Why Women Should Have Career Mentors?
Before that we will have a look at Who is Mentor and what do Mentors do?
No matter what we do in life, there are many times we need some help and support from someone we respect. A mentor is someone who provides help and advice to a less experienced person. Mentors can be male and female, older and younger. Mentors have real world experience; they can provide you with useful knowledge and insights.
Here is a nice article from forbes.com which I would like to share for all Career-minded women.
You can learn from their vast experience: I once worked for a very large, global company that was very male-dominated. One of my mentor’s was a woman several levels above me whom I greatly admired. She helped me learn and then navigate through the layers of company politics so I could gain more support for my projects, prove myself, and then be considered for larger and more difficult jobs. Navigating the political labyrinth at work would have been almost impossible to accomplish without the help of my mentor.
They will help you define your career goals: As a career coach and mentor/trainer to more than 1,700 women over my 20+ year career, I’ve found women are much more successful when they have a mentor to help them define their career goals and objectives. If you don’t know where you want to go, how will you determine how to get their? A mentor will help you put a clear plan in place to ensure you achieve your career aspirations efficiently and quickly. As one happy mentee commented, “My mentor helped me clarify my career aspirations and figure out the actions I needed to take to achieve my career goals.”
They improve your accountability: A mentor brings accountability and this breed’s responsibility. I’ve found that within a very short period of time, my mentees fall into the habit of holding themselves accountable for completing their action items. They learn from me, as their mentor (and I learn lots from them!), and then the excitement of completing tasks and seeing the results motivates them even more to hold themselves accountable and strive for achievements they previously thought were impossible.
They will keep private conversations confidential: I once became a mentor to a woman who, previously, had never had mentors. The problem she ran into is that because she had no one else to speak with, she had been discussing difficult issues with her manager and even with a colleague, whom she thought she could trust. This backfired on her because some of the information she had discussed with her manager ended up in her annual performance appraisal. In addition, the co-worker used some of the private information against her in order to gain a promotion. This situation underscores the need to have mentors you trust and with whom you can discuss confidential information to gain different perspectives and ideas.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2011/07/18/why-women-should-have-career-mentors/