The Value of Mentorship

Mentorship is extremely valuable in society today, I have learned alot from being a mentor and being a mentee that I can share to help others. Before I get into my story, look at this chart below of what others say is the most impactful force in their professional development.

This graphic comes from Tone Networks and showcases the value of mentors. What is scary about this graphic is that roughly 70% of employees do not currently have a mentor.

My Story

When I was just starting in my professional career, I never gave much thought to mentorship or even to what I wanted to do. I really didn't find this until I first figured out about a mentorship program at my first company. This program would match a mentor and mentee together based on a few criteria including personal goals, knowledge gaps, and availibility.

Through this program, I was able to define my career goals, understand what questions to ask , and how to pivot in my career. Which is exactly what I did. I laid out a plan to become a software engineer. This plan started with me going back to school while working full time. Which I completed while also being in a software role.

Like any journey, this path was not easy but it was rewarding and allowed me to grow myself in more ways than I could have imagined. During this journey, the same program that initially let me find a mentor needed someone to lead the program. So I reached out and went for the opportunity to lead it.

The program was one of the best experiences of my career so far as I have been able to help over 200 mentees find mentors. During that process, I have learned many lessons that I would like to share below.

Lessons From Helping Others Find Mentors

Seeing others look for mentorship often helps ourselves figure out what truly is important when we look for mentorship. Look below at the most common advice that mentors give.

1. Know where you are going.
2. What is your next step?
3. What do you actually enjoy doing?
4. What would you do if you had no obligations?
5. Think about your career as a series of steps, some longer and some shorter.

For myself, the largest trend in all of these are having a vision of where you are headed. I have heard the saying that if you get in the car with no destination, anywhere is fine. However, would that be true for you? I know for myself it would not be adequate. That's why I am always thinking about my next move and attempting to increase my value and my ability to create.

I would like to leave everyone on this note, my vision of my future is being a CEO/CTO of a company one day. With that, I enjoy diving deeper in software engineering and learning everything that I can. I also desire to have more leadership opportunities and chances to mentor others. These ideas give me a good idea of what I will need to do in the future and ask one simple question. Does this agree with my future vision or not?