Women Mentoring Women: A Guide to Building Lasting Professional Relationships
Women mentoring women is essential to building friendships and lasting relationships that will help you achieve your personal and professional goals. Women have been supporting other women for generations, but it’s still not common for women to mentor each other in business settings. This guide will show you how to find the right mentor in your industry and get the most out of this valuable relationship.
Women Mentoring Women
Mentoring is a relationship between two people where one person (the mentor) helps the other person (the mentee) to learn and grow. It’s usually done over time, and it can be formal or informal. As you might have guessed, there are lots of benefits to mentorship; but if this is your first time, don’t worry: we’ll get into those in just a minute.
Mentoring relationships are mutually beneficial—both parties gain something from it! Mentors gain experience by teaching new ideas to someone else, which helps them improve their own work style or knowledge base; and mentees get guidance from an experienced person who has already made many mistakes in their field of interest so they don’t have to start from scratch.
Mentor relationships are also powerful ways for women professionals of all ages and backgrounds across industries (and sometimes even outside them!) to build lasting relationships that help advance each other professionally—which means they’re great if you’re looking for ways to network with other women too!
What is Mentoring?
Mentoring is a relationship in which a more experienced person helps a less-experienced person develop professionally. Mentors can provide advice on career development and work challenges, as well as personal support, but they do not have to be counselors or coaches. Although mentoring most often occurs between people with different levels of experience (e.g. mentor and mentee), it also takes place among peers who may need assistance figuring out how to handle certain situations or challenges at work or within their personal lives.
A mentor can be anyone who has more experience than you—a former colleague, your boss, an industry expert, etc.—but there are some things that all mentors have in common:
- They want what’s best for the person they’re working with
- They believe that there is something positive about each individual who comes through their door
- They know how important it is for people to connect with others who share similar interests and experiences
Why are Women Mentoring Women?
In a male-dominated workplace, women often feel overlooked for leadership roles and isolated. To help each other navigate these challenges, women need to find mentors who understand what they are going through.
A mentor is someone who has been there before you and can help you avoid mistakes and pitfalls he or she has experienced. A mentor can be a friend or family member but it’s especially helpful for women mentoring women if the two of you have similar backgrounds and experiences in your industry.
Choosing a Mentor
When choosing a mentor, you should choose someone who has been successful in your field. You also want someone who is not a close friend, but someone that you admire and can look up to.
You should look for mentors who have been successful both personally and professionally. If the person succeeds socially as well, it will be even better because they can teach you how to improve those areas of your life as well.
Choosing a Mentee
The first step in creating your mentoring relationship is choosing the right mentee. Your mentee should be someone who’s a good match for you—someone with similar goals and values to yours, and the right level of experience for your mentoring relationship. The most important qualification, though, is finding someone you can trust and respect.
If you’re looking to develop a lasting professional relationship with an individual whom you want to help grow their career and professional development needs, here are some things to keep in mind:
Role of the Mentor
As a mentor, you’re the one who helps the mentee learn and grow. A good mentor provides guidance and support for her mentee. She is a role model who can show the ways in which she has grown and learned over time: what has worked for her, how she found success in certain situations, how she dealt with failure when it came along. She also offers opportunities for her mentee to grow through day-to-day interactions or by providing resources that help them improve their professional skillset (e.g., “I know someone who could really use your help with this project; let’s set up a meeting!”).
Role of the Mentee
MENTEE
It is the responsibility of the mentee to be open to feedback and questions, willing to learn, honest and open. If a mentee does not feel comfortable asking questions or giving feedback then it will be difficult for them to grow in their career. The mentor can help create a safe space for this type of conversation by giving themselves permission first by saying something like: “I am going to say some things that may make you uncomfortable but I want you know that I just want us both to get better as professionals so I’m going there with you.” This will help set up an environment where both people feel comfortable talking openly about what they are experiencing.
Knowing When to Change or End a Relationship
- When the relationship is no longer useful.
- When the mentee is not growing.
- When the mentee is not committed to the relationship.
- When the mentee is not willing to learn.
- When the mentee is not willing to share their experiences, especially if they are being offered as part of a professional development course that they are taking with you, or at least one that you have helped them gain access to by virtue of your recommendation or endorsement of them.
Women mentoring women is essential to building friendships and lasting relationships that will help you achieve your personal and professional goals.
When you’re a mentor, you share knowledge and experiences with someone who is looking to learn. The mentee is usually someone who has less experience than you do in your industry or job role. Mentoring can help both parties grow and achieve their goals, as well as foster a friendship built on mutual respect.
Mentoring women helps build lasting relationships that are essential to achieving personal and professional goals. Women mentors often have access to networks of other successful women who can provide advice and guidance when needed, giving them an edge over their male counterparts who might not have access to those same types of connections.
Women mentoring women is essential to building friendships and lasting relationships that will help you achieve your personal and professional goals. By understanding the roles of both mentors and mentees, you can choose someone who will be a good fit for both parties.