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Write a blog entry on the significance, importance, and/or impact of having a coach and/or a mentor to help you in your professional journey.
Interestingly, Brandon (2014) lays out the historical significance of the term "mentor" which comes from "The Odyssey". Odysseus asked his friend Mentor to help watch over his son Telemachus while Odysseus was away at the Trojan War. Twenty years later, the goddess of wisdom Athena disguises herself as Mentor to provide Telemachus crucial advice at the start of the epic story: to investigate what happened to his father. With the origin of where a mentor comes from, it allows us to realize how significant mentorship can be,
Having mentors to look up to and learn from has been very significant in my career as a military manager and leader. While I have not had a single "go to" mentor that I have relied on throughout my career, I have learned many different things from different mentor "figures". Each of them had their own strengths that I could learn and pull significant lessons from. Having an array of different leadership styles has helped me to create a unique and all-encompassing leadership style of my own.
The overall impact of having so many different mentors with different approaches to leadership has allowed me to build a mentor "toolkit" that has all the necessary tools to approach almost any situation. Diverse mentorship has been very valuable to me not only as a mentee, but especially as a mentor. Sure, as the mentee, I remembered how each mentor made me feel and how they affected me as a follower, but it was what I did with these lessons as a mentor later that made the biggest impact. I saw what approaches worked for me and which ones didn't, but also remembered that what approaches may have worked for me may not work for others.
Having this array of lessons learned from different mentors allowed me to have many options for my own mentoring opportunities. Diverse mentoring from multiple sources has been the biggest importance to me throughout my career as it has given me so many great lessons to carry with me as both a leader and a follower. I always feel prepared to mentor and coach the next generation of young leaders and coaches within my organization. Being a mentor and coach within our organizations is clearly the most important thing that we can do. The biggest lesson that I have learned is to be open, coachable, humble, and engaging as both the mentor and mentee. Follow these simple rules and great things will start to happen within your organization.
References
Brandon, J. (2014). 22 Quotes to Help Boost Your Mentoring Prowess. Retrieved from
http://www.inc.com/john-brandon/22-quotes-to-help-boost-your-mentoring-prowess.html
Interestingly, Brandon (2014) lays out the historical significance of the term "mentor" which comes from "The Odyssey". Odysseus asked his friend Mentor to help watch over his son Telemachus while Odysseus was away at the Trojan War. Twenty years later, the goddess of wisdom Athena disguises herself as Mentor to provide Telemachus crucial advice at the start of the epic story: to investigate what happened to his father. With the origin of where a mentor comes from, it allows us to realize how significant mentorship can be,
Having mentors to look up to and learn from has been very significant in my career as a military manager and leader. While I have not had a single "go to" mentor that I have relied on throughout my career, I have learned many different things from different mentor "figures". Each of them had their own strengths that I could learn and pull significant lessons from. Having an array of different leadership styles has helped me to create a unique and all-encompassing leadership style of my own.
The overall impact of having so many different mentors with different approaches to leadership has allowed me to build a mentor "toolkit" that has all the necessary tools to approach almost any situation. Diverse mentorship has been very valuable to me not only as a mentee, but especially as a mentor. Sure, as the mentee, I remembered how each mentor made me feel and how they affected me as a follower, but it was what I did with these lessons as a mentor later that made the biggest impact. I saw what approaches worked for me and which ones didn't, but also remembered that what approaches may have worked for me may not work for others.
Having this array of lessons learned from different mentors allowed me to have many options for my own mentoring opportunities. Diverse mentoring from multiple sources has been the biggest importance to me throughout my career as it has given me so many great lessons to carry with me as both a leader and a follower. I always feel prepared to mentor and coach the next generation of young leaders and coaches within my organization. Being a mentor and coach within our organizations is clearly the most important thing that we can do. The biggest lesson that I have learned is to be open, coachable, humble, and engaging as both the mentor and mentee. Follow these simple rules and great things will start to happen within your organization.
References
Brandon, J. (2014). 22 Quotes to Help Boost Your Mentoring Prowess. Retrieved from
http://www.inc.com/john-brandon/22-quotes-to-help-boost-your-mentoring-prowess.html
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