If you are a college graduate or an experienced professional, when you join any organization, you will always be reporting to someone, you call that someone your reporting manager, a someone who is your mentor.
As a new lad to the organization, you always look up your mentor to get answers to most of your questions, let it be related to work or anything. Your mentor is your single point of contact to all your queries.
What if you end up reporting to someone who is nothing but a jackass with some great experience in the industry, but is just another looser. Your expectations from your mentor will be like to increase your knowledge pool, but reporting to some moron, what good it does to you ? Does your knowledge level improve ? How do you grow in your career ? You get stuck were you are, unless you take the step to learn things by yourself.
But if you happen to report someone who is a true master in the industry, then you are one lucky bastard who can then just go learning the best art of the industry and excel out. Best mentors will guide you in right directions and give you right advice. Such mentors will make sure that they make real impact on your career. They help you grow, they help you succeed.
Do you think, working for an organization, you need a right mentor who could mould your career growth ? Have you ever been motivated or de-motivated by your mentor ?
If you are new into professional life, your manager is most responsible for how you carve out. It can be team lead or project manager. From them you learn professional life. If you get some one who mentors you well, you like your team automatically and like your work. If the mentoring is not good, you naturally gets depressed. I am lucky to have a wonderful team and team lead in Arun Rao at Infosys. All my professional experience and career, I owe a lot to him
I remembered my mentor when i read this write up. I owe whatever i made out of my work life to Mr Phanikanth. I was completely raw after MBA with loads of ideas but not sure where to put them. He was the one who molded me.
Its the mentor(Good Mentor) who can guide you rather than colleagues.
No matter whether its your reporting manager,teamlead or colleague,in a professional life you should have a mentor who really help, motivate and lead you to shape up your career in the proper way…
I don’t agree with what you said about your reporting manger being your mentor. It’s possible that they could be, but unlikely. For one thing, younger people would feel somewhat intimidated by their reporting manager. Also, it’s likely that your supervisor won’t always have time for a greenhorn.
More often than not, I expect mentors to be people who have been working at the place longer, but aren’t your supervisors. You’d feel a lot less uncomfortable asking silly questions to someone who won’t be assessing you for your annual appraisals. Of course, if you do run into a manager who would take a newbie under his wing, it’s great.
As for being demotivated by my mentors… well, no. Mentors to me are people who help motivate me… if they demotivated me, they wouldn’t be my mentors.
The Mentors play a great role in our professional life… The one who can motivate you, guide you and bring out your hidden qualities 7 talents in professional life. But if your mentor is not taking you seriously or not considering your abilities then obviously you will lose hope, interest in your profession… I am very thankful to my mentors(POC, TL, Manager etc…) who have guided me, motivated me and whenever I felt “I can’t do” they gave me hope and encouraged me to do it!!!!! I did my work with love and passion. I have got both experiences….
I think when you are fresh college grad joining a big company with thousands of employees, you feel lost. It’s a tricky situation getting a brilliant mentor who is competent to answer all your questions and one feels great about it. As I said it is a tricky situation and can be counterproductive at times. If you get direct answers for problems; your opportunity to explore is lost. I believe a true mentor is one who helps you in developing an approach to find answers to most of the questions. Mentor needs to groom you in that direction. Giving answers is one thing but empowering you with the right approach and ways to find solution of problems is another. Having the right mentor is good because it saves times from hit and trial method but on the other hand not having a mentor can be a blessing in disguise provided you are up for the challenge. You will take more time to find a solution but before getting to your solution you will explore and that’s what I call true learning. It may not matter at that very moment or for that very problem but I am sure because of this hit & trial and exploring you would have touched many things which you may get to use in future.
In the end all that matters is your mind set!! Some of us need mentors to achieve greatness and some can do it without any help. One example that comes to my mind is Roger Federer who never had a tennis coach throughout his career.
I believe mentor is one who give directions, inspire us to learn more, the right way.
Anyone who does that, whoever they are, whatever the topic is – is my mentor. And I have found a lot of them in my life.
Shantharam » December 13, 2010
Not neccessarily, your colleagues could help you better i believe..