What Are the Benefits of Having a Workplace Mentor?

Maybe you’re fresh out of school and looking to kickstart your career, or perhaps you’ve already established yourself within your chosen profession but want to continue your climb up the corporate ladder—if so, finding and fostering a relationship with a mentor should be seen as an essential step on your road to success.

A good mentor will be able to assist you in both your personal and professional development—essentially, helping you realize your full potential. Here are some of the benefits of having a workplace mentor.

A workplace mentor will:

Help guide you toward reaching your goals

While peer mentoring is quite common in the workplace, a prototypical mentor is usually a trusted adviser with more experience than the mentee. As such, most mentors will have already achieved much of the success their mentees seek. Thus, a mentor is in the perfect position to provide real-life insight into how to help you achieve your goals. By sharing their own experiences, they’ll be able to steer you away from making costly mistakes—ultimately, speeding up your ability to advance within your profession.

Provide encouragement

Sometimes, all a person needs to succeed is to be told they can. A mentor will be personally invested in your success—they will be there to encourage you in your professional endeavors. Having your own personal cheerleader is a great way to ensure you’ll remain motivated to keep moving forward.

Offer honest feedback

Being able to accurately identify your personal strengths and weaknesses is necessary for your professional growth. A mentor will be able to offer honest feedback related to your performance, which will highlight areas in which you excel and those that need improvement. While a Yes Man might do wonders for your ego, they will only hinder the development of essential leadership skills.

Hold you accountable

It’s one thing to let yourself down, and it’s an entirely different thing to disappoint someone else who has given you their time and support in order to help you succeed. A mentor will hold you accountable for your actions, and that makes it more difficult for you to give up or slack on achieving your goals. What it boils down to is—you’ll care more about your progress when you’re not the only one who cares.

Introduce you to new contacts

One of the biggest benefits of having a mentor is gaining access to their trusted network of contacts. Your mentor will most likely introduce you to other people in positions to help further your professional goals. You could even end up gaining another mentor in the process. The more help and guidance you have, the better.

Increase your chances of getting a raise/promotion

According to statistics compiled by Sun Microsystems in a study following 1,000 employees over a five year period, those who received mentoring were 20 percent more likely to get a raise than their peers who chose not participate. Additionally, mentees were promoted five times more often than those employees without mentors. This benefit alone should provide all the justification needed to seek out a workplace mentor.

But, while we’re on the subject of raises—a mentor will also be able to offer you guidance before you begin negotiating your future employment contracts. The insight a mentor can provide you with will help empower you to negotiate for the biggest salary increase and best benefits package possible. Clearly, having a mentor will give you an edge over your competition.

Finally, it’s worth noting most mentees—89 percent according to research—eventually go on to become mentors themselves. This statistic speaks volumes about how rewarding these relationships can be. So, if you want to achieve greater levels of success while simultaneously speeding up your climb to the top, find a mentor, and make it happen.