Broaden your horizons – become a mentor!

Often mentoring is viewed as something that is purely for the benefit of the mentee, to help guide them through a particular challenge or shape their career in some way. Yet in our experience that is only half of the equation.

Have you ever considered becoming a mentor? Often mentoring is viewed as something that is purely for the benefit of the mentee, to help guide them through a particular challenge or shape their career in some way. Yet in our experience that is only half of the equation. As Conchita Gonzalez Moreno, Performance Consultant at Coutts explains: “There is so much learning to be had”.

Coutts & Co. is one of Women in Banking and Finance’s most generous suppliers of volunteer mentors. Our Coutts volunteers tell us that mentoring’s significant advantages range from building on your leadership skills, thus increasing your own advancement potential, and developing empathy and active listening skills. Many are now onto their second mentoring relationship, demonstrating their enjoyment of the scheme.

Yes, you are ‘giving back’, but you may also be finding new talent. While you help the mentee develop their thinking in terms of their career and identify potential solutions to various problems, it is also helpful for you to broaden your own horizons. Your career may see you working with a wide range of people, but working with someone outside your own company may help you to relate to others. Sharing your own experiences may help you understand them in a different light.

“It’s such an opportunity to boost your communication skills in particular,” adds Coutts director Victoria Papworth. Victoria has also volunteered as a coach for the Young Women’s Trust. “Crafting your understanding of other people’s styles of communication is a great way to build out and enhance your own. It is of value in your other relationships, with clients as well as with colleagues.”

Coutts Executive Director Claire Foy cites her own feeling of personal accomplishment. “Seeing the confidence of the mentee growing, holding that space to let them air concerns, questions, insecurities – and giving them the tools to manage these for themselves.”

Julian Hartley, Commercial Director at Tesco Bank agrees with our Coutts’ volunteers. “It’s definitely very rewarding, especially if you feel you have genuinely made a difference to someone. And the fact that the WIBF programme is a 6-month programme and has an end point, helps it feel very purposeful.”

You do not have to be a WIBF member to become a mentor. If this sounds like something you would like to become involved in, please sign up here.

No prior experience in mentoring is required. All that WIBF asks is that you commit to a minimum of 1 hour per month for 6 months.

Victoria Pringle
WIBF Co-Head of Mentoring