The Benefits of External Mentoring

Mentoring is embraced by many organisations across banking and finance that know and understand the benefits of mentoring and being a mentor for their employees. Internal mentoring schemes support the career development and progression of many people within our industry and there are passionate mentors doing great work.

One of the distinctions of the Women in Banking & Finance mentoring scheme is that the mentor and mentee relationship is always external and new. Bringing two people together at a moment in time to build a new relationship, work together and learn alongside each other for six months. There are some key benefits that having an external mentor can bring:

• Having a fresh, outside perspective enables mentors to provide advice, suggest ideas and ask great questions with no preconceptions as to your role, strengths, challenges or position at work right now. This means they are able to bring new thinking to your ambitions and challenges with less constraints.
• Every organisation has different ways of working and mentors who have varied and broader experiences of organisations and how they operate are able to share that experience in constructive ways. Helping mentees to see new ways of doing things, new ways to face existing hurdles and giving them the opportunity to take new ways to approach things back into their organisations – creating positive change not just for them and their careers but for their colleagues too.
• Confidentiality is a key premise of the mentor:mentee relationship and for many, having an internal mentor may at times feel like it crosses these boundaries or leads the mentee to hold back for fear of causing upset and issues internally. This barrier isn’t there with external mentors and all WIBF mentors receive information and training around confidentiality.
• External mentors may see a different vision for your career development – opening up conversation and thoughts of new paths and opportunities that those working with you more closely and in the same environment just can’t see. This visionary stretch is one of the key successes of mentoring and often gives mentors the opportunity to explore a completely different path for their career or next step.

If being an external mentor or having an external mentee is something that you feel would benefit your career development and you’d like to get involved you can find out more about the WIBF mentoring programme here.

You don’t have to be a WIBF member to become a mentor – to find out more and sign up, click here.