The benefits of mentoring in talent assessment

Understanding the benefits of mentoring is necessary to design plans that allow you to detect and enhance your company’s talent. In the highly competitive scenario in which we live, betting on human capital can be the differentiating feature of your project. But, what are the benefits of having a mentor?

Thanks to mentoring, you can improve the management of that talent and create new opportunities for personal and professional growth of your teams that, in turn, drive the organization’s strategic objectives. 

Read on to discover the benefits of mentoring for the mentor, the mentored, and the organization. We will also show you the main disadvantages you may encounter.

What are the benefits of mentoring?

As we have just mentioned, the advantages of a mentorship impact the 3 main actors: the mentor, the mentee, and the organization.

Benefits of mentoring for mentors

The success of mentoring lies in the fact that all parties benefit from the relationship, including the mentors. 

Look at the benefits they get: 

• They can share their ideas. 
• They develop new skills, such as transforming values and strategies into practical actions. 
• They consolidate their personal development. 
• They improve their interpersonal leadership. 
• They hone their interpersonal skills. 
• They detect their areas of improvement.
• They can identify opportunities to contribute to other projects. 
• They renew their enthusiasm thanks to their expert role and the satisfaction of participating in the professional career plan of their colleagues. 

Mentoring also helps senior profiles to revalue themselves and keep updated on the company’s needs and opportunities.

Benefits of mentoring for mentees

One of the benefits of having a mentor for the mentee is personal growth, which encompasses other benefits such as: 

• Increases active listening skills. 
• Improves the analysis of a situation focused on decision-making. 
• Reinforces discipline. 
• Develops creativity and the search for solutions. 
• Increases your network of contacts. 
• Acquires another vision of performance evaluation. 

Another great benefit for the mentee is that they can count on someone they trust in the company, broadening their vision of the company and themselves by discovering new professional horizons.

Benefits of mentoring for an organization 

Business mentoring also provides excellent benefits for the company because: 

• It reinforces leadership in line with its strategic objectives. 
• It allows talent detection and promotes it in specific projects. 
• Increases team loyalty. 
• It helps to save costs in the training of new members. 
• Promotes a policy of action focused on achieving objectives. 
• Improves internal communication and the work environment. 
• Facilitates the transmission of the company’s values.

Likewise, another indirect benefit of business mentoring programs is the vision of the person being mentored as a manager, thanks to the new competencies and skills they acquire and will bring to the team.

Disadvantages of mentoring

Indeed, the benefits help you understand how mentoring can help you. However, you need to be aware of the disadvantages to avoid them.

Disadvantages of mentoring for mentors

Among the disadvantages of mentoring for the mentor, we find the following:

• Lack of time: Mentoring will fail if the selected mentor has a busy schedule. 
• Lack of practice or preparation of the mentor to professionally mentor a co-worker. In that case, try to find another one and improve your mentor selection process so it doesn’t happen again. Mentors must have the necessary skills to take on this responsibility.
• Frustration if the mentee does not progress as planned leads to disaffection on the mentee’s part, eroding the relationship. To avoid this, provide continuous monitoring of the process to detect blockages.

Disadvantages of mentoring for mentorees

Among the disadvantages that the mentee may suffer in a mentoring process, we find:

• The frustration of the mentees with the consequent motivation loss. The almost immediate consequence is the failure of mentoring. Without their motivation, the transmission of competencies and skills will not be successful. 
• Feeling of excessive pressure. The employee may think that they are being pressured to get more work out of them in a disguised way. Avoid these situations with good internal communication about mentoring that lets you know their expectations and align their objectives with your company’s.

Disadvantages of mentoring for the organization

La organización a su vez también puede sufrir las consecuencias negativas de una mala puesta en marcha de un programa de mentoring.

• Si los ejecutivos no están de acuerdo con estos procesos pueden crear un bloqueo. Por ello, antes de plantearlo, debes asegurarte de que la empresa entiende las ventajas que pueden obtener todos del mentoring. 
• El papel de la organización debe ser el de facilitar los medios e infraestructuras necesarias para el correcto desarrollo del programa, de lo contrario supondrá una pérdida de tiempo para todos. Así, la línea directiva debe mostrar su apoyo en todo momento mediante un seguimiento continuo, objetivo y eficaz. 

The organization can also suffer the negative consequences of a poorly implemented mentoring program.

• If executives or managers do not agree with these processes, they can create a blockage. Therefore, before you do so, you must ensure that the company understands the benefits that everyone can obtain from mentoring. 
• The role of the organization must be to provide the necessary means and infrastructure for the proper development of the program. Otherwise, it will be a waste of time for everyone. Thus, the management line must always show its support through continuous, objective, and effective follow-up.

In this regard, you can rely on technology. For example, thanks to proctoring -a remote monitoring system- you can provide secure environments for remote exchanges between mentor and mentee and follow-up assessments. 

To help you, we have developed a series of proctoring products to meet your needs. Discover them by requesting a free demo to see how we can help you.