Small business owners break rules, take risks, and endure mistakes in an effort to drive their businesses forward. For this reason, having a mentor is invaluable. On our BusinessAdvising.org platform, there are hundreds of business professionals who volunteer their time as a business advisor to help entrepreneurs create jobs for economically underserved communities.
A mentor must believe in his or her mentee, both personally and professionally. According to Pamela Ryckman: “Mentors help fill your knowledge gaps and seek opportunities to help you grow and excel. A mentor is someone with whom you can let down your guard, share your insecurities, and ask the ‘stupid’ questions we all have sometimes.”
Mentoring has never been more important to the success of a small business. But many aspiring mentors don’t always know where to start when working with their first mentee. The following tips sourced from our pool of experienced mentors should help to get you off to a great start.
- Communicate Clearly
As a mentor, being able to communicate clearly and effectively will help you in your relationship from the get-go. Communicate your expectations with your mentee, to make sure you’re on the same page. Advising is a mutual relationship. Inform your partner of your expectations of them, determine your goals individually and then discuss them together.
- Learn to Give Unfavorable Feedback
Not every piece of advice you’re going to give will be positive — and not every mentee receives criticism well. Keep a neutral tone. If your mentee resists, or throws back your words, he or she is not likely to hold onto your content — so choose your words carefully. You can make your constructive criticism as easy to digest as possible by letting your words do your work for you. Say what you mean in terms of how changing the behavior or issue will help the mentee achieve their goals.
- Listen
As a mentor, you’re there to provide advice and encouragement to your mentee, but to do that you really need to listen to your mentees situation, story, and what they want to accomplish. When you’re providing advice, listen to what they’re saying, and put yourself in their shoes when you’re giving practical tips and suggestions. People often don’t see your side of a discussion until they think you’ve also seen their side
- Have Patience
Much like teaching or parenting, being a mentor is a long-term endeavor. While your mentee needs and wants direction, it’s going to take time for them to be able to digest and act on your suggestions advice. Be patient with them, and understand that progress comes in small increments, not overnight changes in direction.
- Know How to Treat ‘Failure’
Most of us have grown up thinking that failure is unacceptable. When it comes to running a small business, failures happen in one form or another, from time to time. As a mentor, it’s important that you show your mentee that failure can be a positive thing if there is a lesson learned. It’s important to be resilient and learn from the situation so that your mentee can grow as an entrepreneur and make better business decisions in the future.
Interested in becoming a mentor? We’re recruiting new business mentors and advisors to work with our network of small business owners. You can sign up here.
As a business advisor, you’ll have the opportunity to donate your time and talent to mentor small business owners and help create and retain jobs for people in low-income communities. In the last 5 years, BusinessAdvising.org advisors have helped almost 1,000 companies create more than 1,200 jobs and maintain another 13,000.