YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A mentor may help a person who’s just starting a career meet challenges, avoid mistakes and chart their professional trajectory.
“For young professionals, having a mentor early in their career, I think, can change everything,” says Patrick J. Bateman, Youngstown State University Distinguished Professor, Larricia Family Endowed Professor and director of the MBA program at the Williamson College of Business Administration. “It can help give them the courage to take on new challenges or know what challenges they should take on.”
A mentor can also help a younger employee gain insight to help them avoid common missteps and to connect to a larger network, the professor adds.
And a mentor doesn’t have to be someone you meet in the workplace, says JoAnn Stock, executive director of Leadership Mahoning Valley. LMV is a nonprofit that identifies people who demonstrate leadership and community commitment and offers a 10-month leadership program. It’s adding a youth leadership program this year.
“There have been some professional organizations that I’ve been involved with, like the Association of Fundraising Professionals, where they’ve had a more of a formal mentoring program,” she says.
Advantages
Stock’s mentors helped her build her confidence, particularly when she started in a new role, and provided guidance and career support.
“And I think that all just contributes to your overall personal growth,” she says.
A mentor-mentee relationship may develop either formally through something structured within a company or informally.
Cohen & Co. provides a mentoring program for employees, but Kelly Anzevino, a partner in the Youngstown office, likes to reach out to people within the company who she believes she can help.
“I look at individuals and make sure that they have somebody to talk to, not only their team manager, but somebody who they may or may not work with, just somebody who they feel comfortable with,” she explains.
Early in her career, when Anzevino worked at a different company, she was assigned a mentor who wasn’t a good fit. She didn’t feel comfortable opening up to that person.
“When the mentees can select who they want as a mentor, it allows them the freedom to be able to feel comfortable with, to go to somebody that’s approachable to them, somebody that they can relate to, or somebody that they aspire to be with and to be someday,” Anzevino says.
Connecting with the right mentor brings many benefits to a mentee, from learning if he or she is on the right path to achieve what they want in their career to maintaining a healthy work-life balance, she says.
“It’s just whatever the passion is,” Anzevino adds. “I just think it’s important to make sure that they find somebody to be able to talk to, to be able to make sure that their passions in their career are aligned with what their goals are.”
Stock credits many people as mentors throughout her career but says those bonds developed informally.
“I feel like I’ve had multiple mentors throughout my career, but I’ve never had what I would call a formal mentor,” she says.
She’s spent the last 20 to 25 years working for nonprofit agencies but before that worked in retail management, operations, human resources and as a buyer at JCPenney.
“The organizations that I’ve worked for always encouraged helping others and helping new employees, but I think that in most cases, within the organization, outside of the organization, there’s always been individuals that I’ve looked up to, that I’ve respected,” she adds.
How to Connect
Stock approached them, asked to meet and talked about career advice. She considers them mentors because of what she learned from them.
Bateman agrees.
“I would say some of the most successful mentorships are not the ones that are formally arranged, but the ones that are informal and develop naturally as part of getting to know somebody over time,” he explains.
To find the right mentor, Bateman advises it’s OK to ask someone for guidance and support.
“A lot of folks early in their career, they suffer with a confidence issue or an imposter syndrome, and they might feel that asking for support just kind of underscores that it might seem like I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says.
They don’t appreciate that everybody at some point was in that same position. A good mentor is someone with whom you click, who knows what you’re trying to achieve and someone you hope to model, the professor says. When asking someone to act as a mentor, a mentee should be clear about their goals, he adds.
And being a good mentee brings responsibility too.
“So be open to feedback, ask good questions, follow through on advice, provide feedback of how advice might have helped and be respectful of other people’s time,” Bateman says.
A person agreeing to be a mentor isn’t an invitation to bounce every decision off of them, he adds.
Mentor’s Benefits
The relationship may be beneficial to the mentor too.
Anzevino recalls one younger colleague who lacked confidence in an area. She worked with that person, coaching them about learning the information a little at a time. Starting step by step helped that person build confidence, she says.
“And now I really enjoy watching them grow in their process and feeling confident and being able to grow professionally – just taking that one step at a time through that guidance,” Anzevino adds.
Bateman says mentoring is a way to give back to someone else, but its benefits can be professional too,
“Sometimes when you have to take the time to explain to someone
why you did something, or how something works, it actually creates a
greater understanding in yourself,” he says.
At YSU, events like the professional development summit and Meet the Employer Day foster a form of mentorship, allowing students to connect with alumni who return to campus to meet students. Many alumni return annually.
At the summit, alumni share what they’ve learned and what they wish they knew when they were younger, Bateman explains.
“I’m there in the rooms where they offer, ‘Please, here, take my card. I encourage you to reach out,’” he says. And they mean it, he adds.