In the modern context, most of you might be familiar with the concept of business mentoring within your workplace as someone who has more experience or wisdom and is willing to share their knowledge and insights in bringing on a younger colleague, guiding their career within the company.

However, only recently, the term mentor has broken out of the workplace and into the marketplace. The term ‘business mentor’ is often freely bandied around to encompass various activities and services from business angels to non-executive directors.

They are clear as to what business mentoring should be – and it begins with absolute and genuine belief in the businesses we work with and their onward success.

With anybody other than a professional business mentor, time and attention will always be divided amongst their activities and the business mentor’s level of motivation.

Let not be in doubt; however, most successful entrepreneurs will attribute much of their achievement to the support and guidance they received from a business mentor.

Business Mentoring does not involve employing a consultant or employee to help run your business. Instead, it’s a relationship between you, the Business Owner, and someone with business experience that can guide you through making the difficult decisions, point out ways of improving your business, ask you the tough questions and motivate you to want to achieve higher levels of performance, all within the bounds of a trusted relationship.

Because it’s lonely at the top, business mentoring can offer you a partner in the process, sharing views with someone who knows the ropes. In addition, working with a Business Mentor will help you gain fresh insights into problems and decision-making through impartial, objective discussion and feedback.

Some of the benefits of Business Mentoring include: 

  • Reducing the level of risk in making business decisions – exploring options becomes easier when you have someone that understands and shares your concerns at the deepest levels.
  • Focusing your energy simply having someone else to motivate you and share your successes with can often lead to extraordinary results.
  • Making positive progress more quickly – taking the actions that matter can make a big difference to your profits business possibilities begin to open up – with your time and energy better focused, striving for new opportunities now becomes a reality.

Your business mentor should be truly objective and be able to bring their unique experience of life and business to bear upon the multitude of issues any leader or someone on the way up in business encounters; from that important presentation, hiring and firing, to building a productive team and driving for growth.

In short, a business mentor is someone available when you want them and whom you can trust totally to tell it like it is.

To derive full value from Business Mentoring and Coaching, you need to be open to change, prepared to be challenged, and take daily action towards your success.

You have to make time in your week to meet with your coach and time to focus on delivering the action plan you have agreed. They will guarantee that you will be more successful if you take consistent action towards your goals than today.