Mentoring is About YOU Prioritising YOU.

The more senior you are the less likely you are to prioritise you. You will always tend to put first the needs of the organisation, and the demands of your people. Yet in doing so you deplete yourself. Instead of prioritising time out to reflect on your leadership, to refresh your perspective and to re-energise yourself, you push through every day, relegating that reflection to the realm of unfinished business.

But then comes night. Because you haven’t taken time to reflect, sleep escapes you. You find yourself unable to avoid engaging with that unfinished business. Have you noticed how much more difficult it is to manage at night rather than during the day?

Prioritise Your Professional Development with Mentoring.

Mentoring offers you an opportunity to prioritise your professional leadership development, to stop and take time for you.

It is time to reflect and think about what you are doing and why you are doing it, with a guide on the side in your mentor.

Mentoring gives you an opportunity to gain a fresh perspective on what you do and what kind of a professional you want to be.

It takes you outside of the day-to-day challenges and with the help of your mentor, you can look at them differently.

Mentoring Does Little When “Done” in Your Office.

Step out of the office. Face to face is better than online, at least at the outset, if that is possible.

It is all but impossible to get the most out of mentoring when you are sitting at the same desk, using the same computer, in the same room, where you do your work.

You know that work – writing that report, doing your budgets, answering emails, taking phone calls, being interrupted constantly, putting out bushfires, and managing crisis.

It’s very difficult to shift your mind from all that, into a space that allows you to see things differently, see new possibilities.

Mentoring For Senior Executives Needs To Happen Early in the Day.

My experience has been that the more senior you are the earlier in the morning the mentoring needs to happen. That time for me and my mentees is 7.30 – 9 am. Any appointment made later in the day has a high potential of being cancelled due to leaders prioritising someone or something else over themselves.

Mentoring is a very personal gift you give to yourself to enhance and develop your leadership. If you put a value on the mentoring, if you engage enthusiastically and proactively in the process with your mentor, you will achieve more than you thought possible.

And you will sleep at night, confident in your ability to lead your organisation and inspire and motivate your people.