Why You Need a Workplace Mentor (Streaming audio)
Nothing can replace years of work experience in providing insight into a career-field or specific workplace. Not the years you’ve invested in specialized schooling, the book knowledge, or aced tests.
Maybe you are about to begin a new career, or are relatively fresh-faced to your career field, workplace, or specific position. You have the book knowledge or the training, but do you have the knowledge learned through experience? Perhaps you can seek the mentorship of another who does have experience-derived-insights and who is willing to share.
Here is what a workplace mentor can provide:
- A sounding board for your questions, and answers for many of them.
- Recommended routes to advancement in the field.
- Knowledge learned from the mentor’s mistakes, failures, and successes.
- Insight into the values of a company or boss.
- Information on the company’s culture.
- Realistic, honest feedback on your job performance.
- Suggestions for improving your job performance, including efficiency and accuracy.
- Training in career-specific policies, procedures, tools, and technology.
- Support and training in newly acquired leadership opportunities.
- Guidance in solving problems at work.
- Networking opportunities as you are introduced to your mentor’s peers and sphere of influence.
Furthermore, if you are blind or visually impaired and can locate a mentor who is also blind or visually impaired working in your career field or in a career field you are considering pursuing, you can seek advice specific to succeeding in the field with a visual impairment. You may ask questions regarding specialized tools, valuable assistive technology, negotiating assistance, particular challenges, or other areas of concern or interest.
Do these benefits and provisions of mentorship sound like a gold mine? Yes, I think so too. And that, my friends, is why you need a workplace mentor.
To those of you who have many years of experience in a career field and who are blind or visually impaired, please consider Becoming a CareerConnect Mentor.