Mentorship is the missing link

As I get older and having been so blessed to experience life in different parts of the world am reminded daily that life is not a dress rehearsal that we must purpose to do more than merely filling this earth. The insights shared here are dedicated to the resilient human spirit with the desire to make a positive impact in our society, our nation and the globe at large. May I re-ignite in you a new hope and an unstoppable drive to reach out and impact another human being to reach their God-given greatness especially our teens and young millennials who if we sadly leave them to the hands of the internet, social media and their long lost peer pressure will perish and we shall have no one to blame for this peril but ourselves.
75% of executives say mentoring has been critical to their career development, according to a survey by the American Society for Training and Development. Myself i have never shied away from asking for help and advice at important decision making junctures in my professional and personal life. A few years back I was assigned to a mentor who was a very seasoned investment banker by one of my all time best employers ever at State Street Bank of Boston,Massachusetts. Though we were in the same building for over 4 years working for the same employer, I had never met this lady and never knew her before personally and i also did not know that something called mentorship even existed in the first place – in my life prior in my growing up all my life in Kenya? But I must confess her mentorship is the best gift i ever got and my life has never and will never be the same again.

As a mentee, I have benefited greatly from the deep experience of people who have made a personal investment in me and as a mentor, I have accelerated other people’s learning and career growth just by investing my time,opening my global networks to them and sharing my insights, which has been incredibly gratifying and most fulfilling thing you can ever do in life. Furthermore, when I take the time to mentor someone, i too learn a lot because reverse mentoring flips the script. As long as you say open minded like me reverse mentoring allows the younger mentees to share their fresh from school knowledge, new world trends and their crazy ideas always allow me to constantly learn new skills keeping my life very exciting. You get as much out of mentorship as you put in. That is why I joined the Presidential Digital Talent Programme (PDTP), our key goal being to provide life-changing mentorships to fresh qualified ICT graduate students designed to build ICT capabilities, helps their in career paths, leadership and personal development skills and connects them to internships opportunities preparing them to the ICT market. Let me point out that it’s invaluable to have a mentor whose journey is complementary to yours and who is personally invested in your success.

Mentors should also be willing to be open and honest about their experiences to help mentees truly learn from them. No matter where you are in your career, the right mentor can energize you and provide counsel when you need it. When you mentor others, exposing them to otherwise inaccessible networks that will take them decades to get to through first hand experiences, you can accelerate their careers helping them succeed to greater heights.
As an entrepreneur, I know it’s exciting to go at it alone and create something solely on your own. However, the sad reality on the ground is that while you have a grand idea, at times you may not know exactly what you should be doing with your business to develop it into a sustainable business especially in such a dynamic volatile competitive global village we are living in. Mentorship therefore is key because:-

1. Mentors provide valuable information and knowledge. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” Let’s just say until you start a business, you really never know what’s really involved in running it, including making a business plan, budgeting, handling daily operations, making tough strategic decisions or running a marketing campaign. With a mentor from the start, you can tap into a wealth of existing business knowledge that can speed up and shorten your learning curve.
2. Mentors’ experiences help you prevent mistakes and improve where you often might not see. Starting a business is challenging enough, so if you can skip doing things the hard way, avoid costly painful mistakes why wouldn’t you? Movie maker George Lucas noted, “Mentors have a way of seeing more of our faults than we would like. It’s the only way we grow.” Good mentors are always brutally honest and tell you exactly how it is rather than downplay any weaknesses they see in you. Constructive criticism that mentors offer can help you see things you might not have recognized as a young entrepreneur. Sometimes we need someone to tame our ego and/or tone down our exciting crazy passions in a sober logical manner. Having a mentor helps you know exactly where you are lacking in so you could improve in your weak areas. 
3. Mentors find ways to stimulate our personal and professional growth. Another famous movie director explained, “The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.” As a mentor I often pose key questions to my mentees to ponder about and ask them to come back with candid answers later on. Seasoned mentors encourage mentees to set ambitious goals and setting you free to assess if you could accomplish them on your own, all the while watching from a distance to see how these projects you to develop a much needed missing skill gap. I once had the priviledge of mentoring one of our renown Kenyan artist who had somehow limited his business to just local shows. When I met him in 2016, he never believed nor dreamt he could ever expand his business to a global reach. I was not only able to convince him and his music manager that his music had an undiscovered international demand in the showbiz industry but 3 years later -believe it or not most definitely this Chap has not only done so many international gigs from New York City to Madrid Spain but he is now also not only one of top Kenyan musician, most sought-after- brand ambassador for 2 major global brands. Great mentors help you focus on character and values, taking your personal growth and your leadership abilities a notch higher faster
4. Mentors offer motivation, encouragement and help keep our engines going: Inspirational entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey stated, “A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself.” Mentors offer moral support sprinkled heavily with cheer-leading. I remember there are times in my career when if it wasn’t for my seasoned mentors’ encouragement I could easily have “caved-in” emotionally, or given up on the pursuit to reach my stars. Great mentors remind you to keep going when the going even gets “tough and rough.”
5. Mentors are disciplinarians that create necessary boundaries that we cannot set for ourselves. As a young investment banker starting out my banking career, my assigned State Street Bank mentor gave me a lot of “tough love”-which to be honest am forever grateful for. For the first time in my life I learnt what “constructive criticism” was all about the hard way. She did this because she understood my background and my vulnerability and she knew that I really needed the “tough love” to transform my career 360 degrees. I remember vividly our very first meeting, she looked at me straight in my eyes and with zero-chills and boldly said “do not expect me to chase you around, be self-driven and take personal initiative to follow through on whatever we discuss in our monthly mentorship sessions”. Being a young girl straight “from the jungle” this rude shock caught me unawares-contrary to my naïve mentorship expectations (needless to say I thought mentorship was more like someone “spoon feeding my career journey” which is absolutely not – a very big assumption many of us young mentees make). She solidified my professional work ethics, sharpened my focus, drove me to take serious stretch roles outside of my 9-5 comfort zones, clarified my priorities in a way that I could never have done on my own. Am forever grateful. No wonder i ended up being nominated by bank board in various influential employee career development work streams that our State Street’s head of human resources championed to impact lifes of so many of our STT employees reducing staff turnover to competition, improved staff work life balance as well and State Street is one of the best employers globally and thanks to my “jungle contributions” they now strongly embrace “Diversity and Inclusion” in the workplace globally especially Women Empowerment and inclusion of different staff cultures in all their global offices. Due to her mentorship, I was nominated to be part of State Street’s acquisition of Deutsche Bank’s Global Securities Services businesses which was one of the largest milestone in my Wallstreet banking history and one of most successful customer integrations in the industry.
6. Mentors are sounding boards so we can bounce ideas off them for unfiltered opinions. If you are un-apologetically passionate like me am sure you get numerous crazy ideas for all types of business innovations coming to you all at once especially when you are starting out. Having a mentor therefore helps you pick the ones that have true business potential and drop the ones that do not have legs nor make any business sense.
7. Mentors are trusted advisers in this competitive world of business, it’s becoming harder to know who to fully trust with your ideas, especially with proprietary information or intellectual property. Since a mentor is an objective third-party with no stake in any idea or venture, it’s good to know that your mentor keeps everything you shared with them as confidential rather than sell it to someone else or painfully “steal” an idea from you.
8. Mentors can be “destiny connectors” playing a dual role of teacher and a destiny shaper, a mentor can provide free access to their wealth of networks to those within your industry who are willing to invest in your company, offer their skills and much needed expertise, introduce you to talent that can fuel your business or career helping you to ace closer to your target audience if not accelerate your business goals. As a mentor am so honored every time am able to share and connect my mentees to my huge global networks that God has blessed me with over my +20 years of banking experience. My banking peers don’t understand why I take the trouble of physically taking with me my young mentees to big networking events, making personal introductions that lead them to big opportunities, many that open once-in-a-life-time doors to them.Typically, a mentoring relationship grows organically through connections within your industry and your networks. Genuine mentors do not do it for the money. Instead, they are driven by the satisfaction of helping another person get better, paying it forward from a similar experience they themselves had when they were starting out. I feel super fortunate to have had a great rewarding mentorship experience and am now so blessed to be in a position to return the favor by mentoring others who are just starting out their careers or their entrepreneurship journey. As a mentor I go an extra mile out of my way to provide priceless access through my own personal story no wonder I emerged the Best Mentor in PDTP 2019.
9. Having a mentor is not a sign of weakness but it’s a smart move for people who are driven enough to succeed. Mentorship is a relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. If you are a mentee, I urge you to stay hungry for knowledge and if you a seasoned mentor(or seasoned enterpreneur) may this article inspire you to consider mentoring at least one mentee before you expire. Happy mentorship folks