12 Must Have Qualities of a Mentor

Mentor can be your manager, a friend, a college professor, a colleague anyone who’s been a perfect advisor at any moment of your life. Everyone has a first best Mentor is their own Mother. Who raise us, lays the basic foundation and make us able to reach there, she helps us to build up a strong personality with ethics, moral values and principles. Our Mother is the first mentor in all true sense.

Now, think what qualities made them stand out to you. You trust their advise , that you feel like they completely understand you and your goals. Everyone needs mentor at some point of their life.  Like Lord Krishna mentors Arjuna in Mahabharat . Lord Krishna as the ideal mentor due to the fact that he had numerous mentoring styles for diverse situations.

So, here are some qualities to be an Amazing Mentor :

1. Mentor should be a good listener : Mentor must be able to listen what his mentee is saying. There should be an involvement in the conversation for clarity and more information. Mentor can ask questions, consider mentees answers and give time to think. A mentor should be an active listener.

2. Trustworthy : Both mentor and mentee have sense of mutual trust. There should be a sincerity in the way mentor present their desire to help mentee. He should generate a understanding and trust so that mentee can openly share their problems and goals.

3. Ideally has Knowledge or Expertise in the field where the mentee aims to succeed : Great Mentors are excited to share their knowledge with mentee. Mentors seek out  any situation in which their mentees can get involved and learn more skills in their subject. Mentors should exhibit enthusiasm and a sense of energy to motivate his mentee.

4. Has good communication skills : One good quality  every mentor possess open and authentic communication skills which can create a good mentorship relation between mentor and mentee. He should appreciate the ongoing effort of mentee through positive feedback and encourage the mentee to achieve their goals successfully.

5. Willingness to share skills, knowledge and expertise : Mentors always take time to stop talking about themselves and should consider their mentees progress. Good mentoring needs time and commitment and willingness to continuously share information and their non-stop support with mentee.

6. Self confidence and self awareness : If a mentor lacks self confidence, they will not be able to inculcate confidence into their mentee either. Mentor should be aware to aware the mentee about the current scenerios and for setting examples.

7. Provides constructive feedbacks : the major responsiblity is to give guidance and feedback by identifying mentees current weakness and strengths and learning how to use these to make mentee successful in the subject. Mentor should also provide challenges to the mentee which can foster professional and personal development of a mentee.

8. Value learning :  Effective mentors are continuous learners . They should know that while they are experts , they cannot possibly know everything. A mentor that will learn from their mentee is really worth respect.

9. Encourage mentee to step out of comfort zone : Mentor is capable of knowing their mentee comfort zone and developing paths and activities within mentees goals that will push them to become comfortable outside the comfort zone.

10. Constant support without interference : As lord Krishna was always supportive to Arjuna but he never intervene in Arjuna’s life. He constricted his role to  give advice.

11. Support mentee in difficult task give unconditional support to mentee : Mentor can criticize mentee but never denigrate the mentee. Mentor should consider mentee’s decision and never left alone mentee to fend for himself. Like in Mahabharata many of the times Lord Krishna criticize Arjuna for wrong decision but he never left Arjuna alone to look after himself to get the consequences of those decision . He always support him in every situation.

12. Great mentor is available to his mentee and invested in mentee’s success : A mentor should always be available to give the help and advice  to It’s mentee. He should happy to see his mentee’s success and even potentially surpass them.

Submitted By: Devansh Pandey | Ojasvi Gupta
(PGDM Batch 2019-21)