Both mentors and mentees significantly benefit from mentorships. Mentees profit from learning directly from a peer who has actually accomplished the experiences and skills that they’re looking to develop, while mentors expand their leadership skills and grow their perspectives.
Mentors can provide mentees valuable insights and expose them to close-knit networks that can expand their support circles and help them build a career path. Mentorships foster unique one-on-one relationships that deliberately give space for peers to connect and focus on meeting concrete professional goals. According to a study conducted by the Association for Talent Development, organizations with formal mentorship programs increased intra-organizational relationships and collaboration by 37%.
Overall, 57% of employees who participated in mentorship programs at their companies believed that it was highly effective at achieving learning goals based on the same Association for Talent Development study. Mentees expressed benefiting the most from professional development (36%), gaining a better understanding of organizational culture (30%), and developing new perspectives (27%). Likewise, mentors ranked the development of new perspectives (59%), expanding leadership skills(49%), and gaining insight into the organization as the top benefits of mentoring programs at their companies (38%).