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Mentoring & the woman Entrepreneur
Sanjana Jog
Jun 2009
Jun 2009
Page 1 of 2
Many successful entrepreneurs attribute much of their achievement to support and guidance from a mentor. Everybody needs a good reliable sounding board or second opinion or sometimes just some emotional support. The mentor also helps to make the mentee's thought processes clearer, sharper and more enriched with ideas, and decreases the entrepreneur's exposure to risk. As women are often more risk averse than men, a mentor can be a comforting support in stressful times.
Mentoring is a symbiotic relationship between the young entrepreneur and someone with business experience, who can point out ways of improving the business and offer general support within a trusted relationship. It gives more experienced entrepreneurs who may have retired from their business, the opportunity to share their skills, experience, and expertise with those who are keen to get knowledge and guidance.
A mentor usually has no ulterior motive and as the relationship develops over the time, that trust can grow even stronger. When the mentor becomes more familiar with the entrepreneur and her business, this relationship becomes more efficient and sometimes the mentor can foresee and make her wise on problems she hasn't visualised yet.
A good mentor also helps the entrepreneur to expand her social network. Being an experienced businessperson, the mentor is likely to have an extensive network, and can give her access to far more senior decision-makers than she currently has. And they in turn will be far more willing to open up their network to her if she is introduced to them by an old friend.
Learn to get the most benefit from your mentors:-
1. Always tell your mentor what kind of advice you need whether it be on managing cash-flow, or on marketing strategy or to keep you energized and motivated etc, so that he/ she can help you out on specific issues rather than doing guesswork on what advice may be beneficial to you.
2. Share an over-view of your business. Also share your goals so that your mentor has a clear picture and can visualise the end result that you are looking for.
3. Ask plenty of questions and listen with an alert, open mind for good ideas and thoughts. A pre-requisite of a good mentee is that he must be a good listener. People, who are not willing to listen or are too obsessed with their own ego, never really learn anything out of the experience. In the end, they're just wasting their own time.
4. Develop a network. No one person has all the answers, so you may need different mentors for different aspects of your business and for industry specific issues. The composite of good ideas from each of your mentors plus your own good ideas would be even more effective.
5. A mentor need not always be an older more experienced person. Sometimes peers make very good mentors, as they are going through the same stage of business and may have tackled similar problems in a different way. Women entrepreneurs when compared to their male counterparts, often have less time to network outside of work hours, therefore peer mentors can be of great value in keeping up with current trends.
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