Much of the work I do on mentoring focuses on its impact on employees within organisations, but it’s important to reflect on the importance of mentoring for business owners. It’s sometimes easier to distinguish between different contexts by referring to ‘career mentoring’, ‘executive mentoring’ and ‘business mentoring’. The labels can be useful at times but are ultimately a distraction – everyone can benefit from mentoring, whatever you do!
The excellent and highly recommended Association of Business Mentors (ABM) have today published a research report on the impact of professional business mentoring, focusing on the impact of mentoring on business owners. The stats from the report speak for themselves:
– 65% of the leaders surveyed said that the mentoring they received helped them directly boost their revenues
– 63% said that mentoring allowed them to increase their headcount (I hope the Government are taking note!)
– 70% said that working with a professional mentor improved their mental health and confidence
– 72% said that it directly improved their work/life balance
– 72% said that they benefited from improved mental health and confidence as a result of being mentored.
The stats behind mentoring consistently make a compelling case for people to invest their time in finding a mentor to help them on their journey. While many people who seek mentoring for their career, particularly within an organisation, wouldn’t expect to pay for that support, professional mentors can make a real difference, and many business leaders do pay external mentors. And are happy to.
If mentoring isn’t on your radar right now, shouldn’t it be? If you don’t know where to begin, I’d suggest a rather good book on the topic – The Financial Times Guide to Mentoring, which I wrote with Ruth Gotian, as well as reaching out to the ABM. There are plenty of resources on the ABM website, as well as through National Mentoring Day. We share a host of sites and resources at mentoring-guide.com.
If you’d like to read the ABM’s report, you can access it here.