Benefits of Self Mentoring

Resuming Speed through Self Mentoring

If you have ever been stuck in a traffic jam, especially with a specific destination and timeframe in mind, you are probably familiar with the sense of frustration when you are ready to keep moving, but endlessly waiting for something to happen somewhere down the road.  A loss of forward movement can also occur in our personal and professional lives and invoke a similar response. When we expend energy every day just to maintain what appears to be the status quo – what we once thought to be an opportunity to build a rewarding career has now become monotonous dead-end job. For women in particular, this can be compounded by the daily struggle to break the glass ceiling.

Somewhere in the process, we may believe that having a mentor would solve this problem, as they can be a sounding board, a direct line to high-visibility projects and ultimately, a move up the ladder within an organization. While this type of mentoring may provide many benefits from a career standpoint, a recent posting from Lee Ann Mallorie, founder of Leading in Motion, offers an alternative – self mentoring – as a means of understanding our goals, drivers and strengths from the inside out. As a result, we can create a personalized path to our vision of success. Suggestions such as taking stock of activities that we truly enjoy, coming to better understand and control stressors in our lives and even consulting with a career coach are some ways to help us to begin moving again. Also compelling is the realization that a mentor’s guidance may reflect the path that was best in their own journey, but may not be as effective for someone with different strengths, priorities and passions.

By stepping back, and being confident in our abilities and better understanding our goals, we can gain clarity to begin to actively move toward our individual destination. Ultimately, Ms. Mallorie’s advice, along with proactivity and determination can enable us to develop into a highly-personalized plan which can be applied both inside the office and also in our personal lives.

Submitted by: Andrea Vargo