Many of us regularly use our knowledge and experience to help and guide…

Many of us regularly use our knowledge and experience to help and guide others. But this type of help and guidance isn't just useful for our friends and family. By mentoring in the workplace, you can help people increase their effectiveness, advance their careers and create a more productive organisation. Being a mentor can also be very rewarding.

Mentoring is a relationship between two people - the "mentor" and the "mentee". As a mentor, you pass on valuable skills, knowledge and insights to your mentee to help them develop their career.

Mentoring can help the mentee feel more confident and self supporting. Mentees can also develop a clearer sense of what they want in their careers and their personal lives. They will develop greater self-awareness and see the world, and themselves, as others do.

For an organisation, mentoring is a good way of efficiently transferring valuable competencies from one person to another. This expands the organisation's skills base, helps to build strong teams and can form part of a well-planned succession planning strategy.

There are two main types of mentoring: Developmental mentoring - This is where the mentor is helping the mentee develop new skills and abilities. The mentor is a guide and a resource for the mentee's growth.

Sponsorship mentoring - This is when the mentor is more of a career influencer than a guide. In this situation, the mentor takes a close interest in the progress of the mentee. The mentor "opens doors", influencing others to help the mentee's advancement.

To be a good mentor, you need skills similar to those used in coaching, with one big difference - you must have experience relevant to the mentee's situation. This can be technical experience, management experience or simply life experience.

According to the passage, an organisation gains from mentoring in _____ ways.