Is Anytime Mentoring the need of the hour?

 

Mentoring, an ancient custom, has become a vital element of honing abilities and advancing professionals’ careers. It offers an outlet for sharing wisdom between seasoned professionals and novices; consequently aiding the latter to comprehend how to start their tasks, navigate difficulties, and arrive at sound conclusions. 

Unfortunately, due to time constraints, typical physical mentoring can be strenuous and ineffectual sometimes, resulting in potential obstructions during one’s professional voyage. Here is where virtual anytime mentoring comes into play; with its instant accessibility. Also, it provides indispensable versatility and fast tracks access to resources under the present challenging circumstances like never before. 

Categorically, a research study establishes that an overwhelming majority of all interviewees (precisely 92%) who switched from face-to-face to virtual mentoring sessions portrayed an overall affirmative experience.

Thus, by furnishing professionals with individualized counsel from seasoned mentors; especially techniques that have worked for others, virtual mentor platforms have shown themselves to be of inestimable worth. Particularly in permitting users to get essential directions whenever they need them most. Thus, it can be argued that anytime mentoring is truly the need of the hour.

Also Read: Start your 2023 with Virtual Mentoring

Challenges Faced by Mentees and How Anytime Mentoring Can Help

Mentoring has long been recognized as a paramount factor in attaining accomplishments and honing one’s proficiencies. Nevertheless, the customary method of in-person mentoring can turn cumbersome for both guides and protégés alike due to the requirement for them to be present together. The difficulties mentees encounter consist of difficulty finding an opposite mentor, restricted admittance to veteran mentors–working on hectic schedules, long waiting periods, and flexibility constraint. 

These predicaments can further exacerbate if the mentee hails from an underprivileged milieu or is geographically far off from feasible mentors. With all these impediments and more challenges, it is becoming increasingly clear that anytime mentoring is needed to provide equitable access to quality mentorship.

Anytime mentoring seeks to address these concerns by providing easy-to-use online platforms where mentors and mentees can connect–no matter where they live. Such platforms offer enhanced accessibility to experienced professionals, geographically restricted or otherwise hard to reach. Furthermore, mentees get more freedom to tailor their own personalized mentoring journey with greater time flexibility and less waiting time than traditional mentoring.

Anytime Mentoring: What is it?

Anytime Mentoring programs offer individuals the opportunity to gain guidance or professional assistance from international mentors through mentoring platforms at any time, sitting at a place of their convenience.

Fundamentally, anytime mentoring symbolizes the belief that everyone should be equipped with equivalent opportunities to accomplish their ambitions and pursuits. By making quality mentorship and requisite resources available through mentoring frameworks, inequality in terms of bridging the promotion and opportunity gap can be accomplished. Moreover, due to high-tech advances such as Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, anytime mentoring renders precise feedback and individualized solutions depending on workforce necessities.

Not merely these, contemporary technologies such as instantaneous messaging, project management, and an assortment of conferencing tools embedded within mentoring platforms have witnessed a remarkable upsurge in utilization. This has facilitated organizations to monitor developments and impose corrective measures or refine prevailing strategies for the effective attainment of predetermined objectives adeptly.

Anytime Mentoring Over Traditional In-Person Mentoring

Mentoring is indeed indispensable in the contemporary world, yet Anytime Mentoring is an evolved mode of mentorship providing a plethora of advantages–explained below. 

Building Network

Anytime Mentoring programs serve as on-demand facilitators for individuals looking to gain insight and feedback from digital mentors globally–without having to physically traverse. Moreover, this form of swift mentoring enables users to access exclusive networks–inaccessible by any other means; thereby rendering networking opportunities with different experts as when feasible for both parties. 

Rendering a Visual Learning System

Importantly, video calls in mentoring platforms are capable of supporting more useful visual learning opportunities when compared to customary text-based dialogues. 

Quick Brief Meetings

A scenario in which virtual mentoring systems may be more advantageous than conventional meetings includes: a quick brief online mentoring session wherein job seekers looking for career guidance or entrepreneurs approach for business guidance on an overview of investments and financial planning. 

In both situations, digital meetups provide greater versatility from a timing perspective, allowing them to choose mentors around their schedules and exact requirements. Likewise, learners who need assistance in gaining information on specialized topics or for upskilling purposes can receive tremendous advantages from having direct contact with a seasoned mentor virtually on another side of the world–someone with eclectic academics and experience.

Scalability

A noteworthy benefit of on-demand mentoring is its scalability. Essentially, businesses can rapidly augment operations without hiring further personnel by taking counsel from seasoned mentors. Such experts can aid them in comprehending how to significantly raise output with the extant staff.

This assists companies in cutting down expenses smartly–thanks to mentors–while broadening their ambit of operations. 

In-the-Moment Analysis

Real-time analytics tools in mentoring platforms make it possible for administrators to follow up on training progress and take informed decisions. Furthermore, with regard to emergencies, virtual mentoring systems are usually more responsive than conventional methods due to automated alerts being sent out instantly, and on time.

Molding Outlook

It is important to acknowledge that seeking mentorship involves accessing knowledge or wisdom that the staff currently does not possess. Importantly, virtual mentors of excellence will furnish professionals with outlooks that extend their current capabilities. They will mold the workforce to reinterpret their way of thinking and necessitate an alteration of work outlook if required. 

It is probable that the mentorship will direct employees to garner success, examining their environment, predicaments, and aspirations from altogether different perspectives.

Also Read: Online Mentoring: A New Way

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Before Opting for an Anytime Mentoring Program 

Implementing Anytime Mentoring will not at all be difficult if you follow the steps outlined below:

Step 1: Get started with determining clear objectives for the program. This is crucial to ensure that all participants understand the program’s purpose–whether it’s developing leadership skills or simply improving communication within the organization. 

Step 2: Subsequently, decide upon:

• Who will participate in the program to make sure that the most suitable individuals can take advantage of this prospect
• At what stage should it start
• Topics to be covered in all sessions

Step 3: Identify suitable mentors within the organization or seek outside experts if necessary. It is paramount to ponder the various modalities of mentorship, including personalized dialogues and collective workshops, thus making sure each individual receives the necessary coaching.

Step 4: Understand the expectations of both parties, develop guidelines with timelines, and stick to them throughout the sessions. These would be expectations from the topics to be discussed (career guidance or developing leadership qualities, or professional development advice), meeting frequency (weekly or biweekly), and any relevant confidentiality agreements that ought to be signed. 

Step 5: Discuss which mentoring platform would be apt to facilitate meetings between mentors and mentees as needed. 

Step 6: Once everything is in place, initiate an extensive publicity campaign to engender fervor and engagement from participants. This could entail leveraging digital marketing initiatives or orchestrating events such as discussions, conferences, and seminars for attendees to provide insight into their participation.

For instance, companies can implement virtual mentor-mentee relationships through video conferencing software or set up online portals where mentors can interact with their mentees anytime or companies can opt for a mentoring platform encompassing all these features.

Mentors can leverage these tools to guide mentees as when they need directions. This also allows each party to pursue their respective endeavors autonomously. 

The options are endless with some online mentoring instruments, such as Mentoring Complete, which allows initiating different types of mentoring sessions.

Step 7: Finally, it’s critical to communicate with participants about the progress of the program throughout its duration. Have periodic check-ins with both to gauge their overall satisfaction with the initiative; ask for feedback on structure improvement; and celebrate successes together. 

Instituting an evaluation system can help everyone involved quantify their own accomplishments throughout the program. Doing so will also boost engagement and commitment among participants, enabling even better results in the long run.

Types of Anytime Mentoring Programs

Anytime mentoring programs, although seemingly ubiquitous across industries, are extremely diverse and can be tailored to specific needs. We shall adhere to the three modalities of mentorship here.

Peer-to-Peer Mentoring

It is a type of program where mentors offer guidance to mentees of the same age bracket from a similar profession or industry–it can be an experienced coworker or a close friend. This innovative program empowers seasoned professionals to share their wisdom with peers or novices and simultaneously assist them in attaining advancement. 

For illustration, a medical professional can provide guidance to another doctor on how to cultivate caring relationships with their patients or manage an ailment by utilizing particular medicines. The peer-mentor relationship would give the mentee the confidence to apply this newfound knowledge into practice. 

Group Mentoring

It involves multiple individuals being part of a mentoring session. Advantage–it offers multiple perspectives on one topic and boosts members of the group to come up with creative solutions. Furthermore, it also aids to build team collaboration skills as different individuals discuss issues together. 

Group mentoring sessions can vary depending on the participants’ aspirations and the topics to be discussed. But generally, they offer a podium for participants to interchange thoughts, understandings, and backgrounds to reap advantageous insights from one another.

Flash Mentoring

It is designed to provide quick access to professionals’ insight without having to commit long-term; typically conducted through mentoring platforms which enable video conferencing and online chats.

Most commonly, Flash Mentoring involves a series of brief conversations where the mentor will guide mentees on topics like problem-solving strategies and career paths. 

By engaging with an individual proficient in certain industries or occupations, individuals have the potential to pose precise queries concerning the current predicament and gain new skill sets swiftly.

Conclusion 

Anytime Mentoring is a novel, practical approach to match mentors to mentees based on the training requirements–without worrying about frenzied timetables, lengthy waits, and limited flexibility as it happens in physical mentoring sessions. 

With mentoring platforms like Mentoring Complete, unlock the plethora of benefits that Anytime Mentoring has to offer. Time to see it in action⤵