National Mentoring Month: Rethinking Mentoring for the Modern Workplace

This January is National Mentoring Month, a month dedicated to recognising the impact of mentoring in educational and workplace contexts. As a campaign in its 22nd year, National Mentoring Month has become a subject of celebration in organisations across the USA, UK and beyond. 

Many of us may feel that mentoring is a practice to which we have nothing to contribute, or that we do not stand to personally benefit from it. For some of us, we may harbour doubts regarding the value of our own expertise or consider ourselves not yet "senior enough" to be a guiding voice in these contexts. Others in more junior positions may feel that the presumed formality of mentorship may be constrictive instead of empowering. However, here at LGBT Great, we believe in modern mentorship, an approach to reciprocal workplace dynamics outside the bounds of the usual mentor/mentee stereotypes. As we gear up to launching our 2024 LGBT Great Mentorship Programme, we would like to bring to the fore some novel perspectives on mentoring and shed light on the different types of mentorship available to the modern prospective mentor. 

At the end of January we are launching the LGBT Great 2024 Mentorship Programme, designed to pair ambitious, driven LGBTQ+ identifying mentees in Financial Services with influential LGBTQ+ leaders in the sector. 

 BECOME AN LGBT GREAT MENTOR  

 BECOME AN LGBT GREAT MENTEE  

  What is Mentoring, and why is it beneficial to workers?  

The Britannica Dictionary defines a mentor as “someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person”. This definition is likely what many of us imagine when we envisage a mentor; namely, an older person with more work experience providing guidance and support to someone who has not yet made the same progress with their career. This definition may, at first glance, appear to paint an image of a one-sided, imbalanced relationship, but this is only half the story. Although mentoring is undeniably beneficial for mentees – who provide insight as to what lies ahead in their career and how to tackle those challenges – mentors also stand to gain substantially from the mentoring experience. In its truest sense, mentoring is a bilateral, reciprocally and mutually reinforcing partnership. But what does that look like in practice? 

Let’s imagine a scenario where a more junior worker is tasked with writing a report on client demographics; this worker’s company are looking at the breadth of their client reach and wants to identify groups with whom they need to be engaging more. In the scenario where a younger worker reaches out to someone of greater seniority, we imagine the senior colleague’s prior knowledge of the company is valuable input for this report. But imagine for a moment that our junior worker, who may have more professional experience in other sectors, or personal experience amongst other social groups, also brings insight to the table that our senior colleague didn’t anticipate.

Where the senior colleague has become an expert in a niche field or specific industry, the more junior worker may be bringing environmental context to the fore; context which could explain why targeting particular client demographics has proven to be so difficult. We can describe this as the pairing of a "lab expert" and a "field expert". 

In scientific study, a lab expert is someone who works in a controlled environment. Their work may be very technical and specific and require vast knowledge of their specialist subject. As our careers progress, we become similar to lab experts; our work becomes specialised, and we acquire a great wealth of knowledge, but we also do this work in a controlled environment. We tend to only work alongside people doing similar work to us, and this can influence our perceptions about what the ‘general population’ know and understand of our work. 

This is where the field expert becomes such an asset. If we imagine our junior worker as a field expert, this is someone who has more experience out in a more neutral, less specialised environment. It isn’t as controlled, so they may not be surrounded by people doing the same work all the time, but that means they are more likely to become aware of wider contexts and nuances outside of that controlled environment. A junior worker has likely mixed with a more varied array of colleagues and maybe bringing broader social knowledge into the mix. Being able to compare notes with someone who has been ‘out into the field’ can provide insight into why strategies and approaches designed in the lab do not have the impact desired when released into the field. 

  Translating this analogy into LGBTQ+ contexts   

This analogy has greater power when we talk about underrepresented social groups. Using the example of the LGBTQ+ community, more junior LGBTQ+ workers may be in a position to share their perspectives and experiences with senior, LGBTQ+-identifying colleagues who want to further understand the challenges faced by coming generations of gender and sexuality minorities. Being on the receiving end of information delivered from outside our established niches can bring huge value to the work we do and the ways we engage with our coworkers and community members.
 

  Types of Mentor in the Modern Workplace   

Oftentimes, we may find ourselves discouraged by the idea of mentoring because as mentors, we believe we have to provide more guidance than we’re equipped to. The stereotype of the mentor will lead us to believe that a good mentor is all-knowing, highly experienced and equipped with infinite wisdom. This simply isn’t realistic, nor a valuable model for what mentorship can be! Good mentors are those who lean into their strengths but can acknowledge areas where they, too, are yet to learn and grow. You don’t have to be at the peak of your career to have knowledge and advice to impart to more junior colleagues. To be an effective mentor, you may only need to approach mentorship from one area of personal strength and skill. To illustrate this, we have four classes of mentor to share with you, who convey their aptitude for mentorship through different approaches.

   The Advocate   

The Advocate’s strength comes from how they utilise their position of seniority to the benefit of their mentee/s. From a more junior position, the reach of one’s voice is limited; limited by lack of contacts and/or lack of influence. Experience is something we often correlate with value of input- even when a less experienced person’s novel perspectives may be of great use to a company. The Advocate is a mentor who harnesses their own influence and reach to amplify the voices of their mentee/s. In doing so, they may being legitimacy to the ideas and suggestions of a more junior worker; this endorsement and association can be perceived as an accolade in itself. 

Naturally, The Advocate is a mentor whose power is most effective when working in the same organisation as their mentee/s, but when working in a shared industry they will likely have contacts and avenues of influence still beneficial to a mentee looking to have their contributions recognised. The Advocate is a mentor who recognises the value in championing those whose insightful and valuable ideas deserve a larger platform.

   The Path Carver   

This type of mentor derives their power from their years of experience. This experience will be extra valuable if mentor and mentee share similar protected characteristics (e.g. race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexuality, disability) or if they have experienced similar systems of inequality. The Path Carver is likely to be a mentor who broke ground in their organisation or industry; the first Black person in Senior Management at a firm, the first openly neurodiverse person on a board of directors. The battle to this position may have been arduous, with no way of foreseeing what challenges lay ahead; but that absence of foresight is not a burden others have to face. Your hindsight, your problem-solving in the face of these challenges, is a powerful weapon as newer recruits tread along your path. 

The Path Carver is perfectly primed to advise their mentee/s on the hurdles they face- and how specific those hurdles may be to someone from this shared personal background. Passing on the wisdom and knowledge required to anticipate these specific setbacks (or even biases) will make it far less frustrating for mentees to follow in your footsteps and ensure that the diversity of your colleagues, coworkers and collaborators continues to increase. The Path Carver is a mentor who firmly believes in never pulling the ladder up after themselves- and that their guidance and experience can help bring a better array of underrepresented voices to the table.

   The Counsellor   

The Counsellor is someone whose mentorship is grounded in their strong interpersonal skills. This mentor doesn’t necessarily have to hold a particularly senior position; their acute understanding of work pressures, internal politics and the emotional challenges of the modern world can position them as an impactful and empathetic voice in the workplace. Their mentees benefit from having an emotional sponsor- someone who can sympathise, recognise their mentee’s affect and, where appropriate, offer viable solutions and resolutions for their problems.

The Counsellor’s wisdom may be incorrectly misinterpreted as a ‘softer’ skill- but it is in recognising tensions, microaggressions and frustrations that we begin to understand the underbelly of an organisation. Reading the emotions of our colleagues and coworkers allows us to measure the positive and negative impact of our work and workload and suggest innovative and ‘human’ methods for tackling any adverse impacts. Anticipating the stressors for a mentee based on one’s own experiences with said stressors is also incredibly valuable. The Collaborator is a mentor who can generate incredible trust and loyalty in their mentees. 

   The Collaborator   

Similar to The Advocate, The Collaborator is a type of mentor who recognises the weight and influence of their own seniority; the ways in which others will defer authority to them on important matters. However, instead of focusing their efforts on amplifying the ideas and perspectives of their mentee/s, The Collaborator lends their knowledge and expertise to assisting their mentee/s on projects or reports as part of the workforce. Collaboration can look like a myriad of different contributions; it can be co-writing reports or proposals, assisting with the assessment or analysis of data, or even being the final pair of eyes on a project to check for any issues or inconsistencies. 

The Collaborator directly applies their experience and practical skills to helping a mentee fine-tune their work and further their mentee’s understanding of the task at hand. Furthermore, collaboration demonstrates that a mentor, in their position of seniority, shows value in a junior employee’s work, but also that this junior worker shows the kind of potential which will attract skilled collaborators. The Collaborator serves as both guide and amplifier; they equip their mentee with new skills whilst also bringing added credence to their mentee’s work. 

   How to Bring Mentoring to Your Workplace   

If you resonated with any of these types of mentor (or, as a prospective mentee, you wish to work with one of the types of mentor above), there are pathways to establishing these dynamics. Your workplace or organization may already have mentoring schemes in place. You may also be able to raise this interest in establishing a less formalised mentor/mentee dynamic during a progress meeting with a colleague or line manager. You can sometimes facilitate the establishment of these dynamics by requesting to work on a project with a prospective mentor/mentee, or you can even venture outside of your own organization to find the mentoring dynamic which suits you best. This is where LGBT Great comes in.

Mentorship is about so much more than guidance- it is about the exchange of perspectives, experiences, ambitions and values. For LGBTQ+ trailblazers, finding solidarity between generations and between experience levels can affirm our sense of self and reinforce our hope for a visibly LGBTQ+ friendly future. Consider embracing mentorship this National Mentoring Month and discover what you stand to learn and give in this powerful, progressive dynamic. 

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Georgie Williams (they/them) is an Insights and Content Analyst at LGBT Great.