Celebrating National Mentoring Day

National Mentoring Day was founded in 2014 to celebrate, connect, educate, and support mentors, mentees, and mentoring initiatives, ensuring everyone has an equal opportunity to reach their full potential through access to mentoring.  In 2016 the Day was inaugurated as an official National Day at the Houses of Parliament.

The benefits of mentoring 

Mentoring is commonly used for career development, where mentors assist mentees in setting and achieving career goals, navigating workplace challenges, and gaining industry-specific knowledge. It can also be employed for personal growth, entrepreneurship, leadership development, and skill enhancement, fostering a dynamic exchange of experience.

Many treasury teams are small, and having a treasury mentor share their expertise, provide advice, and share insights can really help a mentee develop their own skills and knowledge and feel supported when they face new challenges.

Barriers for potential mentors

The key barriers to a potential mentor can include time, skills, and experience.

• Time – as a potential mentor you will no doubt have many demands on your time and may be concerned that you could be signing up to an open-ended commitment. It is therefore important that at the start of a mentoring relationship, you set out the time commitment you would be comfortable giving. 
• Skills – a successful mentor will be an active listener; someone who can build trust; provide encouragement, have the ability to identify goals and current reality, and someone who can give constructive feedback. Ultimately the mentor’s role is to listen to, guide, and support their mentee.
• Experience – as a potential mentor you may not feel you are an expert. However, what you bring to the relationship is experience as you have already walked some, if not all, of the path that the mentee is looking to walk. 

Feedback from members on the ACT scheme shows that mentors themselves gain a lot out of the relationships and it provides an opportunity for them to learn about themselves, how they work with others, and the challenges younger treasury professionals are facing.  

So, in celebration of National Mentoring Day, why not consider areas where you may be able to develop and sign up for the ACT Mentor Me scheme to support your development?
 

Louise Tatham

Head of Professional Development