How could Mentor support your career no matter what point you're in right now?

Recently I've completed mentorship training provided by idialogue. It was also the place where I once started as a Mentee. The value for me was enormous, so that's why I'm willing to go deeper into this topic and start contributing as a Mentor.

But first, let's define what is a Mentor? It's easy to mix a mentor with a Trainer, Coach, Consultant, but the main difference is that Mentor shares his experience. He usually does not tell you what to do, he does not solve your problems, he does not show you how to do something, but shares experience and suggestions if asked.

If you would think of your favorite athlete, dancer, singer or musician, who we could consider achieved enormous success, I bet that he/she would have AT LEAST one mentor. Sometimes it's more of a coach, trainer or consultant type Mentor, but in all cases it would be a person who has more experience in some topic and great insights. 

It's because usually humans can't see the whole picture. We need someone from the side to share their insights about different topics. And even if you're a great Admin, Developer or Architect, do you have good negotiation skills? Do you have good communication skills? Do you understand how to build your professional brand? We can't be the best at all of these topics, because there is so much going on in our life. 

So that's why having a mentor helps to improve these areas. And from the other side, if you're a Product Owner or Manager, what value can a Mentor provide (I'll look at it from a Salesforce perspective)? Managers may be great about managing people, time and workloads, but having insights about the system can help to manage people, time and workloads even better just by knowing capabilities and understanding people skills better. 

Product Owners may understand the main ideas about clouds, functionalities and how the system should work, but due to big amount of meetings they do not have too much time to study about the system and all the updates on their own. Having a technical Mentor may have a key difference in negotiations with implementation partners or deciding to build, or to buy solutions.

All of this sounds great, but you also should understand that Mentee is the one who should be eager to learn. He books the meetings, prepares questions, does his homework and uses time with his Mentor to get answers. Responsibility for results goes to Mentee.

Do you have a Mentor? What value does it provide to you?