In its purest form, mentoring involves sharing context and experience. Individuals can make more meaningful contributions when they have a clear understanding of their role within the organization’s strategy. However, building this understanding independently can be challenging when confined to one’s specific job function. This is where mentoring comes in. In the opinion of Richard Ghilarducci, mentoring helps employees to develop valuable leadership traits, expand their functional perspective, and create an improved culture for leaders to develop in.

Richard Ghilarducci marks a few leadership traits employees can develop through mentorships

Companies always search for efficient ways to develop competent leaders, managers, supervisors, and other senior executives. After all, without proper supervision, guidance and management, talent within the workforce would not be utilized efficiently. Leaders are the ones to direct team efforts toward common goals. Mentoring is one of the most efficient ways to develop new business leaders. Seasoned employees may act as mentors and use their expertise to guide younger employees on their career paths, develop professional skills, and promote company culture.

Here are a few of the valuable skills that employees can develop through mentorship and emerge as proficient business leaders:

• Problem solving: All great leaders tend to be good problem solvers. There are numerous problems that may come up in the workplace. A capable manager must be able to swiftly solve problems and decide how to execute that solution. Mentorship may help train employees to solve problems faster, by learning from people who have experience in dealing with similar issues.
• Long-term vision: Getting stuck on details is often a problem for newbie business leaders. While details are definitely important, getting fixated on them and overlooking the overall goal can hamper business outcomes. A good mentor would capably show the ropes to the up-and-coming manager and teach them how to juggle both daily activities and details, along with long term goals.
• Organization and delegation: All good leaders know that it takes a team to achieve greatness. A trained, well organized team can get a significant amount of work done in little time. However, organizing a team takes way more than preparing a simple spreadsheet. Business leaders need to know how to work within budget constraints, adapt organizational systems, as well as delegate work without overloading employees. Mentorship often proves to be invaluable in teaching organizational skills to future business leaders. Employees can seek guidance from mentors who have years of experience in managing teams. They can show the new leaders how to budget, delegate and supervise a team efficiently.  
• Negotiation: Conflicts at a workplace are not uncommon. There can be many situations where team members get into arguments with one another. New business leaders need to learn how to navigate the spectrum of human emotions while also getting work done. A good leader can defuse conflicts, and even turn tense situations in the workplace into productive environments. Mentors who have a successful track record of negotiating can coach new business leaders on how to be a smart and effective negotiator, and ensure successful team collaborations.

As Richard Ghilarducci mentions, by helping employees to develop and hone the skills mentioned above, mentorship can fast-track the development of future leaders.