A Modern Mentor Is a Listener, Too

Lorraine Stomski, senior vice president and industrial-organizational psychologist with Aon Consulting's Human Capital Practice, discusses the role of mentors and mentees in the New York Times Career Couch column by Eilene Zimmerman.

Q. You have heard that it’s important for your career development to have a mentor. What, exactly, is mentoring and how can it help you?

A. The most common model is still the senior employee individually mentoring the junior employee. But other possibilities include reverse mentoring, in which a junior person mentors someone senior for a specific reason — maybe to teach a technical skill. Other forms are mentoring within groups or among peers.

Mentors can provide training and open the door to on-the-job experiences, says Lorraine Stomski, a senior vice president at Aon Consulting in New York who specializes in leadership education and coaching. "They also help you navigate political land mines, identify influential people at the company and provide useful information about where the business is going," she says.

 

Click here to read the entire article in the New York Times online.