Mentoring is a powerful tool for nurturing the next generation of industry leaders. It also keeps senior managers grounded and aware of the sentiment among their most junior colleagues. What a tragedy that the Covid pandemic has robbed us of in-person meetings, the most critical element of any mentor-mentee discourse.
With the advent of hybrid workplaces, however, we are seeing a possibility of returning to some traditional aspects of mentoring.
Rapport
Rapport is at the core of any meaningful relationship. It is not entirely true that good rapport between mentors and mentees is not easy to establish today because of the lack of in-person interaction. Remote one-on-one meetings offer unique opportunities to build rapport precisely because they straddle both our professional and domestic lives.
Ask about home life when a child intrudes upon a video meeting or a pet saunters across the screen. Embrace every opportunity to bridge the gap in a digital landscape to make up for the times when you would have actually embraced.
The “virtual happy hour” fad has fizzled out, too. Save any time you would have squandered there and redirect it into one-on-one relationship building.
Multiple Platforms
Coinciding with the huge demand for remote interaction was the rise of platforms to deliver exactly that. All the biggest companies offering the most dynamic options do so free of cost for most features. Their platforms offer better features for certain aspects of interaction and fall short in others. Try them all.
Take full advantage of the best of each. Use your mentor-mentee interactions on them as a medium to gauge how you would assess a work-related matter. A good exercise is to use identical physical objects, for example, a company coffee mug to add a tactile dimension to the connection.
Real-Time Collaboration
You may not be able to share the same desk but you can share the same desktop. Real-time collaboration across documents and other files erases the distance between people with collaboration tools such as Google Docs and Dropbox.
Working on the same file and seeing changes being made by your partner in real time drives home the feel of collaboration as it used to be.
Seize the Benefits
Yes, there are significant advantages to remote mentoring. For one, it affords people in isolated parts of the world access to the same connections and advice as anyone else. Both aspiring mentors and mentees can now take their pick from a far wider pool of candidates than they would have considered before. Remote mentoring can also surmount biases stemming from factors such as height, some physical disabilities, and pregnancy status.
Reach out today to learn how I can help you maximize the benefits of mentorship.
