‘Behind every successful person is a mentor’ is how the proverb should go. The earliest known mentor was Mént?r, a Greek mythological character from whom the term is directly taken. Our earliest mentors, and probably the longest-standing ones, are our parents. In school, teachers assume the role of mentors, and are replaced by professors as we enter university. But what after that? What about that sphere in which mentoring is probably required the most, and becomes an absolute necessity to achieve success?
Our professional lives are meant to be a practical application field for all the knowledge gathered through the laborious years at school and college. However, nothing can be further from the truth in most cases. More often than not, there is a marked difference in the theoretical academic knowledge acquired and its applicability in a profession directly related to it. It is this wide gap between what we have learned and what actually our work entails, that leads to the necessity of a mentor at various stages of our professional lives.
A mentor can be a senior executive, a team lead or even a co-worker. Usually, it is the supervisor who acts as the mentor to the team and leads them to work efficiently. However, not everyone can mentor. This is also not to assume that mentoring is a natural boon. Like teaching, mentoring is an acquired skill that comes with experience, in-depth knowledge, and an essential desire to grow the productivity of the team by channeling the energy of the team members to the right skill and direction.
At MyTasker, we realized the importance of monitoring and mentoring early on in the business, after losing out on a few clients for similar, repeated errors. Clients are expectant of their virtual assistants being versatile and error-free, and we were disappointing them. A few huddle sessions were conducted, which helped a lot in minimizing the errors, and our assistants were back to being the one stop wonder VA that our clients expected. We had the power of effective monitoring leashed to us in those few instances, and from them on, it is a diligent duty to monitor the progress of each individual associated with MyTasker.
Mentoring, at MyTasker, starts from the day a team member joins the company. Mentoring sessions are held by our Supervisors, who are 4 years and above experienced in the Virtual Assistance industry. Our managers who periodically monitor the supervisors are acquainted with the entire work scenario, and provide effective mentoring from time to time on ways to expand personal and professional growth.
Periodical monitoring sessions have brought about a sea change in productivity where our executives learn quickly through sessions with their supervisors, and keep a check on the avoidance of errors previously committed. Besides increased productivity, effective mentoring has helped enhance the supervisor-executive relationship, increase problem analysis skills and has laid equal distribution of work responsibility, resulting in reduced stress and frustration levels of our employees.
It is important to note that over-monitoring can be double the harm and can result in employees feeling stalked, create a claustrophobic work environment and can even take a toll on their mental health. It is here that experienced mentors come handy. Needless to say, every organization, big or small needs effective mentors for continual growth and better efficacy.
