This article explores the benefits of mentorship at a personal level.
A coach is someone who provides guidance to an individual. When it comes to upskilling – that is, the process of individuals learning new skills – coaches can provide guidance and identify how mentees can get benefited from developing new skills. However, coaching is much more. A coach is, in fact, a mentor too, as s/he is someone a mentee can connect with, who is willing to share her or his time to provide impartial advice and guidance, and who shares their knowledge, skills and/or experience, to help another individual to develop and grow. Given this, coaching is not only an integral part of one’s upskilling and life-long learning, it can have major benefits on their personal life, too. Mentorship, for instance, can help mentees develop skills – such as, better manage their time, set priorities and get more done – that can be transferred from one’s professional to personal life.Also, mentorship and guidance on upskilling can enable mentees discover clarity of purpose. By not passing judgement and through a relationship of trust, mentees can open themselves to being vulnerable, which can lead to self-kindness, mindfulness, and a sense of common humanity (Moore, et al., 2016).
Through these feelings, mentees mentees can feel enriched and empowered, and find connection with who they truly are what they value.
Moreover, mentors can help mentees determine their strengths and weaknesses while by focusing on mentees’ positive inner resources, mentees are enabled understand their areas of greatest opportunity and align strengths with (better) decisions.
Having access to mentorship, therefore, is important because it can not only enable mentees (re)start or advance a career through upskilling, it can enhance mentees’ overall wellbeing. This is even more the case for low- skilled/-qualified individuals, who are the target group of the iPath2Upskilling project and the beneficiaries of its platform. Through the iPath2Upskilling innovative platform, adults can access different tools and resources that can help them upgrade their qualifications in a flexible and personalised manner. Explicitly, the users of the platform can develop tailor-made itineraries by firstly doing profiling activities and then, accordingly, setting up the most convenient training itinerary and a personalized pathway with activities that complement the capacities and resources made available to the adult trainee. What is more, these opportunities will be provided alongside professional counselling and career coaching through the iPath2Upskilling platform – hence providing to mentees all the benefits described above.
