Mentoring, A True Essence Of Leadership!

Are leaders born to be followed, not exactly though, large scale of people do follow their leaders, there are varied aspects to a leader and their functions too differ from time to time depending on the situation. Like mentoring is one of the important aspects of a leader, a true leader is mature in his behavior and knows well how to mentor his team and motivate them in a correct direction. But often, we find unsuccessful leaders following short of transferring their values and understanding in their teams to understand the nature of the processes and so I feel there are different types of leaders, the one who is simply a leader and the other who is a matured leader. I guess, matured leader has more practicality and can mentor the crowd well. The results of a true successful leader is not in the number of team member he has or how many awards he got but how much was he successful in instilling his values on to his followers, the success of a leader in a true measure is counted by the number of people he has developed to be a leader over a period of time. A leader is the one who is obligated to do a task without any expectation or a money prize, people should benefit from the leader by whatever way or means. A true role of a leader is inherited only when he is willing to care, to nourish, take up the responsibility, take up the challenges in the organization.

A leader just cannot sit back and expect the things to happen, a leader’s job description itself is a function to develop his team with full potential and due efforts by all the team players and mentoring is one of the many functions and obligations of a leader, if he cannot mentor his followers who are dependent on him, its not his business to be here in the position of a leader, here are some of the points I have gathered through my experiences as a leader of a team which I lead for over 10 years now, these are the rules, the specifications, the tips, whatever you may regard as, but they are very effective. A company is known by the culture prevalent in its premises, the varied stages of a company like acquisition, implementation, development, resources, knowledge, skill set, etc and more of the people who are working in it, their achievements and their power to excel.

1. The role of a leader in a true essence is by the training he gives to his patrons, as mentoring plays an important role in the field, there has to be mutual respect and trust between the mentor and the follower. If there is no correlation between the two, then the relationship might not last for a very long time. Show the people, you care; you value their skills in a true manner. Guide them to the path of righteousness and help them in achieving their targets.
2. Be committed to your team in whatever sense or the position you might be in, if you are committed to your process, automatically your follower would be. If you take your work lightly, even your follower will, set an impression that will motivate them to the path of success. Commitment is very important characteristics of the employees working in an organization, value each other and takes your relationship to a better stage.
3. Talk your experiences – even the greatest of leaders might have been followers some day in their lives and so do you! Let your followers know about your stories and experiences of being a follower, one way you can motivate them by talking about your hardships and how hard you worked to reach this position, get the team in to discussions and it will surely let you know what is it lagging behind in. Talk of your ideals and the people whom you religiously follow, your mentors could be past or present, your job is to get them motivated and teach a lesson.
4. Choose your followers, a leader can be a mentor but a mentor cannot always be called as a leader, leadership’s greater role lies in the good of the organization and that to get productive returns in the company. As a leader you cannot pay very detailed attention to each and every follower of your team, so you need to pick up someone who will stand by the test when you are busy in other tasks. There are lots of activities happening in an organization, there are productive times as well as unproductive times, your true job is to invest that will sound beneficial to the company, mentor those in detail who has the potential of being future leaders, train them as leader’s rule by taking risks. Invest your times where you can find greatest returns, not all in the company have the capabilities to handle the crowd and lead them.
5. Lead the team, well you have been given the role of a leader and given power to initiate actions in your team which will give greater importance to the improvement of your processes and motivate your followers to be future leaders and achievers. You, alone cannot do the whole thing, i.e., arranging the programs and implementing them too but you can be selective of the people whom you really want to mentor in detail and show them the inner qualities of mentoring as a leader. There has to be someone to replace the position of a leader, it should not be just the exchange of a person but the exchange of values and mentoring qualities.

Mentoring for a leader is like tending to a child who needs help to develop himself, as the leader mentor their followers; they turn out to be great role models as they have better and brighter understanding of processes and human relations.