Mentor Motivation
Your Guide To... Mentor Motivation
Have you ever had a mentor, either in your personal or professional life that has impacted the way you think or the confidence you’ve had in yourself?
Mentor motivation is all about what gets mentors excited to spend time, energy, and expertise helping their mentees grow and succeed. It's a mix of personal, professional, and relationship factors that inspire mentors to jump in and support their mentees' development.
What’s your Mentor Motivation?
This year, we started something new, Mentor Training! These sessions, informed by MENTOR’s Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring, serve as a resource to support mentors in gaining a deeper understanding of themselves and how they show up in youth mentoring spaces. These elements are research-informed and practitioner-approved standards for creating and sustaining quality youth mentoring programs and consequently, impactful mentoring relationships. The Fourth Edition, released in September 2015, reflects the most up-to-date research, practice, and thinking in the mentoring field.
So, why do you want to mentor teens and young women at Step Up?
Maybe you’re a professional seeking to empower the next generation, someone who is always learning, a great support system, or a confidant for youth in your community already.
Before we get to your answer, which can and WILL change over time and throughout different mentoring relationships or stages in life –let'sdosome intention setting.
What are your “Ins” ?
What do you want to bring into mentoring for yourself? What do you want to bring into mentoring for teens and young women?
It could be the importance of self-care routine a positive mindset, an activity that supports you, a specific mantra or piece of advice, a skill or practice you utilize—anything that fuels your well-being and you think could be helpful to others.
Take some time to think about this and reflect.
What are your “Outs”?
What are you leaving behind or reframing in mentoring for yourself? What do you want to leave behind or reframe in mentoring for teens and young women? It might be a habit, a mindset, or anything that no longer serves your healing or growth.
Take some time to think about this and reflect.
So, what's so great about mentoring in general? Maybe some of you have already been mentoring for years, or you have a great network of mentors and now want to give back. Maybe you’ve never mentored before and have a passion for empowering girls and young women to see all the possibilities in a certain industry or company. Here's what one of our teens shares:
“I know I belong in a community surrounded by women to share ideas, hopes, and dreams. Joining Step Up was one of the best choices I’ve made. I found my safe place surrounded by girls my age and great mentors.” - Gladis, Step Up Teen Inspiration Awards Honoree
According to The Chronicle of Evidence- Based Mentoring and psychologist, Frank Riessman's 1965 "helper-therapy" principle –states that the act of helping others could be a source of personal growth, self-validation, and psychological well-being for the helper or mentor.
Riessman and others have argued that being helpful can have a number of profound effects:
- Personal Growth: Helping others often leads to a deeper understanding of oneself, fostering empathy, compassion, and emotional intelligence while offsetting feelings of stagnation and loss ,
- Social Connection: Engaging in helping behaviors can create social bonds and reduce feelings of isolation, contributing to a sense of community and belonging , Enhanced Self-Esteem: The positive feedback and appreciation received from helping others can boost self-esteem and self-worth ).
- Therapeutic Benefits: Some studies have even drawn parallels between the act of helping and formal therapy, suggesting that helping others can lead to reduced stress, anxiety, and depression
- Brain Functioning: Recent studies have found that volunteerism can even delay or reverse declining brain functioning.
So mentorship is - Both an investment in yourself and the next generation of leaders, it ensures teens and young women across the nation have access to programs that inspire their continued growth and connections as well as provides potential positive effects for you as a mentor and professional.
What are some of your strengths? Everyone has different strengths and things we all can work on and growth in. So take a look at this list of just some strengths we’d like to reiterate with mentor – mentee relationships there are also many other strengths not on this list that you may have!
Let’s celebrate our strengths for a minute! Take some time to view and reflect -
So why do you personally want to support teens and young women in their journeys to success? What are some words that come to mind when you think of mentors or mentorship? How do YOU want to show up as a mentor?
Here’s some entries from our mentorship community to help inspire you -
Now you’re ready!
You’ve explored your Mentor Motivation and have a deeper understanding of why this work is so important. Whether there is a college, an internship, a network, or simply confidence – we at Step Up are here for it and there for our teens and young adults – with the support of our amazing mentors such as yourself.
Thank you for Stepping Up and supporting the next generation of leaders.
View the recording of the live virtual session here: January 2024 Mentor Training: Mentor Motivation (youtube.com)
Note: All of Step Up’s Training is informed by the National Mentoring Organization MENTOR’s Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring, for more information view here - Elements of Effective Practice for Mentoring
Learn how to Be a Mentor!
View our Mentor Training Resources
Interested in Corporate Partnership? Click Here!
If you’ve participated in 2024 programming fill out this survey!
Questions? Email mentor@suwn.org
