It was Oprah Winfrey who said “A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself”.

Indeed, mentorship can be a significant determinant of a young person’s life and career trajectory, access to opportunities and hopes for their future.

In fact, research shows the power of a good mentor can literally change a life but, unfortunately, not everyone has an equal start in life, or equal access to industry networks, personal connections or the knowledge and learning opportunities they need to succeed.

This is despite the irrefutable evidence that mentoring can make a remarkable difference in the life of a young person, or anyone looking to realise their hopes and ambitions or advance in their career. 

Heidi Holmes, Co-creator of mentoring software program Mentorloop - a software platform designed to help organisations run more effective mentoring programs for better engagement, retention and productivity - says people today are increasingly waking up to the fact that they need to take ownership of their own learning and development.

But the old-school and traditional ways of finding and connecting with mentors has meant not everyone who wants or needs one has had the opportunity or access to networks.

Heidi and her business partner Lucy Lloyd launched Mentorloop in 2016 with the intention of making mentoring more democratic and meaningful for all.

“Mentoring is ripe for a revamp.

“It's an age-old phenomenon that has traditionally only been available to a select, special few - the chosen ones! But with the rapid development and adoption of more social, data-driven technologies we now have an opportunity to make mentoring mainstream,” she says.

“Our mission is to make mentoring more accessible for companies regardless of budget or size, and more accessible for people regardless of their career stage, network or location.

“It doesn’t matter who your parents are, what school you went to or how savvy you are at networking. I want to make sure no one gets left behind. If someone has the desire and commitment to want to better themselves but they need some help, then we should help them.”

Heidi says the right connections can change a life and that the best personal and professional growth is achieved through human connection, knowledge exchange and shared experiences.

Heidi says the key to great mentorships starts with great matches.

Mentorloop's matching algorithm is based on a weighting of skills and goals and also personal attributes, to ensure matched candidates achieve that “mentoring magic”. They then measure success throughout the Mentor / Mentee relationship through their Mentoring Quality Score.

“I think it’s naive to think that having one mentor is going to be the silver bullet to all your problems and questions,’ she says.

“Before you go off and seek a mentor, I’d recommend you challenge your current perceptions around what you think mentoring is as it’s often the most unlikely connections that can prove the most useful. 

 “And don’t think about it as just a hierarchical relationship. We know, as founders, the most impactful mentors we’ve had are other founders just 6 or 18 months ahead. So think about it as building your own personal advisory board - people you can turn to for different pieces of advice. In a rapidly transforming and evolving learning and professional landscape, mentoring is a must not just for students contemplating future study and work, but also for those already in the workplace.“In this new world of work, with things moving so fast, having an interchange of mentors and mentees is going to be the most useful and beneficial form of mentorship.”

 Heidi says in the wake of the pandemic, mentoring is more important than ever as we all navigate our way through the current complexity of the COVID-19 crisis, and its ongoing impact on the economy, education sector, job and study opportunities and the ability for us all to plan ahead for an uncertain future.

“This is obviously a situation that none of us have experienced in our lifetime and hope we don’t have to again! However, what it has forced us to acknowledge is that work for a lot of organisations and their people will never look the same. 

“Right now, while temporary, work is not a place, but a state of mind. Sure we might have the tools to help us do our work and collaborate with our teams, but how do we maintain a sense of belonging, purpose and connectivity to our work when we are all so isolated?”

Heidi also says providing a forum in which people can connect with their peers to talk about how they are feeling, how they are working and what they need help with is a small step to reinstating a sense of belonging in a new world of ‘remote’.

“It’s this sense of isolation and the lack of physical interaction that is driving many people, across all levels of an organisation, to seek and find mentorship right now.”

So what exactly constitutes a good mentor? 

Heidi says key characteristics of good mentors include: they care about the next generation’s success; are self-aware and enthusiastic: set a good example as a positive role-model; are intentional with their time; share experiences rather than advice; provide quality feedback; are open and active listeners; and they extend their professional network to accelerate the mentee’s access to knowledge, people and opportunities.

“Throughout my life I’ve been fortunate to have people that have proactively taken an interest in me. My parents, my teachers, my friends and my colleagues. I’ve had people that have seen something in me and wanted to help me further develop that - give me a push, give me some words of encouragement, give me a kick up the backside when I needed it and, most important of all, give me the confidence to believe in myself when I was unsure. I’ve been lucky,” she says.

“I want to make a space available to all where it doesn’t come down to luck. That’s why Lucy and I started Mentorloop. It’s all about making mentoring more accessible and more meaningful for more people.”

girledworld has just released a FREE Online Mentoring Course in partnership with Future Amp and the Victorian State Government (DJPR), which will be distributed to 10,000+ high school students across Victoria.

Sign up your school or access online learning module here.
The FREE course will take approximately 45 minutes to complete.

To learn more about our industry-backed career education and future skills programs please get in touch with our team at hello@girledworld.com