M is for… Mentor (or sponsor)
If you are serious about getting a promotion and developing your career. You should also be looking to get a mentor or a sponsor or both.
Mentoring can be an effective way of helping people to progress in their careers. A mentor is a guide who can help the mentee to find the right direction and who can help them to develop solutions to career issues.
A mentor can give advice and insights as well as sharing their experience that you may be able to use in your own career. You should be recording the things that you learn from your mentor (and the advice that they give you) in your career journal as you never know when it might be useful. As well as general conversations, they are also potentially available for offering help with preparing for a promotion interview or assessment centre and practising difficult conversations.
However, having a Sponsor can be specifically used for getting a promotion. A sponsor can advise you, but their primary role is to develop you and prime you for promotion by helping you develop the skills you need. Sponsors take positive action and help you up the ladder opening doors to opportunities.
Use your career journal to plan, monitor and record your mentoring and sponsor relationships.
If mentoring is something you are looking to explore and you want to read more about it – check out our mentoring series on networking tips for beginners.
This blog post is an extract from our upcoming book “Prompt: 52 Prompts for Getting a Promotion Using Your Career Journal” which is being published later this year. You can pre-order your copy.
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