Becoming a Mentor Makes You Better
We cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening our own. — Ben Sweetland.
During the dot-com bubble* of the late ’90s, I worked alongside a brilliant software engineer who became my first manager — and, unknowingly, my first mentor. While most developers were chasing lucrative contracts and riding the wave of internet euphoria, he maintained an unusual commitment: teaching at local schools.
For someone commanding premium rates in digital agencies, spending evenings teaching coding to students seemed puzzling. When I finally asked him why he persisted with such a time-consuming pursuit, his answer was simple yet profound: teaching was the best way he knew to learn and improve himself.
Little did I know then that I was witnessing the embodiment of what Seneca observed two millennia ago: “While we teach, we learn.” Research** has consistently validated this ancient wisdom: those who teach or explain concepts to others develop deeper understanding and retain information more effectively than those who simply study for themselves.
The Reciprocal Nature of Mentoring
Here lies the beautiful paradox of mentoring: by focusing on others’ growth, we accelerate our own. This happens through several powerful mechanisms:
- Crystallization of Knowledge: When we explain concepts to others, we must organize our tacit knowledge into clear, communicable insights. This process reveals gaps in our understanding and forces us to fill them.
- Fresh Perspectives: Mentees bring fresh eyes to familiar challenges, often questioning assumptions we’ve taken for granted. Their inquiries can lead us to reassess and refine our own mental models.
- Reciprocal Learning: The mentor-mentee relationship is a two-way street. While mentees gain from our experience, we gain from their diverse perspectives, emerging knowledge, and contemporary insights.
- Emotional Intelligence: Regular mentoring interactions sharpen our emotional intelligence, enhance our communication skills, and deepen our understanding of human development — all crucial leadership competencies.
The Career Multiplier Effect
Becoming a mentor isn’t just about personal growth — it’s a strategic career move. Every time we help someone navigate challenges or seize opportunities, we:
- Strengthen our professional network
- Enhance our leadership capabilities
- Develop a reputation as a developer of talent
- Gain exposure to new ideas and approaches
- Build lasting relationships that can open future doors
Starting Your Mentoring Journey
You might think, “I’m not experienced enough to be a mentor.” But remember: you don’t need to be at the peak of your career to start mentoring. If you’re one step ahead on any path, you have valuable insights to share.
Like my first manager teaching coding while still learning himself, the act of helping others learn becomes a powerful catalyst for your own growth. It’s a virtuous cycle where everyone wins — the mentee gains guidance, and the mentor gains deeper mastery.
In today’s rapidly evolving professional landscape, continuous learning isn’t just an advantage — it’s a necessity. By becoming a mentor, you create a sustainable path for ongoing growth. You transform from someone who simply accumulates knowledge into someone who multiplies it, benefiting both yourself and others.
The torch you hold to light another’s path will indeed brighten your own. The question isn’t whether you should become a mentor, but rather: whose path will you help illuminate first?
Ready to experience the growth that comes from mentoring others? MentorLab offers accredited mentoring programmes that provide the structure, tools, and support you need to become an effective mentor while accelerating your own professional development.
Connect with MentorLab today to discover how our structured approach can help you transform knowledge into wisdom while creating lasting impact for others. The journey to becoming a better professional starts when you help someone else on theirs.
*The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late 1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Internet. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble
**A notable 2018 study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology, “The learning benefits of teaching: A retrieval practice hypothesis,” found that students who taught others showed better knowledge retention and deeper conceptual understanding than those who studied for themselves. Additionally, a 2014 study published in Memory & Cognition demonstrated that explaining concepts to others enhanced the explainer’s own learning outcomes.
