Informal mentoring and why it is important

Long-term mentoring relationships, with someone you’ve identified to help you with a particular challenge or stage in your career, are brilliant, but one off interactions, informal mentoring relationships and support that you might not even think of as mentoring at the time, can also be great for your personal development. 

Informal mentoring is also a fantastic thing to offer to other people, if you’re in a situation where you know they’re focusing on personal development or looking to further their career. It can be as simple as a quick conversation that really helps someone and gives them a ‘lightbulb moment’ that they take with them for the future.

If I look back at my career, I can think of quite a few instances where I was given incredibly powerful and helpful advice from senior colleagues. I hadn’t always asked for it, but it usually came in a scenario where they knew I was someone who wanted to develop my career and had seen an opportunity to help me with it. Or, it came from a line manager, who had stepped outside of the usual performance management role and given me some advice or acted as a sounding board for me on a particular challenge they knew I was facing. 

One example that has always stuck with me, and which I still think of now, even though it was nearly twenty years ago, came about in a meeting I had when I was on a management development programme called “Future Managers” in the company I worked for at the time. Those of us on the programme had the opportunity to go out and spend time with one of the regional managers in the organisation, so we could understand more about their role and how the remote branch network operated. I had a great meeting with this particular colleague, we chatted a lot and it was extremely informative. At the end of the meeting, she asked if she could give me some feedback. I remember feeling nervous, but said yes, and I was so glad I did! 

She told me that she’d really enjoyed our meeting and had found me engaging and confident once we got talking - but that when I had first walked into the room, she wasn’t expecting it to be a good meeting. I hadn’t made a positive first impression because I’d seemed nervous and not very confident when I entered the room. She then talked to me about the importance of first impressions and gave me some tips on how to make a positive impact when you enter a room or meet someone for the first time and in particular making sure that first impression is consistent with what they will experience once they get to know you.

Even now, I find myself sometimes feeling nervous or uncomfortable when arriving somewhere unfamiliar or meeting someone new, but I focus every time on making a good first impression. I’ve actually had positive feedback on it on occasion, and I still think back to that bit of informal mentoring I had from the regional manager twenty years ago! I’m almost certain she doesn’t remember it - she possibly doesn’t even remember meeting me. I’d love to be able to let her know the impression her comments made on me but sadly I’ve not been able to track her down on LinkedIn.

I think it was also possibly the first time I’d been given genuinely constructive feedback in a positive way and again, I often think of this when considering whether to have a similar conversation with someone else. Whilst I don’t go around constantly giving people unsolicited feedback, in the right context I do always try and mention things like this where I think it will be welcomed and helpful, especially when I can back it up by talking about my own experience in a similar situation and especially when I can team it with some positive feedback on the person’s strengths. 

Being a formal mentor is a great thing to do, but we don’t all have the time or even the opportunity to have ongoing mentoring relationships all the time. But offering informal advice or feedback as a mentor can be just as valuable to the individual. It can also be really rewarding for you, especially if your current role or other time commitments don’t allow you to spend as much time on developing and supporting others as you’d maybe like.

What advice or feedback have you received in your career from an informal mentor that has made a big impact on you, and the way you are today?

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Written by Hannah Poulton

Co-founder of Nonpareil Network.

Hannah is a portfolio Marketing Director. She is also a Non Executive Director for the Welsh Cycling Union and a Lay Member for the British Chiropractic Council. She also volunteers as a Magistrate and is a Lay Member for NHS Blood and Transplant.