How businesses can get the most out of mentoring
With 2015 proving to be another successful year for British SMEs, Jackie Jenks, senior manager, enterprise mentoring at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, gives her views on how small businesses in Exeter can get the most out of enterprise mentoring.
This follows the successful Meet a Mentor event held in Exeter Castle aimed at helping local SMEs earlier this month.
Expert guidance and mentoring is crucial to the ongoing success and growth of SMEs. We know that start-ups have a one in four better chance of surviving and thriving over three years if they have a mentor. Studies have also shown that an overwhelming 95 per cent of people found working with a mentor to be good for their confidence and motivation to succeed.
A popular and proven way in which SME owners and budding entrepreneurs can access support is from external business experts. Known as enterprise mentoring, this can help business owners determine the parts of their company that they need to focus on in order to grow. All across the country, companies have pledged resources to help mentor small and medium-sized enterprises. At Lloyds Bank we’ve committed to develop our strong network of enterprise mentors across Britain by pledging 500 volunteers this year. To help, we’ve joined forces with the Small Firms Enterprise Development Initiative (SFEDI) to arrange events across the UK because we recognise that it can often be difficult for entrepreneurs to connect with experienced mentors. Recently we held a Meet a Mentor event at Exeter Castle where over 20 businesses registered to attend and receive support from our experts.
Feedback from Exeter’s Meet a Mentor event revealed the significance business owners place on receiving support from enterprise mentoring. Drawing on responses from local Exeter businesses during the event I have compiled my top five tips for SMEs on how to get the most out of mentoring:
1. Preparation - Enterprise mentors have been selected to act as a mentor based on their strong skill set. Use their knowledge as much as possible. To help, prepare a series of key areas in advance of meeting your mentor to guide your conversation and ensure you agree how to focus your time together on everything that is important to you.
2. Opportunities - A mentor can help entrepreneurs who have brilliant ideas but are unsure of how to turn it into a viable business. Take advantage of their business knowledge and use them to help you think through your ideas and plans to ensure you achieve what you want.
3. Issues - Treat your mentor like a business sounding board. They are trained to listen, in total confidence, to any concerns about your business and help you to find solutions to problems. Do have frank, honest conversations with them – they are not there to judge your performance, but instead to guide you to success.
4. Resources - Your mentor will have a variety of resources, tools and contacts that could be helpful to your business, so let them know if you think you need support in any area - even if it is not the main one that you are working on at that time together.
5. Be open - Always ask for more feedback and have an open mind. A mentor needs to challenge you to share the best support and how they can relate to your business.
To find out more about how your business can be supported by a mentor please visit: www.lloydsbank.com/mentoring
