Business Mentoring: How does it help you raise the bar?  

19th July 2005

Business mentoring can be provided one-on-one between you and your mentor, or with a group of like-minded business people working together with the mentor. This applies whether you run your own business, or are part of a corporate team on a mentoring program. You should achieve similar results in working with your mentor, whichever format you opt for. However, it is the added bonus from the dynamic of a group which can really add enormous value to your outcomes and your performance.

Making yourself accountable to the expectations of your peer group will raise your performance, and at the very least your efforts , significantly more than if you are only accountable to yourself.

It's a brave step, putting your goals ‘out there', letting your peers know what you want to achieve. It's an indirect form of ‘permission' for others to assess, watch, support, encourage or ultimately judge your performance. But, how much harder will you try to reach those goals when you've set expectations that you're going to achieve them?

That's the first way mentoring can help raise the bar – peer groups indirectly demand that much more from us than we can from ourselves (even if you demand the highest of standards from yourself.)

The other key ways in which business mentoring with your peer group can help you raise the bar, are:

• It builds a culture of mentoring and business development within the group, so everyone expands their skills through supporting other members and their businesses. You have to look beyond your own situation and open your mind in order to effectively contribute. That has to be a good thing!
• It provides new sources of ideas, information and strategies for otherwise ‘isolated' business owners. This can give you a whole new perspective , and maybe a better one, on what you're doing….
• It makes you think about your goals and your priorities, and focus more on achieving them. We can all get distracted, lose focus, forget about goals which seem too hard, change our minds, and lose sight of the bigger picture, when we don't have to ‘answer' to anyone else….
• Watching others perform, and learning from their successes and mistakes, can help us operate at a more skilled or confident level within our own business environment.

“Most people's lives are a direct reflection of the expectations of their peer group”. Tony Robbins .