For young mentees, the potential value of a mentoring relationship is clear. Yet what do mentors derive from such relationships? Beyond benevolently sharing insights and sponsoring the business development of their mentees, it turns out that mentors who take on diverse and cross-cultural mentoring assignments accrue a wide-ranging but largely hidden set of benefits.
These benefits are considered hidden because they rarely appear in official pro/con analysis studies of mentoring relationships. However, thanks to new studies from UN Women, KMP+, and the Red Shoe Movement, fresh insights about these benefits have come to light. In the paragraphs ahead, these insights will be discussed with a view toward encouraging more senior level mentors to seek out cross-cultural mentees in the future.
Mental agility that requires few gymnastics
Often, mentor matching programs seek to build pairs that share similarities of background or interests in order to speed up trust-building and next level friendships. However, with cross-cultural mentoring, one has the opportunity to allow opposites to connect and to encourage participants to seek out individuals they might not otherwise ever be paired with in a professional setting.
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