How mentoring can help you and your business

Mentoring is an impactful way to bring different perspectives and insights into your business.

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Building a relationship with a mentor can have many positive effects that you might not otherwise be able to access. 

Here we can look at some of the benefits of business mentoring.

A mentor can:
  • offer you an external perspective on your business.
  • provide impartial and unbiased support.
  • help you make business decisions based on their previous experience.
  • provide constructive and honest feedback.
  • share their own success and failures, helping you learn what’s worked for other people.
  • listen in confidence to your worries, fears, challenges, opportunities, and success.
  • help you build your network.
  • help you build your confidence.
  • help you develop new business skills.
  • talk through ideas, whether that be for new products and services or new ways of doing things.
What a mentor can’t do:
  • provide specific technical business advice that would be best coming from a specialist business adviser.
  • provide training for you or your staff.
  • take on responsibility for running your business.
  • provide you with counselling that should be delivered by trained counsellors.
  • take on a role as a business coach, who would usually focus on specific skills and development goals.
Other mentoring schemes

There are of course other ways to access support for you and your business such as coaching and training. So, it's important you think carefully about what help you’re looking for before you embark on mentoring support.

Mentoring isn’t just about the benefits to a mentee. A true mentorship relationship works in both directions. This is what we sometimes call ‘reverse mentoring’. Your mentor gets to learn about innovative ideas, strategies, and tactics from you, just as you'll gain insight and ideas from them.

For more information on mentoring, it's worth having a look at mentorsme.co.uk - Britain’s first online gateway for businesses looking for mentoring services which provides more detail on what to look for in a mentoring programme, how to find mentor, and what to do if you’d like to become a mentor. And of course, please have a look at our other resources.

Regardless of your location, there are many other schemes up and down the country that could benefit you.

The mentoring schemes we’ve mentioned before – our own The Santander Breakthrough Women Business Leaders' Mentoring Programme | Santander Breakthrough and the support provided by Be The Business | A more productive economy driven by inspired business leadership – are just three examples of mentoring that’s available in the UK for SMEs of all sizes. It’s also important to do your own research to find out what other support might exist in your area or sector. We can’t provide a list to every mentoring programme available, but we’ve provided below some organisations to contact who’ll be able to signpost you further.

Businesses in Wales

Businesses in Scotland

Businesses in Northern Ireland

National Programmes 

  • mentorsme.co.uk is an online gateway for SMEs looking for mentoring support.
  • The Government funded Peer Networks programme is managed through the UK’s network of local Growth Hubs.