Why mentoring matters – even when you are well into your career
News
- Professional Performance
27 October 2026
On National Mentoring Day 2026, we want to encourage more IWFM Members to engage with our powerful Mentoring Programme. It’s an incredible opportunity for potential mentees looking to connect with a more experienced professional as their career progresses.
But the benefits of becoming a mentor are equally rewarding.
IWFM’s Mentoring Programme – whether as a mentee or a mentor – can prove invaluable for those at every stage in their careers.
To be successful, you need help from others, and mentoring others creates a network of rising professionals who can help inform you and make valuable connections for you.
Mentoring helps you stay connected with the younger generation. As a leader of any institution, knowing the next generation’s perspective can greatly influence your thinking. Mentoring gives you access to people from different backgrounds and perspectives, which can help influence your own thinking.
Mentoring younger people can also give you optimism about the future. It connects you to people who not only care about their careers and professions but also about trying to improve the world. It gives you insight into how younger generations work, talk, and communicate.
Five ways mentoring can benefit a mentor’s career
Encouragement from a mentor can be critical to success, particularly for early-career professionals. But what’s in it for the mentor?
1) Mentoring helps you become a more effective leader.
A mentoring experience can help you develop your own leadership skills, which you can then use to advise, coach and develop your own staff.
2) Better understanding your own experience
Your experiences may seem quite ordinary to you, but when you participate in a mentoring programme, you will see how beneficial and helpful those experiences can be to those who are upcoming in your profession.
3) Mentoring hones your transferable skill-set
Mentoring teaches you how to accommodate others’ ways of thinking and working.
4) Mentoring gets you out of your comfort zone
Mentoring gives you the chance to step out of your comfort zone and apply your expertise in other areas. It also improves your listening skills and your ability to give guidance.
5) The rewards of mentoring are a two-way street.
You will learn that you don't have to be in the exact same discipline to be helpful to a mentee. You will also find that mentees have a lot to offer the mentor – you may learn from them.
Mentoring isn’t just about helping other people or about being altruistic; it can make us better managers and better leaders. Mentoring, therefore, remains important throughout life.
Want to find out more?
Join our Mentoring with IWFM webinar on 17 November, 12pm–1pm to discover what makes a successful mentoring journey, how the IWFM mentoring platform works and how you can get involved as a mentor or mentee.