This Wednesday 27th October is National Mentoring Day; a day to help raise awareness of mentoring in all its forms and highlight the invaluable contribution it makes - not just to the economy, but to society too.

And mentoring is really, really important to me.

As a working-class lad from the darkest depths of Devon, I have benefitted from having fantastic mentors over the years, who have given up their time to discuss or work through some of the more interesting challenges of my career.

Today, alongside my role as a CEO, I’m Chair of Trustees for the charity Creative Mentor Network (CMN), which works with schools to match talented young people from low-income and diverse backgrounds with creative industry professionals who we train up to be mentors. It’s an invaluable foot-up for the mentees, giving them access to a world that can seem off-limits, as well as helping the creative industries in its essential quest to become more inclusive.

For the last decade, I’ve also supported the brilliant Marketing Academy as a mentor to some of the brightest minds in UK marketing and advertising. I’m also an ambassador for Bloom, the professional network for women in communications, where I’ve been lucky enough to be a co-mentor. Alongside these formal mentoring roles, I also try where possible to share advice and counsel with a small network of mentees.

So, mentoring has grown in importance to me over time and through the more recent years of my career. Here’s why I’d encourage others to get involved…

Fastrack to a patchwork quilt of experiences

Firstly mentoring, as distinct from coaching, is about relationships and about learning from a variety of other people’s experiences. To my mind, careers are like creating your own individual patchwork quilt of experiences – through your own roles, but also vicariously through the experiences of others.

Mentoring helps to speed up that process of experience, which gives mentees more reference points for the future challenges they might face.

Sticky learning

Mentoring is the oldest form of personal development – which can be a powerful tool for creating positive changes in people and organisations. Because it’s personal and experience-based, I think the learning can be stickier - in the same way we may recall learning from a schoolteacher or leader who believed in us and encouraged us to be our best selves.

It’s based on real-life scenarios and not theoretical models or hypotheses - that was certainly the case for Oprah Winfrey who was mentored by her 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Duncan, Quincy Jones who was mentored by Ray Charles, and Dr Martin Luther King, who was mentored by Benjamin E. Mays.

CVs left at the door

The balance of power in a good mentoring relationship is equal – in fact, the emphasis should be on the agenda of the mentee. Mentoring should be the ultimate leveller, where participants, like the Knights of the Round Table, leave their CVs at the door. This provides the ability for the mentee to understand more readily that their challenges are not always unique and that the person they are chatting to (however experienced) will be likely to be able to empathise or apply their own filter.

I’ve particularly valued co-mentoring and reverse-mentoring schemes that acknowledge the idea that both parties have something to learn and gain from the experience. This is particularly the case with the Bloom Exchange which focuses on providing male co-mentors with valuable insight into the lived experience of professional women.

The mobility objective

It’s not lost on me that were I to try to break into the business world today, my ‘working class’ background would inevitably hinder me from access. The lack of social mobility in many developed countries such as the UK and the US is a very real challenge, that has long term societal implications. And this is an important context for our work at the Creative Mentor Network.

The quality of giving back is one that Steve Yates, a former mentor on Live Magazine, considers crucial: “One of the great stains on the British economy in recent decades has been the decline in social mobility,” he says. “While the Nordic countries occupy the top-five slots globally, the UK ranks among the worst in western Europe. The middle and working classes often lead different lives, live in different places, consume different culture and typically go to different schools. Mentoring is your chance to do something about that.”

If not now, when?

Mentoring young people is particularly important during these anxious times, amid an era where young, vulnerable people from underserved communities are expected to be most impacted by the pandemic. In such times, mentoring, whether in person or distanced, can be a lifeline – especially for those suffering from anxiety, by reducing the sense of isolation and increasing self-confidence. It can be both cathartic and supportive.

Everyone can help

It’s never too early to start mentoring. I encourage everyone to consider it – at whatever stage you are in your career, formally or informally. When someone in your network asks for advice, don’t assume you don’t have the experience – you probably do. When someone like me asks for co-mentoring advice, always assume you can help.

Once you’ve benefitted from guidance and counsel, you recognise the value it can bring. I’m never one to overstate the role I can personally play for others - but if there is a shared experience, a similar career challenge experienced or another objective mind applied to a problem, then discussing it can be helpful. And truly fulfilling for all concerned.

Improves your batting average

There is an apocryphal story about a world-class cricketer, who improved his batting average when he taught his young son how to bat. Whether it’s true or not, I think we can all relate to the idea that being forced to think about how we (often instinctively) do things, encourages us to revisit best practice in our own ‘day to day’. So, in addition to potentially helping a mentee to improve, we’re likely to help ourselves with our own personal growth.

The relationships I’ve developed with mentees and co-mentees over the years has informed the way I think, the questions I ask myself, the knowledge gaps I feel I have. I think I’ve become a better leader, manager, colleague thanks to the brilliant people I’ve mentored, no matter how junior.

Mentoring has long held a special place in the imagination: from Dumbledore to Gandalf, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Miss Jean Brodie, or M for James Bond, mentors have your back. National Mentoring Day aims “to educate, inspire, connect and support mentoring to effect positive change and elevate mentoring throughout the world… our goal is to make mentoring accessible to any individual, child, business or group that needs it, regardless of age, background or ethnicities.”

This 27 October, National Mentoring Day is asking everyone to commit one hour to mentor someone. “Everyone has skills and experience to share as a mentor,” they say. “One word, one hour, one person can be all that’s needed to effect a positive change in someone.”

What greater reason could you need?