Importance and Benefits:

1. Big picture: business mentor can help you look at the “big picture”, and help you
identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that you may have
overlooked.
2. Experience: A successful, growing business brings new challenges such as hiring new
staff, raising new capital and entering new markets. A business mentor can offer
specific support, share best practice from other industries and sectors, caution against
potential pitfalls and instil confidence in your plans.
3. Sounding Board: A key role of a business mentor is to listen, stimulate and challenge
your thinking. This will help you develop your own ideas and arrive at your own
solutions to your business challenges at a much faster rate than doing this by yourself.
This alone should lead to better decision making.
4. Improve business network: Your business mentor will help you develop your business
network and customers within your industry, as well as other professionals. Business
Mentors are coaches, not consultants, and do not take the place of accountants,
lawyers or bank managers.
5. Accountability: Having a business mentor won’t automatically fix all your business
challenges. You will still have to do the work and invest the time and effort to
implement changes. A mentor will help you set goals and milestones as well make
you accountable for delivering on them.
6. Focus: t is very easy to get side tracked when you run a business, your business
mentor will make sure you do the high value work you should be doing and don’t get
sidetracked!
7. Challenge: Sometimes when we run a business we can get a little stale and start
settling for things. Your Business Mentor will challenge you to go that extra mile to
improve standards and to go from good to outstanding! They will help you develop
your skills, increase your motivation and be there to celebrate your successes.
8. Skill and proficiency: They provide skill and proficiency to increase growth rate of
business. A consultant is simply the right kind of helper and a sympathetic partner.
9. They build consensus and commitment around corrective action
10. ring in expertise: the skills needed to change something in the company are not
always available in-house.
Types of business counsellors:

1. Masters of Craft: They are at the highest level of their craft are usually
among the most iconic figures of their respective fields. can give you
insight into the history, values, and current state of your industry and help
you better see why other respected leaders in your area are so good at
what they do. share their wisdom with us and teach us the values and the
skills we need to become the best in our professions. He or she should
help you identify, realize, and hone your natural strengths toward the
closest state of perfection as possible.
2. Champions of Cause: In any organization, you should make sure there is
someone who will champion your cause. There will be times when the
thing you need most from your mentor is emotional support and the
knowledge that there is someone there who cares about you. But
champions are not just advocates; they should also be able to help
connect you to others. Your champion is usually a superior in your
workplace who is looking out for you and supporting your career path.
3. Co-Piloting Colleagues: Not all mentors need to or should be superiors. It
can be immensely useful to have a copilot, buddy, or mentor. This type of
relationship can develop when you are on-boarding someone new,
helping him figure out where to go for lunch, showing him how the office
tech works, and introducing him to others. A copilot is a peer mentor and
your go-to colleague for working through major projects or tasks.
4. Anchors: Anchors are trustworthy counselors who always show up when
you need them. They may play less of a day-to-day role in helping you
hone your skills, but they are there for objective advice and
compassionate support as needed. We need people who can counsel us
while keeping our best interests in mind and help us see how we can grow
and improve, even in uncertain times.
5. Reverse counsellors: reverse mentoring is an opportunity to collect
candid upward feedback on engagement and leadership style. Moreover,
when millennials feel that their perspectives matter too, they become
more open to learning. Organizations need to equally embrace younger
workers' fresh perspectives and older workers' wisdom and experience to
create more flexible, meaningful, and collaborative workplaces.
Practical Examples

1. Swapnil Khandelwal, cofounder of alumni-based social network startup

AlmaConnect. the 29-year-old rookie entrepreneur is at it with two “big shots”
of his own: Amit Ranjan and Gokul Rajaram. A year into the venture, in April
2014, Khandelwal hit a dead end in terms of user engagement. In sheer despair,
he dropped a plea for help to Ranjan on Linkedin. “I never thought he’d reply
the same day and also give an appointment,” recalls Khandelwal. A year into
the venture, in April 2014, Khandelwal hit a dead end in terms of user
engagement. In sheer despair, he dropped a plea for help to Ranjan on Linkedin.
“I never thought he’d reply the same day and also give an appointment,” recalls
Khandelwal.

2. Medha Mukerji, the 26-year-old founder of Feminstaa, for instance, plumped

for somebody who is perhaps the most powerful woman in business in India:
Arundhati Bhattacharya, chairperson of the State Bank of India (SBI). the first
meeting didn’t turn out to be rosy. Bhattacharya was brutally honest in her
assessment of the venture: the website looked like an amateur college project,
and the cofounders didn’t appear serious about a business model. The expenses
were at least 10 times what they were earning, and thought that to be normal.
Bhattacharya offered a reality check.“She emphasised the importance of
creating a sustainable business, rather than spending first and hoping to recover
later,” ays Mukerji, who also counts NDTV Gadgets 360 chief executive
Bhavna Aggarwal, author and screenplay writer Madhuri Banerjee and Yes
Foundation chief executive Prerana Langa among her “free” mentors. What
made the banker agree to mentor the founders of Feministaa was their “genuine
desire” to empower women.