The National Hispanic Landscape Alliance (NHLA) is stressing the importance of having a mentor. A mentor is someone who offers inspiration and guidance, a person who can identify the potential in mentees and motivates them to continue to grow and aim higher.
When LM covered mentor relationships in the July 2016 issue, green industry professionals used words like “invaluable” to describe the mentors throughout their careers.
“Working with a mentor doesn’t get you where you want to be,” said Eric Remeis, president of Yard Solutions in Groveport, Ohio. “But it helps give you a path, and it will help you speed up the process. I haven’t hit the promised land, but it should fast forward things.”
Whether a person is starting a new job, looking to grow in the company they work at, or want to establish a new business, the guidance of a mentor is key to personal and professional growth and success.
“The key that made the difference in my company’s performance was understanding through my mentor that, the moment I became a true leader for my employees, I would be able to develop more people like me, leading my company towards progress and success,” said Rafael Diaz, co-founder and president of Diaz Group and Director of the National Hispanic Landscape Alliance (NHLA).
Experience
Having a mentor is learning from someone who already walked the path towards achieving their goals, which enables them to offer a broader perspective because of their experience. Sometimes that mentor’s advice can become a challenge, but those opportunities are the ones that force an individual to get out of their comfort zone and grow in the professional world.
Networking
One of the most important and decisive factors for professional success relies on the relationships that emerge along a career path. A mentor usually has excellent connections that will open doors for job opportunities and future business partnerships. Building these relationships can be the beginning of a revolutionary project, the result of great ideas developed together, directed towards a common goal.
Guidance
A mentor is an inspiration, someone to reach out to during moments of uncertainty, who can provide much-needed advice. A person will often face difficult periods during their career path. However, a mentor can point them in the right direction and guide them in the process of good decision-making. Remember, a good mentor is not one who makes decisions on someone’s behalf, but rather one that serves as a guide to define paths and ideas to develop in the future.
Confidence
Most importantly, having a mentor means having someone who believes in you. When challenges seem to be unreachable, it is common to lose initiative and motivation. A good mentor has the capacity of inspiring and reminding a person of their talents and potential, directing them towards the best ways to handle certain situations. Being able to count with a successful professional that has a broad knowledge of the industry strengthens the mentees’ self-confidence.
“In my experience, the biggest and most important aspect of a mentor is teaching mentees the importance of believing in themselves, their capacities and potential, leading them to become an inspiration for others,” said Diaz.
