Why CIOL Mentoring?
Mentoring is a great way to learn, grow and connect with others.
Three major benefits are:
Mentoring can help linguists achieve their career goals by providing guidance, feedback and resources from someone who has more experience and knowledge in the field. Both parties in a successful mentoring relationship gain new perspectives and may see opportunities that they may not have considered before.
Mentoring can improve personal and professional skills by helping both parties to think about situations from a different perspective. People who take part in mentoring often learn to communicate about needs and expectations more effectively which can help with collaborative work. Mentoring can also help to develop confidence, resilience and emotional intelligence.
Mentoring can enhance a sense of belonging and community by creating meaningful relationships; and most of all for CIOL linguists, by taking part in mentoring with people who share common interests, aspirations and values.
Expert Support
For these reasons and more, CIOL has chosen to work with UK-based mentoring experts Perform Learn Develop (https://www.pldmentoring.com/)
PLD support a wide range of professional bodies, companies and public service organisations, and have the platform and expertise to help us support and maintain high quality mentoring relationships which benefit both 'mentees' (those receiving mentoring) and 'mentors' (those offering it).
Everyone benefits
It's easy to think that the main beneficiary of mentoring is the person being mentored. But mentoring is widely recognised as mutually beneficial. Both the mentor and the mentee can grow personally and professionally in a successful mentoring relationship.
For the mentor: mentoring can provide a real feeling of personal accomplishment in helping another linguist; in thinking about their own skills and experiences, mentors experience increased job satisfaction, advance and consolidate their own skills and can rightly feel they are contributing to another person, the community and the future of languages and linguists.
For the mentee: mentoring encourages personal development, can help identify and achieve career goals, increases confidence, exposes them to experience, wider skills and perspectives and can enhance their networking opportunities.
For the CIOL community: mentoring can also benefit the whole CIOL community: by fostering a culture of mutual support and greater confidence in and recognition of the skills, expertise and value of linguists and their languages and language skills.
An opportunity for all members to benefit from one another's knowledge and experience.
Whether you are a linguist interested in sharing your skills and expertise to help nurture and grow the linguists of the future; or you are at the start of your career interested in advice and guidance, but also with perspectives and ideas to share - it's easier than ever to find a mentor or mentee through CIOL's Mentoring Platform.
CIOL Affiliates and Members can find out more about becoming a mentor or a mentee by logging in to access the platform.
Longstanding CIOL Mentee
