How to meaningfully advance your career or business in 2024
Interview with Evelyn Jackson (CEO)
With 2024 in full swing, it’s time to return to work and meaningfully advance your career. After taking a much-needed break, the team at Corporate Crayon is back delivering meaningful solutions for our clients. We recently spoke to our CEO and Creative Director, Evelyn Jackson, about the importance of mentoring and the impact that it can have on businesses and your individual career. These are the insights from our conversation.
Why do you believe mentoring is important?
We briefly touched on how to use the power of mentoring and what it can do to promote a high-performing team. But importantly the impact on individuals and the one to one relationships they can develop with their mentor providing many perspectives they may not get at work.
“Mentoring gives you a different perspective as to what you might get from your manager and also your immediate team. Your mentor can give you options that you haven’t considered on how to do things, how to solve a problem and how to manage being in the workplace. Mentors are also a really great tool for when you need to make decisions. They can empower you with the knowledge and confidence to make a decision quicker.”
Mentors are there to give you confidence, along with guidance. Drawing on their years of experience, they are able to give guidance on managing career and professional situations and obstacles that come your way, along with simply listening and allowing a safe space for you to think and brainstorm ideas on how to tackle your personal development.
“Mentors give you a safe space to talk. Of course, there are some great managers out there, but for the most part, the majority of people can’t be completely truthful or honest with their manager due to the structure of organisations. I think also, more and more managers now are looking at how they can make an environment safe for people to talk much more openly about their struggles and frustrations, but we are in the early stages of this change in the workplace.”
How do you deal with challenges in business?
Challenges in business are inevitable; like any journey, business is filled with ups and downs. Having a mentor can be a great resource, unlike a coach, who gets you to reflect and deal with your challenges on your own, a mentor shares experiences and can support you as you work through your own business challenges, operations, and new business development.
“Whenever I face challenges in business, I really try to have a glass-half-full mentality. I often say this is ‘just’ a challenge. Framing it like this enables me to make it smaller and more manageable and approach it with the ability to think that it can be solved, rather than it becoming overwhelming.”
“By trying to see it as ‘just’ a challenge that can be overcome. Verbalising this to other people like a mentor is so important. When you can openly talk about issues, they become a lot more manageable.”
How has a mentor helped you with these challenges?
Mentors aren’t there to solve all your problems, but they are there to be used as a resource you can lean on to solve them yourself. Oftentimes, the challenges that come with business can only really be viewed and understood by someone who has been in a similar position. We asked Evelyn how having a mentor has helped when working through business and professional challenges.
“The great thing about having a mentor is how actionable their suggestions are. If you’re starting off in business or are early-mid career, I always recommend having a mentor. Or, if you’ve just been promoted to a director role or something similar, this is a great opportunity to find a mentor. The first 6-12 months are when people usually face challenges, so having that support is so important.”
What’s been the biggest surprise about working with a mentor and being a mentor?
Although Evelyn has a mentor herself, she is a mentor at Corporate Crayon and through her work with Find My Meaning. Evelyn mentors several people and guides them in business and with their career development. We picked her brain about what the biggest surprises are when it comes to being a mentor herself.
“When you really start to get into conversations, you don’t realise how much you know until someone asks you the questions. It’s quite surprising how much you’ve learned along the way without intentionally learning. Another big surprise is how much you actually learn from the mentee. You learn about people, their struggles and challenges and generally how to adapt to different people.”
“Something I love about the mentor/mentee relationship is how nice it is for those who are willing to share their knowledge. It’s a win-win situation. No matter if you are paying for the service or not, those in a mentoring relationship are genuinely excited to share knowledge.”
What advice would you give to someone looking to propel their career in 2024?
Moving forward into 2024, our team is excited for the year ahead. We asked Evelyn her thoughts on the best way to advance and move forward with meaning in your career in 2024.
“I think that it’s a really difficult time with everything going on in the world and the goals people set themselves, not to mention the difficulty some businesses are facing. With that in mind, be really clear about what you are good at and what you enjoy doing, not just what’s going to advance your career. Take 2024 as the opportunity to find what you are good at and use it to propel your career forward. Look further than what’s going to make you more money, discover what your skillset is and continue to develop it, along with focusing on where you could make improvements.”
Evelyn mentioned that when searching for a mentor, look for someone who is two to three job positions above you. This is usually a good level of seniority and allows you to still connect and relate to one another.
Final Thoughts
When looking to propel your business or career, having a mentor/mentee relationship is crucial. The process of sharing knowledge allows both parties to develop professionally further.
How Corporate Crayon Can Help
If you’re interested in working with Corporate Crayon or building a mentoring relationship, get in touch with us. In the meantime, connect with us on LinkedIn and read through our blogs to discover our thinking.