Career Development: Mentorship

Why do you need a mentor?

At any given time in your career you would need guidance from someone to make decisions. If someone is successful and if you follow their advice and marry it with your unique strengths, you will end up being successful, it’s inevitable.

Below are few famous quotes related to giving and seeking advice.

Advice is like cooking — you should try it before you feed it to others. — CROFT M. PENTZ, 1001 Things Your Mother Told You

I’ll give you the same advice I give my children: Never take advice from anybody. — ROBERT ALTMAN, Esquire, Mar. 2004

You read it right, there are 1001 reasons not to take advice from others. But then what are we talking here mentorship being a life changer, when there are more reasons to say advice is bad in general. You might have friends and family to give you some kind of advice. Giving advise to others is so easy and you tend to get it a lot. The real essence of mentorship lies in how effective you are at asking the right question and taking the right advice which when executed properly produces greater results.

In simple terms mentors have done it before and as a mentee all you are looking for is to understand what should and what shouldn’t be done to succeed. What shouldn’t be done is equally important to what should be done. The key is to understand how to avoid expensive mistakes by learning from others.

There are a few life changing moments in my own personal life and my mentors played a key role in transforming me into who I am right now. I would like to share one such experience. Few years back, I was performing at my level best, putting in a lot of effort, enjoying each and every bit of my work and I was doing a lot more than what was anticipated from me. In-spite of all that I had a serious set back. I was a little broke with the outcome, did a lot of self reflection, had a lot more discussions with my mentors to make some critical decisions. I moved teams, took complete responsibility and control of my career. I am a changed person now. I am so thankful such a set back happened to me which triggered multiple changes in me and that moment made me realize a lot more things and the real importance of mentorship. That’s when I intensified my focus on everything I do.

What are the qualities you look out for in your mentor?

1. First and foremost, do they walk the talk?
2. Are they willing to spend quality time with you?
3. Are they a subject matter expert in the field you are looking for guidance?
4. Do they inspire you?

There are more qualities that you can look for but I think these qualities are good enough for an awesome mentor.

Does mentorship goes both ways?

Is a mentor learning from a mentee? — Mentorship is always bi-directional but the amount of learning that you get from a mentor is much more substantial than you give back to your mentor. Another example could be that you as a mentee could be an expert in a specific skill and your mentor is interested in learning it form you. It becomes mutual and this mentorship relationship would continue along much better as there is benefits for both the mentee and the mentor. It’s all about successful people sharing their success through intangible asset exchange. For mentors it is the satisfaction of giving and contributing toward creating a better world.

Should the mentor be older than a mentee?

That’s true in most cases and as humans we naturally think that we will take suggestions from people who are older than us. Also with age comes experience and your maturity level increases by experience to be an effective mentor. Having said that if you have the maturity as a mentee to accept mentorship from a subject matter expert who is younger by age but much more experienced by skills that should also work. This might change in the future. We should be open to seeking mentorship from folks younger than us. At some point, that will become inevitable.

Role of an effective mentor?

1. Trustworthiness: Should commit to keep what ever the discussion is to themselves.
2. Commitment: Should be willing to spend focused quality time with the mentee.
3. Person of Focus: Helping a mentee is the focus here, the mentor should not think of using it for their own benefits.
4. Relationship: Long term mentorship creates a special bonding for life.
5. When to stop: Both a mentor and the mentee should know when to stop or pause the mentorship if its not working.

Role of an effective mentee?

1. Perspective: The most important thing that you should remember as a mentee is that your are not paying your mentor, and your mentor has committed to sacrifice and spend their time with you. So you should always have this perspective and make use of their time very effectively.
2. Planning: In order to utilize your mentor’s time effectively you should spend quality time planning for your mentorship session.
3. Driver: Its always you’r responsibility to drive the mentorship discussion forward. A good recommendation would be to plan ahead on what do you want to focus on the session, wrap up the discussion with what are your action items and if possible give the mentor a heads up on what you wanted to discuss in the next session.
4. Commitment: This session is for you and you only. If you don’t have the commitment who else would?
5. When to stop: Both the mentee and a mentor should know when to stop or pause the mentorship if its not working.
6. Agenda of 1–1 is often driven by mentee. If there is nothing to discuss mentee should cancel the 1–1.

How many mentors?

Is there a limit on how many mentors one can have at a given time? There is no magic number, 1 is a good start, 2 is ideal, 3 is awesome and 4 is extra-ordinary. I have had up-to a maximum of 3 mentors, but it all depends on how well you are able to spend quality time and get value out of your mentorship. As discussed already, you have to do effective planning and if you have the time and energy to be effective with multiple mentors you should not hesitate to do so. The golden rule here is you should avoid seeking guidance on the same problem from multiple mentors. If you have more than 1 mentor in essence what it means is you are seeking mentorship on different skills from each of them. For example., Your goal is to become a great blogger and you have a mentor who is mentoring you on that. Similarly you have another goal of becoming an influential speaker and you have a subject matter expert who is helping you with that. It’s simple as that.

Frequency of the session?

Its completely up-to you and frequency dependent on multiple factors.

1. Your mentors availability.
2. Your availability: Remember to be effective, you need to consider the time required for planning and working on your action items.
3. Total number of mentors you have.

Ideal recommended frequency is a 30 minute session per month.

Should you have a mentee?

Yes you should. Remember : Sharing is caring! Like the way your mentor is helping you, you should return the favor by helping others to be successful. Mentorship is always win-win, winning and making others win along with you.

Thanks to all my mentors and mentees who helped me to grow and come up with this article. This article is a combination of exploration and my self reflection of all my mentorship experiences. Hope it helps you to have an effective one for yourself.