Get selfish: Be a mentor.
TL;DR: everyone needs someone to talk to in a safe environment. Go be that person for someone. It just might help you.
Mentoring isn’t something we typically think about helping the mentor. Which is precisely why we should reorient our thinking about mentorship.
I have had many mentoring relationships during my career, and they all have one thing in common: they deepen that relationship. Mentoring can be a safe space where you can discuss impending decisions, past mistakes and successes, as well as future plans. Sometimes they are formal relationships, other times they’re informal, but I guarantee you that you don’t have enough of them.
I have heard colleagues say “well, I don’t know what I would help somebody with” and “who would want to hear what I have to say?”
If you’re in a similar headspace, I would suggest that you’re probably being too coy about your skills, and maybe you’re just not taking stock of the team around you.
Think of it this way: Giving advice is the best way to hear yourself sound stupid. But seriously, service of others is clearly the big deal here, but using some self awareness can ensure you will benefit from hearing yourself tell your stories — if you’re honest with yourself.
Said another way, if you want to be a great leader, try to help others lead. If you want a better career, help someone else plan their career using your experiences. If you want to help younger colleagues learn from your mistakes in advance, share those mistakes and your learnings with them.
You’ll hear yourself give the kind of advice you should probably take.
The keys are: to engage openly and honestly, and then to keenly listen to yourself.
“But I can’t do that.”
Nonsense. Here are a few tips to get you going:
Offer up a conversation. Take the relationship for a test drive. If you have a perspective you want to share, or a skill you want to help someone else master, offer that to someone who you think will be receptive to it. Opening yourself up to some rejection will paint the backdrop for a real conversation.
Say “YES!” Try to be alert for innocent questions from others, asking for your insight. This could be a mentee fishing for an opportunity to learn what you obviously know. Let them borrow your tools.
Establish the frequency, and stick to it. If you don’t hold something like this sacred in your schedule, you’ll diminish its inherent value to both you and your charge. Sure, you can move it, but plan ahead. A good rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t move a meeting farther than the amount of notice you give. So if you have to move it three days later, you had better be giving three days notice.
Agree to a “safe space” right off the bat. It’ll be important for the mentee to feel comfortable sharing their real experiences and real emotions, but it will also be important for you, as real advice about your life lessons always comes with vulnerability.
Listen intently. Yes, part of your charge is to dispense your worldly advice. The larger part should be to truly hear what’s going on. Ask open-ended questions, and like Aaron Burr never really said, “Speak less, smile more.”
Create the impetus for follow-up. Maybe the conversation is one-and-done, but maybe it’s you. Did you offer to check in with that person after they’ve had a chance to try that skill? Did they have enough time to have that next at-bat in the customer meeting that you gave them feedback on improving? Create that future meeting as part of the conversation, so that neither of you can ignore it.
To reverse the narrative a little, I love the idea of seeking out someone who has skills that you want to put in your own toolbelt. Observations like “Wow, Benji is so good at handling customer objections,” or “Terry always keeps his cool under pressure” are great, but rarely does that person go ask the one demonstrating the skills to sit down and share their approach. We (all) need to do that more.
So say “YES!”
