Are you my mentor?

The question is the answer. 

My time at Undercurrent demanded two new college graduates to become managers and supervisors. We sat crisscross-applesauce and kept in casual because anything remotely formal felt awkward. At the time, I was one kind of entry level and my managers were another kind of entry level.

Prior to Undercurrent I thought people were groomed to become managers for their entire careers. Plus I assumed that all intelligent people are exalted leadership positions. Those are two cute ideas now. After watching these two managers, I witnessed natural leadership abilities arise and observed them harness these newfound skills. They learned what worked and what didn’t work; they rested on their natural leadership laurels.

Fast-forward to this: I’ve returned to the office after a seven-week absence. (As a pre-professional ballet dancer, I was training at Alonzo King LINES Ballet in San Francisco.) I sit down with one of my managers in order to get a pulse on the office. These were my observations in sequential order:

She complains about her haircut.

After asking me how my intensive was, she disengages eye contact.

She opens up her notebook not to take notes, but to doodle.

Inserts more filler conversation about her hair.

Checks her phone for texts and emails.

Concludes with complaints about how busy she is.

She might not even realize this, but all of the aforementioned choices are total power moves. They all speak volumes about what she thinks about me in relation to her time. By these means, I know that I am not a priority. By these means, I am robbed of my voice and I no longer feel as though I have anything noteworthy to say.

Furthermore, Harvard Business Review called out the overachievers— the article argued for people to stop complaining about how busy they are. The busy ones are often confused as the intelligent ones; and yet, this is paradoxical when the smartest people manage time wisely. In short, the workload complaints do not garner this person more respect; what this person is vocalizing is actually undermining her.

I had a mentor at the dance intensive in San Francisco. Her name is Sandrine Cassini and her eye contact made me borderline uncomfortable. Not in an intense and prying manner, but in unadulterated sincerity. She leaned in with her entire body when I spoke, as if she were about to run across the circle of twenty other dancers and sit in my lap to listen to my life’s story. To be honest, I had to look away sometimes because her naked artlessness made me emotional. Sandrine made a point of making herself an equal among us pre-professional dancers and we did not feel worthy to be so friendly with a former Paris Opera Ballet etoile. Her pinky finger possessed more talent and prestige than all of us combined, and yet she got on our level.

I’d like to note that dance culture rarely prepares dancers for any skills beyond a ballet barre. In the case of Sandrine, she has most likely learned her mentoring skills from examples throughout her career. In other words, my first two managers and Sandrine all have the same basic training to be leader; however, they do not share the same basic understanding.

Now I didn’t let these observations sit in a silo; I delivered this feedback to the aforementioned manager. By doing so, I pried open the context in which these insincere habits formed. A question arose as to whether the workplace environment caused this detrimental shift in her leadership capabilities. I learned that my mentor was subconsciously modeling the leadership language her managers had demonstrated to her. (The main culprit was technology’s distracting and harmful presence when she attempted to connect with these people.) Although she managed to cope with these irritations, she still internalized this behavior on some level and her managers’ examples subtly shaped her progression as a mentor.

Another question arose as well: what does a mentor look like? I learned that my mentor and I spoke different body languages. As a listening mechanism, my mentor doodles in order to be an active listener. Just the act of writing anything down on paper helps her hone into what someone is saying. I interpreted this as disengagement; she was armed and ready to be the best mentor she could be.

My mentor identified a gap in our point of views as well: she regarded our relationship as one that grew out of the manager phase and into an office friendship, whereas I strictly defined her as a manager. When a woman once described her perfect mentor as someone who spoke with her once a week, Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In, concluded “that’s not a mentor— that’s a therapist.” I attempted to avoid this but failed to create an alternative to this relationship. In short, we didn’t know what we wanted from each other. As a byproduct of this mishap, we lacked a feedback loop in the relationship as well. Furthermore, “a mentee who is positive and prepared can be a bright spot in a day” according to Sandberg. I lacked the expectation preparation, so no wonder why my interactions with my mentor seemed lukewarm and unproductive.

Bottom-up criticism is also hard to come by; therefore, I have a unique and sought after mentee point of view when it comes to feedback. As the only intern in this office, I am a source of rare insight; therefore, I need to facilitate these opportunities if I want to impact my workplace (which I do). This also relates to me being a woman without a strong initiative in the professional world. With more of Sandberg’s insights in mind, “studies show that mentors select protégés based on performance and potential… We need to stop telling them, ‘Get a mentor and you will excel’” but rather “we need to tell them, ‘Excel and you will get a mentor.’” If I don’t own my competitive advantage, then who will? A mentor is not a right, I needed to earn her time and interest by cultivating skills she wanted to foster in me as well.

With further observations in relation to mentorships for men and women, Sandberg notes “men want answers and the women want permission and help,” meaning “that searching for a mentor has become the professional equivalent to waiting for Prince Charming… Once again, we are teaching women to be too dependent on others.” I was not impervious to this trap. I don’t know what push I was waiting for from my mentor, but I’m so grateful I didn’t wait a day longer for that dreamy and ambiguous launch.

I was humbled. I now know that I owe my progression to my mentors. Even with all their habits and flaws, mentors often times become my confident backbone. Just as prescribed in Love Leadership, “people will forgive you every other sin as long as you’re authentic.” Simply knowing that I have someone who genuinely supports me boosts my work performance. This subtle advocate makes me more likely to take on new projects and risks. And as exemplified above, I could use a lot more risk taking. Mentors can even make or break your experience at work, where just one proponent can alleviate all of the office’s chaos.

With both mentee and mentor POVs in mind, this relationship boils down to vulnerability. It becomes a question of ‘what would you do if you weren’t afraid?’ Would you run the risk of asking for help, even if it reveals your overwhelmed and amateur underbelly? Andrew Young concurs that “most of us fear the emptiness and anxiety in our lives, and so we’re always looking for affirmation, understanding, acceptance from others.” Paradoxically, dismissing vulnerability makes you come across empty and shallow, so we unintentionally play into what we fear most. With vulnerability as the foundation of a mentee/mentor relationship, there leaves neither room nor reason to fear.

Now I’ve found that real vulnerability isn’t a free pass to talk about your love lives and roommate troubles during meetings. This is merely skirting around the real challenges and growth opportunities at hand.

Moreover, John Hope Bryant, author of Love Leadership, realized “self esteem is critical in combating fear. I learned early in my life that if I don’t like me, I cannot like you. If I don’t learn to love me, I cannot love you. If I don’t respect me, I won’t respect you. And here is the biggest lesson: if I don’t have a purpose in my life, I am going to make your life a living hell.”

Vulnerability may seem like a soft-core skill, but it is a force to be reckoned with. This kind of sincerity assigns purpose to my relationships with my mentors and, on a larger scale; this skill leaves me open to embrace new drives, directions and potentials for my life’s purpose.

Sandrine Cassini gets this. She wanted to see something in me grow. Sandrine wanted this so much that she was willing to break down all barriers in order to do so. Her vulnerability doesn’t mentor me— it moves me. For her, she can be nothing but authentic.

One of the challenges among implementing mentors is that they grow best in an organic environment. It’s hard to coerce this kind of relationship. I don’t know the answer to this barrier to implementation yet. Sheryl Sandberg regards the question “Are you my mentor?” as a mood killer, where “if someone has to ask the question, the answer is probably no. When someone finds the right mentor, it is obvious. The question becomes a statement.”

But I’d like to call for more mentors and less leaders. Mentors transcend backgrounds, ages and complexities. We might not train people to become proper leaders but we can foster mentors that go above and beyond the call of a boss. A manager does the bare minimum and the strained check in, whereas the mentor doesn’t even need to pencil you in because you’re already so enmeshed in each other’s lives.

Let it be known: my mentors and I will no longer learn to lead by a detached example but rather mentor with relentless and genuine intensity.