Sparring partners as the new mentors
How failing to find mentors helped me uncover my real allies
A source of big frustration for me has always been the fact that I haven’t had one or several mentors accompanying my professional life. It seems to be a rather common thing in business, yet I haven’t found individuals to form such a relationship with. The really interesting people I met were usually too busy or not in search of yet another mentee. More importantly, I didn’t know what to offer them. Besides being a nice young man willing to learn from them, we had no shared agenda, nothing to work on after the initial pleasantries. I realize now that I was trying to force something without really understanding myself or the other side. I simply thought that if I could get real close to successful people, by emulating their behaviors that would in turn make me more successful as well.
But I was unaware to ask much more important questions: What was it about them that I wanted to learn? What were my and their goals? For what reasons could they be interested in helping me?
I also thought that I could force this relationship into being from day one. Once I’d found a mentor, he/she would just be there for me in all aspects I saw fit. Akin to a parent, not a long term business partner. I understand now that this is not how my world works. While this might be working for other people, it isn’t for me.
Sparring partners as a new category of mentors
What I’ve recently realized though is that while I may not have formal mentor-mentee relationships, I have many sparring partners that help me think through certain topics without having any interest other than seeing me succeed. In a way, I have assembled an informal advisory board around myself, ready to coach me through the topics I’m working on. I view this as an incredible ability that I’m deeply grateful for.
What I work on with my sparring partners
I generally work with my sparring partners on topics that are of strategic importance to me. To give you a more concrete sense, this is how I’ve worked with my sparring partners over the past two months:
- Michael Stucky and Wolfgang Kratky helped me think through a proposal I wrote for the Swiss Innovation Agency Innosuisse. I sent them the initial proposal and they made crucial comments around pricing, timeline and checking in with my contacts. Also reading Never Split the Difference during this same time period tremendously helped in negotiating successfully. If it weren’t for them, I probably wouldn’t have a deal now.
- Assaf Kindler, Andi Brenner, Alex Stöckl, Samson Altman-Schevitz and several others have recently helped me tremendously in obtaining clarity on how I could provide value to the corporate & VC ecosystems, what that world is willing to pay for and where my skills are most valuable. It is with this knowledge and their support that I can now take next steps towards capitalizing on the opportunities in this field.
- Benni Bremmer, Misha Kahan, Flavio Rump, Sunnie Groeneveld, Tal Yannay and several others have been a tremendous help in exploring and pushing me on my overall journey towards my next stage in life.
I realize that these are mostly guys and I’d be super grateful for any female inputs, hit me up if you’d like to help with that!
How do I make it work?
While I don’t know all the secrets yet, I believe I have uncovered several important factors that contribute to making this work for both sides:
- Establishing a relationship prior to asking for help
I guess this goes without saying, but I had somewhat of a shared relationship with all the people above before I “needed” anything from them. While I worked with some of them before, some I had just shared a social event with or we belong to a shared network. It seems to me that it’s not so much about the depth of the relationship but rather about the rapport and trust you’re able to build. The feeling that you can call that person, not to sell them anything but rather to get their opinion on something (most people are happy and often eager to share their opinion).
2. Asking for things that are aligned with their goals
And this is where point two comes in. Everyone of these people have interests. Sometimes it’s business interests, many times a personal interest. Different things matter to them but all of them want to see their life/work and as a consequence this world change in one way or another. They all have different tools to achieve that change, but they share the fact that they’re not perfectly happy with the status quo. Marshall Goldsmith calls this interest a natural law and sums it up perfectly in his book:
Now if I can position myself in a way that forms a credible story around me potentially being an agent of change for some of the things they care about, I’m suddenly a tool for them to achieve what they want to see more of in the world. Now they have a reason to care. So my job before I go into any of these conversations is to uncover the interests of my counterpart as deeply as I can and listen very carefully when I propose areas of potential collaboration. This is even more true for high profile business development, more on that potentially in a future article.
3. Getting the communication right: Intensity, expectations and transparency
As Spiderman so correctly popularized: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Since these people are trusting me with things they wouldn’t necessarily share with everyone, I must be super careful to make this relationship mutually beneficial. This means to neither over- nor undercommunicate: sharing updates when major events take place with regard to something we worked on together but not boring them with small details. This communication of course also takes into account the depth of the relationship, I will communicate more frequently with people I’m closer with. I also work very hard to set expectations that are aligned with both sides and that I can follow through with. I don’t promise things I don’t intend to keep and I don’t expect unreasonable things. Lastly, I work to be as transparent as I can be in terms of sharing relevant information. I find that when I am transparent about my facts, my plans and my challenges, people are OK with things not working out or unfolding differently than they might have expected. It’s only when you keep information to yourself that you put yourself in a potential position of dishonesty.
4. Appreciating the help and giving back in one way or another
I work to provide as much value as I can to my network and even more so to my sparring partners. I also make them know that their help is very much appreciated and that I’m available if they need something from me. While I try to not to spam them with all that’s happening in my life I do share original thoughts, startups or events with them that are aligned with their interests and that they might not be aware of. Over time, this helps strengthen our relationship further.
Going with the flow
While I still sometimes fantasize of these super important people I met once to finally notice me and take me under their wings, I actually think that the fact that it didn’t work out has led to a much more beautiful thing. An army of supporters helping each other along life’s road. I’m pretty damn happy and grateful for the sparring partners I have and the relationships I’ve been able to cultivate with them.
I hope this article provided you with some value, if so, give it a clap (or 2 or 50) and share it with whomever you see fit. Let me know your thoughts and ideas in the comments or by writing me directly at samuel.scheer@me.com.
