Mentors, companions on a long journey

Increasingly I feel the importance of mentors in my life, be it official mentors or unofficial mentors. In general, I believe we all prefer having someone we can look up to in our lives so that we can always strive to be better. Having someone who is already at the top of the mountain and pulling you up. There are times when you want to give up and they are the ones who will help pull you up to the next step.

I am writing this piece to share with others my experience and a rough how-to guide to finding a mentor, building the relationship and hopefully becoming a mentor to others (I have had a lot of requests for this, so blogging about it is the only way to scale up)

Growing up, parents would act as the default mentor. However, entering the workforce, finding your footing and navigating through the corporate world, it’s a totally different story. Sometimes, just surviving the day is considered a stroke of luck.

I wanted to write this article to thank the people who have shown me support as well as share my observations of my journey of finding a mentor, building a relationship with a mentor and ultimately, really benefiting from the relationship with the mentor. A mentor-mentee relationship is the only promiscuous relationship where no one minds you having more than one.

I’ve worked in Big Blue for close to two years now. With all the negative publicity, I wanted to share some positivity that the company has actually taught me these last 22 months. Having been in other American MNCs, IBM was the first company where I found a very strong mentoring culture. Seriously, we even have a whole framework dedicated to how to be a mentor and how to be a mentee.

Types of mentors

There are different types of mentors that I have observed:

1. Career mentor (most people have one of these to advance)
2. Technical mentor (I prefer the technical mentors. This is like an apprenticeship)
3. Networking mentor (You leverage their networks. I personally feel this is more transactional)
4. Alternate opportunity mentors (I really do not like this type of mentorship, where seeking a mentor is about seeking a new opportunity)

So for the discussion and sharing, most of it will focus on career mentors and technical mentors.

As a junior employee, my first mentor was assigned to me. That didn’t work out too well. Basically the person moved on to a new role after 2 weeks (in my experience, assigned mentorships never work because it takes both parties to build the relationship. Having one side being coerced into the relationship to fulfil KPI requirements tends to lead to a more disruptive outcome).

I think in total, to date, I have had close to 7 self discovered mentors, 2 half mentors (I’ll explain) and 2 assigned mentors.

Mentor Discovery

I would say, a lot of this is dependent on chance. You can actively search for a mentor, seek recommendations, however just like a life partner or a job, some of it is left up to serendipity.

The process of discovery, matching and pairing:

• Actively network with new people
• Express your interests in seeking a mentor
• Ask for recommendations
• Boldly put your foot forward and pitch to your potential mentor to spend time to coach you

The first mentoring relationship that was successful was my mentor who actually approached me from the UK. This was purely coincidental. We have a social network within IBM that allows users to tag themselves and colleagues to build a semantic intranet. But anyways, basically this mentor found me through the internal social network. He was the first one to guide me through my career and advise me on the things I should look out and how I could grow my own skills. A second mentor for project management was actually introduced by him as well. She basically guided myself and a few friends on the basics of project management and observe her existing project as a live case study. That was good fun.

I had another mentor that was recommended to me for learning about analytics. Once again, this was more of an assigned mentor, since I knew his boss and his boss kinda stuck me with him. We had a few sessions but didn’t really result in much.

Of course over time, I’ve unabashedly approached a few more people who have been kind enough to share their experience and coach me to become better.

How to have a successful mentorship?

I’ve noticed a fixed process for having a successful mentoring relationship:

1. Setting expectations on both sides
   - What do both parties want to achieve out of the mentorship
   - This is important and helps set the tone and the main goal to drive towards
2. Having a periodic call/ meeting
   - I would suggest a monthly call, maximum 2 calls a month
   - This gives enough time for the mentee to work on the last set of advice and not overtax the mentor’s time
3. Document everything
   - With Evernote (or Onenote or any tool you prefer) it’s really become a lot easier to expand our memory and dump all the information needed for a later point in time
   - Documenting everything helps to keep track of the progress as well as recording the experience so that when time comes, you can refer to it again

Half Mentors

The half mentors are actually the more interesting cases. This is where neither party has agreed to a formal mentoring relationship. But trust me, as a mentee, you know they are looking out for you.

This to me is actually the more successful mentorships. Ambiguity and the lack of a well defined set of expectations helps the relationship evolve more into a friendship. And with friends you will be more candid and honest.

Going full circle and mentoring others

When you have gone through a few cycles of being mentored, it is always good to give back and pay it forward.

There are 3 types of mentoring relationships:

1. Conventional: experienced mentor coaching the less experienced mentee
2. Reverse mentoring: the person with less work experience mentoring the person with more work experience
3. Buddy system: Two similarly experienced people taking turns to be a mentor and in the process strengthening each other’s blindspots and weaknesses

My first reverse mentor was with a Partner based out of Brazil. The leadership team wanted the fresh gradautes to give them a perspective on social media, social networks and the ability to scale up, especially in the enterprise context. The biggest challenge I face when reverse mentoring is that you have to keep your cool and patience even when the senior leadership has totally stood you up or have difficulty in comprehending a supposedly simple concept.

Some tricks I found useful:

1. Breaking down the periodic sessions into 5 to 10 minute blocks
2. Instructions should be prepared in an easily consumed idiot proof manner (No thinking should be required when walking through setting up a Facebook account with clear screenshots/ videos)
3. Always confirm they have understood the concept by getting them to repeat in their own words (Sometimes, the leaders may politely state they know the concept but really haven’t grasped it yet)

I have also mentored high school students as part of the Company social responsibility program. That was good fun to be in touch with young folks again and to learn about the current fads and possible trends in years to come.

Concluding advice

I would say, find a mentor that can really challenge you. Someone who can bring you out of your comfort zone without causing psychological hysteresis.

At the same time, active seek mentors who are outside your domain of knowledge and expertise. These are the folks who will make you really uncomfortable and open your eyes to a whole new world.

If you’re still lost and seeking a way to start, just look for my handle on twitter: @mryitch