Mentors: A Golden Ticket to Success?
The TechTogether Medium presents this article from Susi Burke, a mentor at TechTogether Boston 2019, who shares her insights on finding a mentor and what makes a mentoring relationship work. She has mentored young women in STEM informal programs and informally; online and in-person as well as at hackathons like TechTogether Boston. She has a passion for advancing diversity in tech as it can only lead to better and more inclusive products and services and sees mentoring as a tool to help do this.
Winged Words of Wisdom From a Goddess
You may have read articles telling you about one of the golden tickets to success: a mentor! What does that mean? Is the mentor like a god or goddess that magically bestows wisdom on you? Actually, the first mentor mentioned in written history was indeed a goddess. In The Odyssey, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, guided Odysseus’s son Telemachus, speaking to him in “winged words” in the guise of Odysseus’s friend Mentor. Alas, she did not simply tell him everything he needed to know. She shared the history and wisdom of his elders with him. She fostered courage, hope, and skill to help him reach his goals. But he had to make the difficult decision to leave home and journey to discover himself. He had to learn some hard lessons before he could complete his destiny.
What to Do if Athena Does Not Come to You?
Wouldn’t it be awesome if, at just the right moment, a mentor would appear before you offering help? But if that isn’t the case, how do you identify when you need a mentor and how do you take action in finding one? To answer the first question, you could always benefit from someone mentoring and supporting you. No matter how long you have been working or how smart you are, there is always something new to learn and someone who has had experiences that you have not had. Being in tech means being involved in an industry that constantly changes so being a life-long learner and having the willingness to reach out to others for support are important traits for success.
A good mentor can be an invaluable asset and very successful entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Richard Branson all benefited tremendously from having a mentor. As Richard Branson talks about in this article, “going it alone is an admirable but foolhardy and highly flawed approach to taking on the world” .
So how do you reach out? Finding a mentor can take many forms. You can find a formal program through your work or school, reach out through various organizations, connect with someone you know like a current or former manager or reach out to someone new. Some women in tech organizations like Tech Ladies and Women Who Code have organized ways to find a mentor — this article from TechTogether has a great list of organizations: Techtogether Medium — The Joy of Discovery and the Search for Support. Many of these groups are also good places to find help for a particular situation and some, including Women in Product and Women Who Code, have mentoring or career advice channels on Slack.
Another way to find mentors is to reach out at conferences and hackathons to people you connect with or admire. A young hacker I met at TechTogether Boston 2019, reached out to me asking for some help with a project she was working on and we have been keeping in touch ever since. While I am not formally mentoring her, we have met in person a couple of times and I am working to support her through some challenging issues at a new job.
Keep in mind that mentorship doesn’t need to be a formal, every 2-week check-in type of situation. In fact, if you are reaching out to someone outside of a formal program, it may be better to let the relationship develop organically rather than ask them to be your mentor. Reach out to them with a small request first or to just grab a coffee or lunch and chat. Offer to help them on a project or ask them to help you with a small request. Be understanding if that person just doesn’t have the time. Let the relationship grow into a mentorship if that seems right.
Lastly, keep in mind “having a mentor” doesn’t require you to be bound to a single person. It may take a few of us mere mortals to equal the wisdom of Athena!
Advice if Your Mentor is not a Greek Goddess
When you find your mentor, they may not be Athena (if they are, congrats to you!), but hopefully, they can help you recognize your strengths and values and empower you to make decisions that will set you on the path that is right for you. But it is your path to follow and your skills and choices that will ultimately get you where you want to go. Your mentor is simply a guide providing knowledge gained from experiences you have yet to encounter. Even Telemachus, with a goddess as a mentor, still had to go on his own journey and learn his own lessons. But that journey was made easier and ultimately successful because of the encouragement and guidance of his mentor.
So how do you make this relationship work? What can you do to make this a positive experience for you and your mentor? If you are doing this through a formal mentoring program, the program itself might have specific guidelines to follow, questions to ask and things to prepare. But if not, here are some suggestions to help you get the most out of this experience.
Be Inquisitive: Find out about your mentor and what their experiences have been; why they are mentoring? This will help you determine the best issues to focus on with your mentor. This can also give you insight into how you can give back to your mentor.
Be Open: Be open to feedback and new ideas. Your mentor may be looking at situations through a different lens and see some options you may not have considered. Reflect on what they have to say and see how if it can be applied to your situation.
Be Ready to Work: Your mentor’s goal is to help you discover your own answers and to do so will take some work on your end. Hopefully it will be exciting self-discovery work!
Be Responsible: Keep appointments and show up ready with an agenda and goals you would like to accomplish. Send the agenda out ahead of time so the mentor has time to prepare as well.
Be Thoughtful: Be considerate with how and how much you communicate. Find out from your mentor the way they prefer you to communicate with them and what their time constraints are. They are likely busy and may not be able to respond to everything you need immediately so be sure to give them sufficient time when you need them to review something.
Be Appreciative: Think about what you can provide to the relationship — what new apps, books have gotten you thinking, what excites you? Have you learned something recently you think your mentor would be interested in hearing about? Share that! In addition to learning something new, your mentor will learn more about you and know better how to guide you.
What’s that You are Holding?
So is having a mentor really a golden ticket to success? Actually, you already hold a golden ticket! But a mentor can help guide you in the process of cashing that ticket in to get the career that you deserve. They can help you avoid the traps like turning into a big blueberry or falling into a chocolate river, although that second option does sound delicious…
So reach out and find a mentor or a few mentors! Be enthusiastic and energetic and give back in any way you can to those that help you. Embrace feedback and apply that feedback in a way that feels honest to you. Your hard work will be well worth it and you may end up with the chocolate factory of your dreams! And when you do, you can pay it forward by showing others that they hold their own golden ticket and guide them to find their own success.
