There is so much talk these days about the importance of mentorship. It seems like people feel that their career can’t be successful without one. I sometimes get the image of a Carol Burnett character hunched over in a dark, dusty, back office saying, “If only I’d had a mentor…”
It’s true. There are times when a mentor can provide perspectives and information you’d never thought of and that feel like real shortcuts. They can help you with the “I don’t know what I don’t know.” However, if you are lacking a fairy princess who follows and protects you, all is not lost. Here are a couple of musings on mentorship.
First, being proactive in your life is worth 10 mentors. I sometimes get the sense, like with the back office character, that people are waiting for a mentor in order to make a move. It sounds a bit like, “If only I had…(a six-figure income, a thinner body, the love of my life), then I could (be a success, really be myself, have confidence). The truth is that we get to decide where our career or life is going, and that first step is the most critical. For more on being proactive, check out “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”
Second, not every mentor is Batman to your Robin, bigger, older and wiser, but otherwise just like you. People mentor us for different things, in different ways. Carla Harris in “Expect to Win,” distinguishes between the mentor, the sponsor and the advisor. The mentor you can tell, “The good, the bad and the ugly.” The sponsor, she says, you can tell, “The good, the good, and the good.” This is a person who you have identified as a supporter, who will use their influence on your behalf. Finally, the advisor is someone who can help you with discrete issues and questions. What if then, you let yourself have a board of directors. A few advisor/mentors who could help you along the way. You know the way; you are being proactive.
Expanding on this last thought. What if you already have mentors and you don’t even know it. In the early parts of my career, I didn’t think my stay-at-home mom could be a mentor to me. I thought she hadn’t experienced the ups and downs of corporate life. In my mid-30’s, however, I realized that she had gone back to school in her 40’s, reinvented herself, and reached the highest levels of management in her work. That gave me the vision to step away from cosmetics and reinvent myself as a coach. And once I did, I found a mentor in a peer, one of my closest friends, whose family had their own mid-sized real estate firm. She guided me in the ways of entrepreneurship and I sometimes think I couldn’t have done it without her. These are just two, and it wouldn’t take much to think of many, many more.
Would you take a few minutes to think about who has been a mentor to you, and who might serve in an advisor/mentor role? Feel free to share stories on the blog site.
Stay warm!
Claire
I adore your humor and even more, your astute observations. Indeed, anyone can be a mentor to anyone else, if we just sit up and look out from our dark, dusty back office!
Thank you, Claire. These are questions I have been contemplating myself lately. Much of it for me is delving deeper, away from the frenetic voice on the surface that’s constantly asking “what’s next” and retreating to a quiet place in my brain where I can really listen for the answers that lay in plain sight. Winter is the season for that inward retreat!
Claire I enjoyed your musings. If we start from the premise that we are all limited by our homeostasis but all have the potential to go beyond, then the question is what resources are available for us to unleash that potential. Ideally we want a trusted advisor/sponsor/coach and mentor all wrapped into one, for each of those individually have their limitations (as we might define them). Does such a beast exist? I think so but they are few and far between. Yes, you can tell the mentor the ‘good, the bad and the ugly’, but how powerful would it be if your mentor had ‘been there, done it’ (advisor), had the skills to unleash your limiting beliefs (coach), and supported and promoted your cause (sponsor)?
Hi Cameron-
Thanks for your very thoughtful comment. Does such a beast exist indeed! Should we not learn and enjoy playing tennis because we cannot hire the Williams sisters’ coach? Or, expect our spouse to create all of the fulfillment in our lives? It would truly be powerful if one person could carry so much weight for us. I guess what I am trying to say is that if we wait for that to happen, we can miss a lot of the great stuff career and life has to offer.
Claire
Claire your point is well made. One of the greatest challenges coaches and mentors have with clients is identifying and avoiding the ‘Rescue Model’ as opposed to ‘The Client Responsibility Model’. I credit these terms to Mary Beth O’Neill in her book ‘Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart’. In the Rescue Model the coach inadvertently takes on the client’s burden and becomes the pseudo leader of the situation, so abdicating the client of responsibility – and actually rarely achieving the desired result. I do think however that finding the right ‘beast’ (as I so eloquently put it!) to work side by side with can be enormously powerful, as long as The Client Responsibility Model is followed.
Cameron