What would you recommend to others seeking a mentor? What should you look for?
There needs to be rapport and trust established with your mentor. Since you’ll seek counsel and advice from this person, it will need to be someone you respect and hold in high regard. And that feeling needs to be mutual. Both people need to “want” to be in the relationship.
To find a good mentor, look for someone who has an achievement that you admire or you would like to emulate. That way, you’ll naturally be interested to seek their advice on said accomplishment.
It’s not just anyone who has a senior role, leadership title, or higher station in life that can be your mentor. But you shouldn’t stop at these accolades.
Look for commonalities and interests that you share with that mentor. So, when you meet, you have other things to connect on. Discussing those shared interests will make the interaction more fun and the mentor pairing more successful.
What did you do to be a good mentee?
Being a good mentee means being prepared. Time is valuable and when you connect with your mentor, know what it is that you’re asking for advice on. Put together an agenda and share it with them in advance of your meeting.
Also, update your mentor on any progress you’ve made as a result of the advice you’ve followed. They’ll want to share in celebrating your successes.
What are the pros and cons of having a mentor?
Pros of having a mentor – learning from the wisdom of someone who has already been where you want to go. They share all their learnings with you so that you don’t make the same mistakes.
Cons – At times, situations can be very context specific, and a mentor’s advice may not be too helpful.
Mentorships are relationships that need to be developed. They require patience and time to be fruitful. You can’t expect that in your first meeting with a mentor, that you’ll get answers to all of your career woes. The good advice and help tends to come after you’ve had the time to establish trust and rapport together.
What Further pros and cons of being a mentor?
Pros – Making the career path easier for someone else.
I tend to act like a sponsor for my mentees and do work for them. I’ll make intros and/or assist them in their careers, where I can. There’s the saying that you should “pull others up with you” and I visualize this. In my head, a mentor is on a high rung of a ladder and the mentee is below him getting pulled along. I think this work is time well spent and gratifying.
Cons – Sometimes you can’t help a mentee, no matter what you do. They have to develop and grow at their own speed. So, even if, as a mentor, you can see where they stumble and try to help, sometimes, they aren’t ready.
Mentees have to take initiative and do the work. A mentor can only do so much
How much did identity matter when you were seeking a mentor or to mentor someone else? Are there factors that mattered related to any aspect of your own identity outside of a common interest in a specific kind of work? (For example, race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability, and/or shared schools, contacts, interests, or hometowns?
When working with mentees, I’m mindful of the backgrounds of those I’m mentoring. I will make time and provide coaching to them because I’m not sure if they’ll get the advice or feedback elsewhere. It’s not because my mentorship is so profound or groundbreaking. It’s that data shows that people of underrepresented communities don’t have broad enough networks or relationships to get ahead at work. I take that to also include a lack of mentor figures.
I’d call these informal mentees as well. I’ve met them at work, they are junior, and they’ve reached out asking for advice. We’ll work at the same company which gives us a shared context.
When seeking my own mentors, I’ve sought out people who have had interesting career path, I connect strongly with, and I admire. I should say – this has been me reaching out to leaders directly and not a match made through a formal mentorship program. Many times, they have been women, or gay, or of color. And at other times, they’ve been straight white men but, frankly, that’s been more rare lately. I’ll say that the most important thing I seek out is a sensitivity in the relationship that allows me to share openly. The security allows me to let my guard down, I have to feel safe and not judged. It allows me to receive the information more wholeheartedly.
What do you think are the attributes to being a good mentor?
Two attributes – having specific, detailed advice to share and a willingness to help others.
Everyone mentions that you have to be able to listen well and be empathetic. Well, yeah, of course. You’re helping others so it’s table stakes that you’re dialed into that person and hearing their challenges.
Good mentors are able to get to the root of what mentees are looking for guidance on. Many times, they aren’t able to communicate this. They may not have the words or have a complete or mature understanding of a situation. Or sometimes, they may not know how to ask for help or advice on something that’s a blocker.
A good mentor will discern this and address it. They’ll tell you what you need to know.
For example, in banking, I became obsessed with getting promoted to a director. I talked about it incessantly and made it my mission to reach my goal. As annoying as it might be, I wanted people to see me and think, “That’s Jason and he needs to get promoted!”
In comes Lisa, a senior leader who I got to know. She sat on the bank’s regional steering committee, and she would give me advice from time to time – about the LGBTQ ERG I ran and also other topics. I developed a close relationship with her because was always so warm. She knew that I was after that director promotion.
One day, she came to the trading floor where I worked and noticed my work attire. Friendship bracelets were a trend and I had about 20 of them tied on my forearm. I happened to be wearing an electric blue short-sleeved polo shirt. What I deemed fashion-forward was not how others would perceive it and Lisa would point it out.
Later that day, she and I were on the same the elevator down – just the two of us. She asked me rhetorically: When I thought of what banking directors looked like, did they wear friendship bracelets or loud polo shirts? These items weren’t doing me any favors and they didn’t fit with people’s mental map of what a director looks like.
Her advice was to cut off the bracelets, wear a long-sleeved shirt, and don a tie. “Gotta focus on executive presence!” she would exclaim. And the way she said it, we both thought it was the funniest thing. But it was memorable. That night, I did as she said and got rid of the bracelets, and started wearing ties daily. And I got my director title.
Another attribute is that good mentors should reach out to check in on their mentees. Some formal programs will state that mentees should take all of the initiative in a mentoring relationship. That’s a good way to establish a structure. But once rapport is built, a mentor should also check in on their mentee.
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