How to find a mentor?

Finding a mentor is not an impossible mission but before sharing my thoughts on how to do it I'll tell why I think it's important.

We discover new things on our path and learning from own errors is the most expensive way to advance. Getting advice is free and getting advice from "old stagers" can save you lots of time and energy. Mentors are akin to our parents when we were young - they unselfishly teach us their secrets of life - be it family relationships, growing kids, or advancing on the career.

In this blog I want to talk about the latter. The role of luck in one's career hardly can be overestimated but learning others' patterns of success and listening to people that have reached high results can remarkably help. How to get exposed to their experience and make them wanting to share their secrets? A few ideas of mine:

• Don't be afraid of asking help. If you find a person whose experience and achievements are worth of studying try to reach the person and ask for a piece of advice. Very straightforward and very efficient. I did it a couple of times: asked for 15 minutes of conversation to share their secret of success and got 1.5 hours of a very frank talk. A caveat here is don't ask to help you. Ask to share their secrets and then they'll ask about your situation and will be willing to advise. But even if not don't be disappointed. What you need is to found  relationships so in the future you can come back and ask for advice.
• Use good timing. Big guys are busy, their inbox is full, and you should use the one-bullet principle here so good timing is vital. I did it on a conference where I knew we both would be. During a conference it's most likely the mentor will have some time. Again, ask for a chance to learn their experience not to resolve your problem.
• Learn about the mentor. Show that you're interested in learning the mentor's success seriously. Today lots of information is publicly available via a company site or network tools like Linkedin.
• Look everywhere. Find many. One mentor is great but two are better. You're seeking for sources of wisdom - hence the more the merrier! Look for candidates for mentors among executives you don't report directly - then you'll eliminate any potential for seeding a feeling of obligations to you and exclude any ethical problems. Look for mentors in other areas and industries too. A sales or a marketing executive can noticeably widen the horizon of a techie.
• Think about your current and former boss. You don't want to become a "student" of your boss if you just started reporting to her but if you have already continuous relationships you may feel it's harmless to ask your boss for advice, for being your mentor, and being your coach. Great bosses do it gladly. I was happy to work with such great guys and my experience is not exceptional.

As the time goes by we may acquire more and more advisers for different areas of our life. Professional teachers are rare thing and if we want to learn from other's success we should take care of getting mentors seriously. As Keith Ferrazzi writes in his book he even accepted an offer when the CEO of the company agreed to have lunch with him 3 times a year.

Earning mentors is not a simple mission but possible. What is your recipe for getting personal adviser?

Technorati tags: mentor, boss, career

Comments

[kaioti]

your advice is very helpful in finding advisers and possibly advisors, but even these are different.

Further, a mentor is one who adopts you and will guide you through many obstacles. I am unsure if anyone can actively seek a mentor by any means other than being the best they can, and hoping to be noticed by someone who wishes to share deeply with them.

nonetheless, thank you for your guidance.

[Matthew Stibbe (Bad Language)]

Readers might also be interested in a post I wrote in August about how to ask someone to be a mentor. I've mentored several companies and I have been on the receiving end of lots of requests like this, so this may be a useful perspective 'from the other side of the table.'
http://www.badlanguage.net/?p=269

[Denna Jones]

Don't forget to look the other direction - to students. Yes, that might sound counter-productive, but here's an example. Earlier this year I had an MA student in my Retail Forecasting course. We kept in touch post-course and she asked for one-on-one tutorials/guidance. It's unpaid and uses up quite a bit of my time, but I was happy to do so. The "reward"? Turns out she had an internship in the Innovation Unit of Arup, and recommended me to her bosses. They in turn invited me to several invitation-only forecasting events. One recent invitation-only event was at a thinktank in Zurich where I met several key industry professionals. So while this might not fit the strict definition of "mentor", it is another way to develop your industry reationships, plus you'll be helping the next generation and serving as a mentor to the student. Always a good thing!

[Roman Rytov]

Kaioti, you're right. Mentors and advisers are different. Sorry for the fragmented English:-) Ultimately, the is one mentor and may be many advisers but we need luck for fund the mentor. My set of advice refers to advisers most of all and I believe we can actively seek for them. If the chemistry between us is enjoyable (and there is some luck) a few of them can evolve to mentors.

Matthew, no doubt, you ask for a favor and should be ready to get a no answer.

Denna, I commented on Bren's post on the importance of getting yourself to the opposite site of the deal. Becoming a mentor of an a colleague, an employee, or a student has only a positive impact on your knowledge, experience, and image and helps you to realize how the mentor/mentee relationships work.

[Billy Smith]

As a recent college graduate, May 2006, mentoring is almost more valuable, than formal business school education. I have been lucky and have 3 mentors, one who kind of adopted while interning, one at school, and the other is part of the leadership program I am in my new job. I think the key thing for finding a good mentor is finding someone who is willing to invest their time in you. As the mentee Roman hit it right on the head when he said that you have to be interested in what they have to offer. Some of my greatest experiences is being able to listen to the stories that my mentors tell. Personally, I see an advisor as a short-term solution, but an advisor as someone there for the long haul.