The Search for a Mentor, Pt. 1
We’re in February, and by now, most of us have abandoned our New Year’s Resolutions to read more books, watch less Netflix, and find our way back to the home gyms we curated during lockdown.
I didn’t even bother promising myself I’d read more books. Law school and over a decade of lawyering ruined reading for me altogether. I’m all about the Blogs and Audio Books now; talk to me, read to me. Hopefully, something sinks in. I definitely am not watching less Netflix, but I’m blaming that on Daylight Savings Time and the unseasonably cold weather that’s kept me housebound, more or less, on the evenings and weekends. The gym one isn’t going as badly as the other two. Actually, I’ve managed to work out 5 days a week for the last month. (It’s still dusty in the gym, but that’s because we just redid the stairs, and all the sanding left a thin layer of it on everything).
My New Year’s (non)resolution was to find a professional mentor. I haven’t really had one. Maybe in my very early lawyer days, some kind, more experienced attorneys offered some sage advice, but nothing was ever formalized. No matching mentor/mentee tattoos or anything.
Fast forward a few years, and as a 51 year-old working in her third (and final) career, I think having a mentor would be helpful. 97% of professionals with mentors find the relationship valuable. You rarely see stats like that. America’s favorite candy is the Reese’s Peanut Butter cup, but only 77% of us agree that they’re the best. I know so many amazing humans who I consider successful at work and in life. Is it as easy as just asking one of them to share their amazingness with me?
Searching for a mentor doesn’t have to be as challenging as sticking to that New Year’s resolution to stop drinking wine or start training for a triathlon (these are not, and never have been, on my list of resolutions). And like most things in our modern world, there’s an app for that.
No really.
I did a quick search on “How to find a mentor,” and Google returned 329,000,000 results, and there are apps galore for the same topic. And it has its own month, too. January is National Mentoring Month, and that’s been a thing since 2002. I guess I’m a month behind to start my search, but I was busy trying to keep those other resolutions.
Finding a mentor is a common goal; not surprised. And there’s a whole vocabulary around mentorship involving SMART goals, sponsors vs. mentors, elevator pitches, and informational interviews. Looks like I have to do some reading after all.
Define your short-term and long-term career goals. We just can’t get away from goal-setting. And you have to choose SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). It’s not enough to say “I want to look less jiggly in my swimsuit when I go to Belize.” I must instead say, “I will exercise 20 minutes a day, 5 days a week” and “I will stop earning Frequent Flyer miles from my DoorDash account and only order in once a week.”
With a quest to find a mentor, you can’t decide who to target as a mentor until you decide what you’d like accomplish professionally in the next few months or year or 5 years. Most of us have some type of metric designed to measure our success or highlight opportunities for improvement, and those are usually evaluated in time chunks—months, quarters, years. But your goals might not be something that can measured by a formula in an Excel worksheet.
Do you want to learn more about your industry? Would you like to attend more conferences? How about speaking at one of them, or maybe getting on the podcast circuit? Maybe your goals relate to continuing your education, opening a business, earning a promotion, taking on a leadership role. Do you want to serve on a nonprofit board, spend more time volunteering for a cause you’re passionate about? Perhaps finding a career that allows you more time with your family is high on your list.
There are even more career goal possibilities than the 329,000,000 million results in Google for “How to find a mentor.” But you have to pick a few specific, achievable goals that are relevant to you, measurable by some means, and that can be achieved in a certain time period. With your goals defined, it should be easier to visualize what help, guidance, support, or inspiration you need from a mentor.
Make a list of people you respect in your organization or in your industry. A mentor does not need to be working for the same company you do, or in the same industry you work in. But it’s a logical place to start when searching the universe of potential mentors feels overwhelming. One of my partners has a unique way of measuring his stress levels on a Whelm Scale. He likes to be at the bubbling point just beneath overwhelmed so he doesn’t pull his hair out, but far enough above underwhelmed to be challenged and fulfilled.
Let’s stay in whelmed in this process, then. Jot down a list of people you respect who have some knowledge or expertise or connections that may help you accomplish one or more of the goals you set for your career. That part should not be tough.
Will you be my mentor? I grew up a military brat, moving every three years to a new Army post, starting over with friends and schools. It was never easy to pack up my room and move on to the next new place as an only child. I learned quickly that it was up to me to find new friends, and I usually set out to do it as soon as I got my new room unpacked. I would go door-to-door in my new neighborhood and knock on doors, looking for kids my age. If a grown-up answered, I asked them, “do you have any kids my age?” and if the answer was yes, I asked to meet them. If a kid my age answered the door, I led off with “Will you be my friend?” Looking back, I’m sure that little kid got teased plenty, hopefully more behind her back than to her face, but I have to give it to her. She was fearless.
As an adult, knocking on a proverbial door and asking someone to be my mentor seems a little tougher than scouring my new neighborhood for friends when I was 9, especially because I had a very cool collection of Strawberry Shortcake dolls. And it does require a bit more than fun toys that smell like fruit and proximity to my own house as a qualification, but assuming you’ve set your goals and made your lists, the next step is to pick up the phone and make the “will you be my mentor?” call.
I coach job-seekers regularly who are unsure about reaching out to acquaintances or strangers to learn more about the company they work for or the role they’re in. “What would you do if someone you didn’t know, or didn’t know well, asked you what you love about your company or your job?” Most of them would gladly respond without a second thought. People generally like to help other people. When you think about having that first conversation with someone you’d love to have as a mentor, imagine how you’d feel if you received the same call.
They may not have the time to devote to a mentor relationship, but I have yet to have anyone report back to me that someone was anything other than flattered to be asked.
The message is important, certainly. They’re busy, undoubtedly. Don’t waste their time. But be yourself. You don’t need to think of the type of Elevator Pitch you’d hear on “Wolf of Wall Street,” but you do need to communicate clearly and concisely:
· why you’re interested in them as your mentor,
· what you envision the relationship will look like, and
· what you’re willing to commit to as a mentee.
Give them time to think about it, and depending on where you both live, meet up in person for a meal or virtually for a call, to iron out the details. While your mentor may be, or may become, your friend, you still have goals to accomplish, and you need to be intentional about that.
I’m off to put my goals together, and make my list of possible mentors, and get my elevator pitch ready. I’ll report back in my next installment of this blog how all of that went for me, and I’ll share some tips on how to be a good mentee.