A mentor is someone further along than you who will tell you the truth about your work. Almost everyone who has had one describes it as one of the most useful things that happened to their career, and almost nobody is taught how to find one. The good news is that the process is far less formal, and far less presumptuous, than most people imagine.
What a Mentor Actually Does
- Tells you what nobody else will — that your presentations run long, that the role you are chasing is a dead end, that you are underselling yourself.
- Explains how things actually work in an industry or organization, as opposed to how the handbook says they work.
- Has seen your problem before and can shorten the time you spend on it.
- Opens doors — sometimes. This is a byproduct, not the point, and treating it as the point is the fastest way to lose a mentor.
A mentor is not a therapist, a job-placement service, or a substitute for doing the work.
Where to Look
- One or two levels ahead, not twenty. Someone five years further along remembers the problem you are having. A chief executive does not.
- Inside your organization — often someone in a different department, since your own manager has a different role and a conflict of interest when it comes to your leaving.
- Professional associations, which is much of what they are for. Many run formal mentoring programs.
- Alumni networks, where the shared institution gives a stranger a reason to say yes.
- Former managers and colleagues you got on with. The relationship already exists.
- Formal programs — SCORE offers free mentoring to small business owners, and many industries and community organizations run their own.
How to Ask
Do not open with “will you be my mentor?” It is a large, vague request that asks someone to commit to something undefined, and the polite answer to it is usually no.
Ask instead for one specific, small thing: twenty minutes to ask about how they got into the field, or their view on a decision you are weighing. Be specific about why you asked them. Then, if the conversation goes well, ask whether you could come back occasionally with a question. Most real mentoring relationships form this way — incrementally, and often without either party ever using the word.
Being Worth Mentoring
- Come with a question, not with “any advice?” Vague requests get vague answers and quietly end the relationship.
- Act on what you are told, and report back what happened. Nothing keeps a mentor engaged like evidence that the advice mattered.
- Respect the clock. Ask for 20 minutes and end at 20 minutes.
- Do not ask them to get you a job. If they want to, they will offer.
- Be useful in return where you can — younger colleagues frequently know things their mentors do not.
You Need More Than One
The idea of a single wise guide is mostly a story. In practice people are better served by several partial mentors: one who knows the technical work, one who understands the politics of the organization, one outside your industry entirely who can tell you when you have lost perspective.
You can also learn a great deal from people you will never meet, through what they have written — but a book cannot look at your specific situation and tell you that you are wrong, which is the part that matters most.
Being the Mentor
At some point you will be the more experienced person, and mentoring well is a skill rather than a personality trait.
- Ask more than you tell. The person usually knows the answer and needs help trusting it.
- Be specific and be honest. Comfortable vagueness helps nobody, and the whole value of the relationship is that you will say the thing their colleagues will not.
- Share the failures, which teach more than the successes and are far more reassuring.
- Set a boundary you can keep — a half hour a month you actually honor beats an open door you resent.
- Do not clone yourself. Your path was shaped by circumstances that no longer exist.
Mentoring is also one of the most effective management tools available — see how to manage and motivate employees and leadership basics for new managers.