How do you find a mentor?
Great question, and think I'm going to dress this by cutting this question up into about four parts.
About Mentorship: what is the purpose what what is mentorship
How to find/ask first meeting/session: started the mentorship
Manage relationship: so some tips I have her folks in regards to managing that type of relationship
Gratitude: thinking of ways that you can support the person you're asking to Mentor
Mentorship
Mentorship doesn't have to be this formal relationship, that is portrayed in the media– where there is the mentor and the mentee with very strict rules and that relationship spans over time. I like to think of this kind of like any other relationship– there's different forms of mentorship. A way I like to see mentorship is identifying the gaps of skills or knowledge that you might have and try to identify who has those skills or knowledge that could potentially share that with you. It is something that is usually driven by the mentee and I think that's again another thing that gets misconstrued, people believe that mentors should be identifying you and be like “I will Mentor you” – doesn’t really happen in the real world. It's driven by the mentee and you need to figure out who you want to talk to and reach out to. I want to go over a couple of different types of mentorship and this is from one of the blog sources, I’ll be sourcing at the end of the blog, so if you want more details you could definitely go to it. When it comes to a mentorship relationship it doesn't have to necessarily be a senior person and a junior person. There are peer mentorships which means that you could be mentoring somebody who is in a similar job level, could just be identifying that your coworker might have a different skill-set than you do and being able to help one another out: peer mentorships. There's also, something I find really fun that has happened to me before, there's a reverse mentorship – where the person who is the “mentee” is someone who's in the senior role and I was in a junior. A lot of that relationship was just trying to communicate how a new generation interacts with work and how to approach Millennials. That was, of course, many years ago when I had that type of relationship. There's also tons of other different ones different types of relationships; just want to give you a few that are not as common. I also want to pull a part that idea of mentorship and sponsorship. Somebody who is sponsor is someone within the organization that could speak on behalf of you. A sponsor has a different role than in Mentor; mentorship is sitting down exchanged ideas, bouncing ideas off, learning, but a sponsor somebody who within the work setting will advocate for you. So that is a different type of relationship. Those are a couple things when it comes to a mentorship I just wanted to highlight.
How to find/ask first meeting/session
Now ways in which you can find a mentor. The most common way would be to find somebody within your own company or within your organization because they'll have the most context of what you're working on but you don't have to limit yourself to that. You can even find folks outside of your company, outside of your even your industry as well as someone who could be your mentor. That could be found through LinkedIn, you can go to tech community groups as well – or whatever industry you're in – go to the community groups and find individuals who have knowledge or skill sets that you don't have. The way that you can start the relationship is just like asking for an informational interview. You can just ask the person “hey, can I get half an hour of your time, would love to chat with you about XYZ” and be specific on what you're asking. I've had a good handful of people asking me if I could be their mentor and I’m like “Yeah, but about what?” and they respond with “All of it?” That's a lot to ask of someone. But if someone comes up to me like “I'm looking on how to get my first job” or “I'm looking at within this specific thing” it's a lot easier for me to go “Yeah, sure, I would love to talk to you about that.” Definitely as the person looking for mentorship it is on you to go out and ask and be as specific as possible. That way it gives the context to the person you are asking for help and knowledge.
Manage relationship
Now when it comes to managing the relationship, this is something I tend to be very explicit with folks who are asking me for support, but I think this applies to everyone – as the mentee, you are the driver of the relationship, you should be the one who is managing setting up time, figuring out agendas items/what you want to talk about and giving that to your Mentor in advance; that's always nice. I know I love it when someone sends me an email with “I want to talk about this thing in our next session,” that way when I go in I already have thought about what to talk about or how to explain it to this particular person. Also, you’ll want to make it as easy as possible for your Mentor, so again your scheduling the times, you're making the agenda is your kind of driving it. That way your Mentor just has to worry about gathering the knowledge and sharing that with you. Another item is to over-communicate, it doesn't hurt to send the email before your meeting with them with a “heads up, this is why I want to talk to you about.” Again this is all about you making it easier for the mentor to support you.
Gratitude
Finally I just want to end this with gratitude – that's the term I saw in some of the blogs – but really it's acknowledgment and connecting your mentor to other opportunities. You're going to be meeting with the person who you've asked for support and something I'd like to recommend is if you find articles or resources or another person that you know is within the interest of your Mentor, connect them. Because that is part of mentorship, is that connection portion of it. Don't assume that because you found an article that your Mentor will know about it, send that over to them, send them about the events that you think that they might be interested as well. Be able to connect them back into different community groups that your part or the different space that your in. Of course because these relationships are not one directional, feel free to share your own insights of what you've learned or other people that potentially your Mentor might be interested in meeting too. I know when you're first starting off working in your career you might not have as many resources but still I think it's always helpful to try to be as supportive to your Mentor as well.
Something else I want to highlight is mentorships don't have to be a long-term relationship. It could be something that is just one session and that's okay. It can be where you just meet with them once so you can confirm that you are “going in the right direction.” So really mentorship could be something that could be short one session, could be multi-year, is it could just for a quarter, for a year. Again I would highly recommend to think of it as any other relationship, it takes time and energy and you as the mentee are the driver of it. So it's really up to you to maximize this time for you and your Mentor.
Resources
