How to Find a Career Mentor

Some of the most successful people in business today have accredited their sharp rise in success to having a mentor.

In fact, most of the world’s billionaires have mentors. They’re not for people at the beginning of their career. Or for people who are struggling.

Having a mentor who has walked a similar path could make a massive difference to your life and career.

Don’t believe me?

Steve Jobs mentored Mark Zuckerberg.

Christian Dior mentored Yves Saint-Laurent.

Warren Buffett mentored Bill Gates.

Steven Spielberg mentored J.J. Abrams.

Sir Freddie Laker mentored Richard Branson.

Virtually everyone you can think of who’s achieved unparalleled success has had the benefit of a fantastic mentor.

This is a sentiment echoed by Branson too, “If you ask any successful business person, they will always have had a great mentor at some point along the road.”

Oprah has a mentor. Nelson Mandela had a mentor. And even Aristotle, one of the greatest minds in the history of human intelligence, was mentored by Plato, who was mentored by Socrates.

If three of the greatest minds ever were convinced of the benefits of mentoring, there’s every chance you might find one useful yourself.

How can a mentor help me?

To put it simply, there’s about a hundred different ways a mentor might help you. Whether you’re a KDB Developer, a Quant Analyst or in UX.

The degrees to which a mentor might help are not only endless, but differ depending on who they are, where their experience lies and the relationship you have.

There’s also a difference in those mentors where the relationship’s defined, and those you lean on infrequently and ad hoc.

A defined mentor is someone you have regular catch ups with. Someone where the relationship is earmarked as mentor and mentee. The mentor knows their job and offers advice.

An ad hoc mentorship involves someone you might look up to informally. They might not know they’re even a mentor of yours. Rather, they’re someone you ask for help on occasion.

For both though, the benefit is, you know they have skin in the game and their advice is well worth heeding. You’re not asking a stranger, but someone you know well. Their advice is formed from experience. Not a best guess.

Today’s article is about formalised mentors. Those people you can approach and ask for constant advice and guidance.

I’ll give you advice on finding one, approaching one, and managing the relationship.

Let’s get into it.

The power of the network

One of the hardest parts of finding a successful mentor is earmarking them to begin with. It’s almost impossible to appreciate the benefits of a mentorship if the only people you engage with professionally are in your own company.

The best way to earmark a potential mentor?

Network, network, network.

In person. In real life.

Amazingly, 61% of people with a mentor say their relationship developed naturally.

And the average length of relationship up to this point is 3.3 years.

Of course there’s plenty of people you can find on LinkedIn. But it’s a long game to take digital relationships into the physical world. If you’re trying to build rapport, there’s very little substitute for meeting people.

That means you’ll have to potentially go outside your comfort zone. You’ll have to attend meetups. Drinks. Coffee mornings. Conferences. Seminars. Industry events.

But the potential benefits are huge.

“Mentoring is the missing link between a promising business person and successful business person” - Richard Branson.

Now obviously, the networking part of this tale is almost already done for someone like Richard Branson. But you’d be surprised at how he got some crucial advice along the way.

"When we were starting up our first Virgin businesses, we’d simply find someone who was already running a business in the industry and ask if they’d spare some time to give us advice.”

“It really was that simple.”

And so, finding a mentor is made much easier when you approach relationship building under the premise of finding one.

And normally, people are incredibly flattered by questions about their own success.

Soul searching

Did you know, 76% of people believe having a mentor’s important, but only 37% of people have one?

That gap maybe due to the fact there’s no right way for a mentor to help you. The strength of the relationship when you find one will be defined by the person’s background.

People have mentors for incredibly different reasons. Some might be career driven. Others revolve around particular skills. Some might be personal, or bordering on life coaching. You might even have them for personal pursuits, outside of work.

The best way to make sure you’re maximising the potential of yours is to look inward.

Is there a specific problem you’re facing?

Is there one skill you’re hoping to brush up on?

Is there an area of the industry you’re hoping to learn the ways of?

Is your career growth being stifled?

Once you’ve done a bit of soul searching, you’ll be better equipped to find someone who can help you reach the next step. Whatever area of your life that’s in.

Once you’ve done the groundwork, and highlighted a potential mentor, the next part’s the easy bit. But perhaps the most daunting.

Ask them

I understand if there’s a touch of trepidation in asking for a mentor. But it needn’t be a conversation that makes you feel awkward. Rather, the next step in your relationship after initially asking their advice and getting to know them.

But that last bit’s very important. It’s likely if you ask a stranger out of the blue to give up their time on a regular basis they’ll say “thanks, but no thanks.”

Compare that with asking a friend and you’ll be much more likely to get a favourable response. After all, you’re asking this person to invest their time in you and your career.

But after you’ve built a relationship, just ask them out right if they’d be willing to chat more regularly.

“Would you be open to having a regular chat about this, so I can learn all I can?”

Or…

“I’m looking for a more formal mentor at the moment, and wondered whether you’d be open to it?”

As you’ll have already assessed the areas you want them to give advice on, make your request specific too. Be it your career, job interviews, life coaching, personal or sporting goals, the more information you give, the better you frame the relationship.

And the more framed it is, the more useful it’ll be for you and them.

It makes the advice easier to give and digest, but also helps the feedback loop.

A mentorship’s a two-way street. You get advice and quicker routes to success. They get pride, reward and personal satisfaction.

You’ll be surprised how many people will be flattered and say yes. And once you’ve made this step, there’s some housekeeping to take care of too.

Keeping it sweet

Typically a mentor’s not helping you for financial reward. The reward they receive will be the satisfaction of their advice helping you.

So keep them up to date. Give them feedback. Tell them what you tried and whether it worked. And from time to time, ask if they need any help too.

OK, you might be using them for their vastly superior experience, but that doesn’t mean you might not be of use to them in some way.

In an ideal world, you’ll both grow together as the relationship matures.