Mentors: Guides along the Path

Have you ever gone to lunch with someone to a place you’ve never been, but your car was parked closer so you volunteered to drive? The other person rides with you and gives you directions as you’re driving. In the middle of the conversation, you may hear “Turn right up at the next light.” or “It’s a little further down this road on the left.” You return to your conversation for a few minutes and then, “See it right up there? It’s the brown building with the red roof.”

If you think back a few years, you remember that people used to give directions frequently. If new friends were visiting your house for the first time, you would write out directions for them to get there. If you were meeting someone in a new place you would give them directions before they left. Maybe if you were holding a meeting with several people you might type out those directions and hand out multiple copies, but usually the directions were handwritten from one person to another. While you’re driving and reading the directions you could almost hear your friend’s voice as you read the directions that had been given to you.

I remember one time early in my Navy career, my parents came to visit me. I wrote out directions all the way from their house in Mississippi to my house in Norfolk, Virginia. We had no email at the time, so I wrote out the directions by hand and mailed them to my parents. Before they even left home, I gave them directions for driving almost 1000 miles to get to my house, where they had never been before.

As one of them was driving, the other read the directions. They could both look for the next turn. It was almost as if I were in the car with them, showing them the way to a place they had never been, but I had already traveled.

A mentor is much like that. A mentor is simply someone who is further down the road than the mentee is and is willing to help show the way. Just as those written directions to a New Place helps someone navigate an unfamiliar road, discussion with a mentor can help you navigate along your path or situation in life or in your career.

If you had directions from two different people, they may have given you different directions to reach the same destination. Perhaps one person prefers the directness of taking the interstate. The other person, on the other hand, has experienced heavy traffic which took extra time. That person may give you directions which avoid the interstate so that you do not run into that traffic. At first glance, these directions seem very different. Yet they both lead to the same destination. They are different, yet both are valuable.

In the same way, if you have two different mentors, they speak from a different set of experiences. They may advise you differently. Ultimately, you must decide whose advice, if either, you will follow. You obviously cannot go in two different directions at the same time. Sooner or later you will have to decide your own direction.

This does not mean, however, that the advice you were given is not valuable. Even though you may choose to follow a different path, learning from both people who have already traveled through that situation is still useful.

Today people use GPS to help find destinations along the road. This does not mean that GPS has become our mentor, though. The GPS has never traveled down the path. It is a professional service which can give us a broad range of information about the roadways between two points but it has not actually traveled along that path. While not a perfect analogy, this is more like a professional coach than a mentor. The coach has most likely never been in your position or even if your industry. The coach has, however, very specific training and skills that can be used to help you see in yourself that which you cannot see without outside help. This level of assistance can transcend industry or position and can be very valuable no matter what your career path.

A mentor may be skilled at some aspects coaching, but a mentor is not a coach. Likewise a coach is not a mentor. Typically a mentor will tell you specific answers based on his or her experience in a particular position, industry, or career path. On the other hand, a coach should not give you advice, but the coach will instead ask you questions carefully crafted to help you find the answer within yourself.

Don’t go it alone

You know a lot about your current job. It is what you do every day, so it is very familiar to you. You have probably been in this career for a few years, maybe for a couple of decades or longer, so you know what you need to do to move ahead. If you are now transitioning out of the military and looking to start a civilian career, you know much less about that new career field. Even with all your reading and research, your knowledge of the field cannot even approach that of someone who is living it day in and day out.

You would have a hard time finding your destination in an unfamiliar city if you only had an address and no directions or road map or GPS, right? The same is true for finding your way to the new career destination. You need to learn from other people who have already done it. This includes both people who have already made the transition from military to civilian and people who are in the career field and industry you want to join, whether they are veterans or not.

“My greatest leadership challenge is leading me!” 

John C. Maxwell

That Maxwell quote is probably true of most, if not all, of us. We need mentors and cannot grow to our full potential without guidance and coaching of a mentor. A good mentor must be available, a good example, possess wisdom, have proven experience, and have a desire to make a difference in people’s lives (Maxwell 210-223). Good mentors help us find the way to places where they have already been but where we have not yet.

Specific mentors for specific purposes

Different mentors are needed for different areas of needed growth in life. Referring back to my driving directions analogy, not every person has been to every destination. A person can only give you driving directions to a place where that person has already been. The same is true for a mentor. You will need multiple mentors for different purposes. 

When you know which career field and industry you want to enter, you need to find a mentor or mentors from whom you can learn more specifics about that job. They should be able to teach you some industry-specific knowledge which will help you understand that job and better prepare you for the job search. They can also help you learn where such jobs are available, specific conditions of that type job, maybe introduce you to common acronyms and other language that will help you to position yourself as someone who knows how to do that job. 

If you are not yet sure which way you want to go, you need to engage potential mentors in every career area you are considering. From them, you can learn more that will help you to narrow down your search. Sometimes a career field may sound very interesting, but as you learn more about it, you discover that it is not for you at all. 

My son went to college very excited about becoming a nurse. He had been talking about it for a while and was thrilled to learn that he had been accepted into the nursing school at his college. Before the end of the first semester, though, he was looking for a new major. As he got into those classes and started to learn deeper details of what the career actually required, he quickly found that it was not the path for him.

This is ok. In order to be fulfilled and to be truly successful, you have to find the right career. Find something that that you can be passionate about or at least happy about! If you are miserable every day at work, you will bring that home and your family will suffer. Every aspect of your life depends upon making a career choice that is suitable for you. The career doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should fit you. You also need to keep in mind that you can change jobs again if you need to but try to find some good mentors to help you find the path to the right choice early if at all possible.

Asking people in the career field you are interested in to do informational interviews is a great way to start figuring out whether this career is something you will enjoy or not. Being a mentor for someone is a significant investment of time, energy, and yourself in someone else, so you can’t expect everyone who agrees to do an informational interview to become a mentor. But some of the them will. A part of a great mentoring relationship is finding someone you really connect with and some people just click together.  Those will frequently be happy to start the mentoring relationship.

In addition to mentors for helping you learn about potential career fields, when you are transitioning from the military into a civilian career, you need help with that transition from others who have already done it and can help you avoid common pitfalls. There are many things along the way that you would never think of, but those who have already been there can alert you to. Other veterans who have already traveled down the transition path will be needed to guide you through that process specifically.

There are certainly other times you will need mentors to help you through specific phases in life. If you choose to start a business, you need to talk to someone who has started a business. If you are really retiring, you will find it very helpful to talk to others about how to engage with social security, medicare, and other programs. If you are dealing with a specific medical problem, talking to someone who has been through that same problem can be very helpful. There are many other examples.

What to look for in a mentor

While there are many people out there with knowledge to share, and many of them would want to be mentors, that doesn’t mean that just any of them would be a good choice as your mentor. There are some specific qualities and characteristics of a mentor that you should look for in order to get the most value out of the mentoring relationship.

The mentor should be on the same path that you are on, but farther down that path. If you are looking for career mentoring, the mentor should be in the same career field as you. If you need help through the military career transition process, the mentor should have already gone through that transition. If you are looking for guidance on becoming a drummer in a rock band, you mentor should already be a drummer in a rock band.

The mentor should have the same type of goals as you. If you aspire to be a vice president, but your mentor is happy retiring as a senior manager as long as he never has to relocate, then his career choices will be very different from yours. His career goals are different from yours. And the career advice you get may not help you to reach your goals.

The mentor must be someone you are able to relate to. You should feel very comfortable talking to this person. If you want to get the most out of the mentoring relationship, you will need to ask completely transparent questions and share your fears and concerns. You will have to be very open about your weaknesses if you want to overcome them. The mentor must be someone you can talk openly with, share these issues, and trust them with that information. You should be able to confide in you mentor. Mentoring must be a relationship (Maxwell 13-14).

You mentor must be someone who is already successful at the thing that you want to do. If your mentor is mediocre at their career, they can teach you how to be mediocre too. There is an old saying, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” But in reality, it is difficult to teach someone to do something that they cannot do themselves. If someone is not successful, they do not know the steps required to be successful, so you will not learn what you need to do to be successful.

Where to find mentors

There is an old saying, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” When you are truly ready to grow, mentors have a way of just showing up in your life. Here are a few places you may find them:

1.      Veterati is an organization which brings together thousands of service member, veteran, and military spouse mentors and mentees. The site provides the contact and scheduling to set up one-hour mentoring sessions where you can choose as many mentors as you like and set up mentoring sessions with them according to the available time schedule that they have uploaded onto the site. The average mentee chooses about four mentors. Mentors share advice from their personal experience, can help you hone your jobseeking skills to become a better applicant, and can often introduce you to job opportunities.

2.      American Corporate Partners (ACP) is another non-profit which provides mentors to military members, veterans, and active duty spouses. It differs from Veterati in that ACP pairs each mentee (which they call protégé) with a mentor from a Fortune 500 company. The program is free but there is a one-year commitment to participate. Each mentor and protégé are expected to meet at least monthly. Mentors typically provide resume review, interviewing practice, career exploration and advancement advice, networking, and leadership development.

3.      LinkedIn, as the premier online business networking platform, is a great place to find mentors. As you become active on LinkedIn and build your network, you will find that you form closer relationships with some of the people you meet there. Many will be willing to answer questions and those interactions can grow into mentor/mentee relationships. There are also a number of veteran-specific LinkedIn groups which are more focused and are a great way to find potential mentors.

4.      Probably the best way to learn more about any given career path is through informational interviews, which will be discussed in more detail in conjunction with figuring out what you want to do. When you schedule an information interview with a business leader in some career path that interests you, they will usually be very happy to share information with you that will help you narrow down the career you want to pursue, but don’t expect each one to become a mentor. However, as you continue to do more of these interviews and follow up with interviewees, you will find that mentor/mentee relationships will develop from some.

When you are searching for a mentor, you need to keep your aperture open to all possible sources. Keep in mind former managers, alumni from your schools, professional organizations and associations, volunteer groups and civic organizations, teachers, family, friends, and neighbors (Blanchard and Diaz-Ortiz 13).  Even if you do not find a mentor among any of these sources, they very well may know someone who could be the mentor you are looking for.

Meeting a mentor and forming the relationship

When you first meet with the potential mentor, you should focus on the personal before the professional. In order for the relationship to thrive and for you to get the most value out of it, you need to “click” with the mentor. You should go in with a list of qualities and key values that are important to you and see if you are both a good personality match for each other before delving deeply into the professional aspects (Blanchard and Diaz-Ortiz 37). Also, regardless of whether you choose to engage in a mentoring relationship or not, be courteous and thank the potential for their time and willingness to meet and talk with you.

When you have decided that this is the person you want to pursue the mentor-mentee relationship with, you need to establish some ground rules for your future meetings early on. Begin to build the foundation of the relationship by deciding together what you will expect from one another. Determine how often you will meet and by what means and how often you will communicate (Blanchard and Diaz-Ortiz 53).

Working with a mentor

The mentee has responsibility for the learning. Even though the mentor is there to help and the relationship is a collaboration between the two, the mentor cannot force the mentee to grow and should not really drive the agenda. If the mentee doesn’t truly take ownership of his or her own growth, not much will come of the mentoring relationship (Starr 186).

Each time you meet with your mentor, you should prepare ahead of time by putting together a list of questions you would like to have answered. If you have discussed in a previous session that you would do some type of homework between sessions, ensure that you have done it and show up ready to discuss the outcome. You should create an agenda and provide it to the mentor ahead of time so the he or she knows what to expect and has time to prepare.

Wrap up

You never outgrow the need for a mentor. It would be extremely rare to find an area of life, or a career, or a situation you might find yourself in, in which someone else hasn’t already been there and completed that or at least is farther along than you are. Regardless of whether you are starting a career fresh out of school or learning how to retire or facing a serious medical condition, you will always have questions and can better navigate through the situation with the help of someone who has already been through that experience. 

Our topic at hand is transitioning out of the military and into a civilian career and this is a life situation where having multiple mentors is invaluable. This is one of those situations where a mentor is needed for a finite time and task. After you are settled into a new career, you will need the mentor less and less. You will then be in a position to become the mentor for others starting this phase of their journey.

When the transition is more or less over, though, you do not outgrow your need for mentors. There will be any number of challenges in your new civilian career and life where you can benefit from a mentor or multiple mentors. Leadership is a lifelong learning process! 

Notes:

1.      Maxwell, J.C. The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, Center Street, 2012, pp. 210-223.

2.      Maxwell, John. Mentoring 101, HarperCollins Leadership, 2008, pp. 13-14).

3.      Blanchard, Ken and Claire Diaz-Ortiz. One Minute Mentoring, William Morrow, 2017, pp. 13-53.

4.      Starr, Julie. The Mentoring Manual, FT Press, 2014, p. 186.