Mentors, valuable career enablers and accelerators

In the days of pre-knowledge economy, mentors were definitely a valuable asset, but maybe they were more of a “nice to have” and having a great mentor was left up to a luck or mere chance. In a today’s knowledge economy where things are moving fast and you have to learn constantly, having a great mentor has become a “must have”. Invest your time and effort to find one.

Recently I read and shared one article on the importance of having a mentor and how much effort one should invest in finding one. In this article however, I would like to expand on it and point out WHY it is important to have a great mentor and I would encourage every young manager or anyone who wants to become one, to make sure they have a mentor early in their career.

In developed and business focused cultures many companies have processes where they assign a mentor to each and every employee and guide the process systematically. Sometimes that works and sometimes it is just a “paper stamp” type of work and young mangers end up being even more frustrated and confused than they were without having such mentor in the first place. Assigning a mentor is not an easy task, as lots of it depends on the “chemistry” between mentor and the protégé and many other “personal” factors.

Hence, do not wait and rely on the company or someone else to find you a mentor, try to find him/her yourself and evaluate the progress of the relationship you have throughout the time. Adjust accordingly. After all it is a relationship and you always have to work on it and invest in it in order to be fruitful and meaningful.

I believe that if you want to have structured and somewhat accelerated path to promotion into healthy and rewarding career, you cannot do it without mentor. Or at least it will be much more difficult if you are on your own.

In case you are still “lazy” to go out there and find a mentor, here are some reasons why you should pick some other areas of your career to be lazy about and get busy looking for a mentor.

Mentor can help you gain insights and knowledge of what exists “our there”
For example, one of the best experiences and thing that accelerated my career was my MBA. But being an engineer focused on technical work mainly in the beginning of my career, I have not even heard of MBA until I was already in my late 20s. In the age when Internet was not as widespread I had no way of knowing that such program (as MBA is) even existed and not to mention what it was about. If I had mentor at the time, I am sure – due to my ambition and things I wanted to do in my career – I am sure I would have been pointed out to consider going for an MBA maybe a bit earlier in my career.

Mentor is a person who has “been there” and might have “already done” things where you maybe want to or not want to go. Mentor is a person who listens and understands you and will be able to point you to the things and career paths you have never heard of or maybe even imagined.

Mentor can teach you…Duh!
I have not put this “tip” on the first place on purpose. Maybe it does represent the most obvious “tip” and maybe the response of most of you is just a good old “Duh…”, but this is not always the case. Sometimes we find (or are assigned) a mentor who is nice and good to us and we have great chats and pleasant conversations, but at the end of the day, we do not learn. Make sure to check yourself on this one as well: are you actually learning anything? Or just having a good time? You can still keep this person as being your mentor, but you have to find one more at least.

Mentor can help you learn the right stuff
A little bit expanded previous tip, but FOCUS is something that matters the most in business. Having no focus can nothing but lead you down and exhaust you. It is not about how much “hours” you put into something, but how focused and efficient those hours are.

Like a teacher in school. Teacher points out what is important for us to know. Imagine you have to look for books and study on your own and find out on your own everything you need to know in order to learn and at the end of the day, pass the exam. That would be extremely inefficient and difficult. Teachers point you in the right direction and show you how to learn. It is similar with a mentor at work. Mentor should point you in the direction where important information can be found and what areas of job you should focus on in order to learn quicker and better and hence get promoted faster.

Mentor can show you the “internal non-written rules and customs”
Every company and even every team is specific. All cultures have some sorts of un-written rules that are – by definition – difficult to learn and find out, just because they are not written. Nevertheless they can be extremely helpful. Of course, your colleagues and your bosses are the ones who can teach you those… but they may not be very likely to do so, as they can sometimes benefit from you not knowing all of those rules and customs. This is the perfect area for your mentor to teach you. Mentor is by definition someone who will also benefit from you getting ahead and being promoted.

Note on skewed role (or vision) of a mentor: nepotism
In some cultures and companies the role of mentor is sometimes completely misunderstood. Some people see mentor as someone who will “push” you forward not matter reason just in order to benefit you and her/himself. But mentor is not someone who will in any way do anything that will harm the organization or yourself in the long run. Mentor is not someone who will “push” you forward no matter reason.

Mentor is someone who will enable you to push yourself forward. The best litmus test whether you had a good mentor (admittedly retroactive) is whether your skills and “powers” stayed with you even when your mentor left the company. Mentor left and you still stayed respected and valuable to the organization – that is the case when you had a good mentor. If your mentor was pushing you due to some unjustified favoritism or worse, nepotism, than that was not your mentor and you probably were done more harm than good.

Conclusion
So… go out there and find a mentor that will teach you, help you, encourage you to do great things and that will teach you values that will stay with you throughout your career and continue to push you forward even when your mentor is gone or you have outgrown her/him.