by Liz O’Donnell (Boston) and Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

At The Glass Hammer we’ve reported extensively on the comparatively low number of women in executive positions in the Fortune 1000. Gender bias and sex discrimination are two oft-cited reasons for this. More training, better work/life programs, and access to mentoring are suggested as some of the ways in which to ensure the retention and advancement of women. However, if women look exclusively to other women as mentors, a lack of women at the top means women may not be able to find suitable mentors who can help them develop and move up the corporate ladder. Luckily, having a female mentor isn’t necessary all of the time.

The best mentors are problem or stage-specific meaning they can help you at certain stages of your career. It makes sense. After all, the same CEO who successfully launches a company may not be the best choice for CEO to lead an acquisition. Just as different stages of a company require different types of leadership, so do different stages of a career require different types of guidance and coaching.

Certainly, if you are a woman returning to work after a maternity leave looking for advice on continuing to nurse while working, or you seek advice on handling sexual discrimination on the job, a female mentor is your best, and probably only, option. But if your needs are specific to landing the next promotion, negotiating a deal or working overseas, gender doesn’t matter as much. You should seek out a mentor who can provide the best coaching and connections for the specific issue.

And often, the best woman for the job, is a man. “In engineering,[when I was coming up] it is only 20% women so it was mostly men and at that point there were not as many women leaders as we have today. So really most of my mentors/leaders who helped me navigate were men,” said Grace Leiblein, President de GM Mexico in a recent interview with The Glass Hammer.

Linda Swindling, JD, CSP and Chair at Vistage, a Dallas-based organization that provides executive coaching, has been mentored by men her entire career. She started her mentoring as a law student and recipient of several scholarships, and then continued as partner in her own firm. She chose different mentors along the way, depending on what her career challenges were at the time. When she began serving on boards and then writing books, she sought out male mentors who could help her with those roles too.

“There is little way that I could have figured it out on my own,” says Swindling. “Most women I knew at the time hadn’t achieved the level of success these men had.”

Swindling says the men who coached her had several things in common. “First, they spoke frankly and gave feedback. Second, you always felt like they were in your corner, whether taking the time to sit down and explain things or promoting you to people who could help you. Third, never once have I been questioned about my wanting to be a mom and wife as well as a professional. Fourth, many of them had working wives or daughters who they could envision facing the same challenges.”

Fathers of daughters, says Swindling, are some of the best mentors when it comes to dealing with work life balance and being a working woman. “These men are laying the groundwork for their daughters,” she says. Their advice would often come from real life experience. “My daughter and I have been thinking about this, they would tell me.”

No matter what stage of your career you are in, or what your current workplace challenge is, Swindling says the best way to work with a mentor is to ask specific questions. “Don’t call them and ask, ‘Can I be your mentor’,” Swindling says. “That makes it seem like you’re Velcro and it scares them.” Instead she says ask things like how can I run my group better, what products would you focus on right now, and what questions should I be thinking about in this deal?

Lilly Chung, Partner at Deloitte LLC in San Francisco agrees. Over the course of her 25-year career, Chung says that she never had anything but male mentors. She attributes this to the time she was coming up the ladder as well as the industries in which she worked. “When I graduated in the early 80’s, there weren’t that many women in [in the industry]. And then after business school, the whole consulting space was all male… What I have found is that the reason I could become a partner in all of that is because I have white male mentors who absolutely believe in me. But I found the first thing is that you can’t ask for [them to be mentors]. I always put my head down and prove myself – do the job better than it has ever been done before and always surprise them.”

Mentors, says Swindling, don’t want to take responsibility for your life. But they’ll be happy to help you close a deal. “People are surprisingly willing to help you.”