11 Ways Mentors Can Help You Succeed – And How To Get Their Help
Most successful women will tell you that mentors made a big difference in their careers. Their mentorship may not always translate into breaking through the glass ceiling, but mentors can help your work performance, help you achieve success in a company and also help you be more fulfilled in your work.
Here are 11 ways a mentor can help you during 4 general stages of your career:
Stage 1: Newbie: Your Mentors Help You Acclimate to a New Job or Work Environment:
1. Find Your Way and Learn the Rules: Bonnie Marcus, author of The Politics of Promotion, says, “The mentor can offer advice on how to best navigate in the new work environment and give information about the people and politics.” A mentor within your company can help you understand corporate expectations—both spoken and unspoken rules. They can point out mistakes if they see you in action. Your mentor can help you feel comfortable operating within that environment.
2. Identify your skill set and anything missing that you need to work on. In my second job out of business school, a mentor suggested I attend trainings in time management and organization, which helped me be more effective in my job.
3. Model what works: Ask your mentors to share their stories of what’s worked in their careers and what hasn’t. Learn from your mentors’ experience. Beth B. Kennedy, a Leadership Coach who has taught many Leaders how to begin a successful mentoring relationship, shares the success of a client whose mentor taught her “excellent delegation and time management strategies” that led to the client’s success and promotion.
Stage 2: Strategic: Your Mentors Help You Plan Where you are Going for a More Successful and Fulfilling Career:
4. Create a Vision: A mentor can help you think about where you want to go in the long run and what can help you get there. This type of mentor can be someone in your workplace, someone in your field, or more of a general business coach, perhaps even someone you hire.
5. Look for Resonance: A mentor or coach can help you assess how well your current environment fits your values, skills and interests. You will be happier with a job and environment that resonates.
6. Help you define success: Long term success is not only about what a company or environment defines as success. Says Amy Beilharz, former corporate executive turned serial entrepreneur and business coach shares that as women, group goals, our relationships and contribution to a larger cause are all important to feeling fulfilled in our careers.
Stage 3: Mobile: Your Mentors Help You At Key Decision Points
7. Solve Problems: You can turn to your mentors for feedback on any challenges you are experiencing, offering possible solutions to problems, as well as general strategies that have worked for them in similar situations.
8. Evaluate Job Offers: You may be offered a job within your own department, another part of your company or even your own company. Sometimes it’s hard to see all the ramifications of taking a particular job—both for short-term fit and also for its long term strategic value. A mentor can help you see all angles and evaluate the fit.
Stage 4: Successful: Your Mentors Help You Get Where You Want to Go:
9. Help You Network: Marcus says mentors can introduce mentees “to potential allies and champions.”
10. Get You Noticed: Beth B. Kennedy, a Leadership Coach who has taught many Leaders how to begin a successful mentoring relationship notes, “A current client of mine learned strategies from her mentor that led to her promotion. Her mentor taught her ways to raise her visibility in an authentic way.
11. Your Mentors Can Serve as Sponsors: Marcus points out that at the upper echelons, it’s not just about mentoring. To get promoted, women need sponsors who are willing to introduce their mentees to the right people and suggest them for promotion.
12. Look Outside Your Company: External mentors in your field can help you look beyond your company for opportunities. They may help you decide what you are looking for, introduce you to contacts of theirs, or even help you get into their own organizations.
Where to Find a Mentor? Cultivate mentors within your company and outside of it. Kennedy offers the possibility of someone “from a different department to add a more systemic and strategic perspective.” Your boss can also be a good mentor, depending on the person.
How to get mentored? Kennedy says that, “The best mentoring relationships take place when they’re not forced mentoring programs. A proactive way to get a mentor is to begin the process in a more unofficial way.”
How?
a) Identify someone who has been successful in your organization or field in a way that resonates with you or that has certain skills and relationships you’d like to emulate.
b) Get to know them. Kennedy suggests you ask for a brief meeting or coffee, nothing fancy.
c) Kennedy says, “Asses the synergy.” What does your gut tell you about the mentor? “Does the possible mentor have the time and energy to mentor?”
d) After a few casual meetings, Kennedy says you can then ask the person if they would be your mentor. “Share your expectations. Some of the best mentoring relationships my clients have shared with me are the relationships that meet once a month and the mentee brings questions and an agenda. The mentee needs to be proactive and discuss their needs.” It’s also a good idea to share articles on mentoring and “other best practices with your mentor.”
e) At some point you want to evaluate the effectiveness. Kennedy suggests an assessment six months or a year down the road. If it’s not working, you can thank your mentor and move on to someone new.
Don’t wait for someone to offer to mentor you. Start to think now about specific ways you want a mentor to help you and list people who might be of help. You can have more than one mentor at a time, too. Ask other women about their mentoring experiences, as well. And if your company has a mentoring program, find out how one gets chosen to participate. No one goes it along in the corporate world. The support of your mentors can be one of the most important determinants in your success.
Guest contribution by Lisa Tener
Lisa Tener is an author, trainer and four-time Stevie Award winner, including the Silver Stevie Award for Mentor/Coach of the Year 2014. Lisa serves on faculty at Harvard Medical School’s CME publishing course and blogs on topics like how to choose a literary agent. You can also find her posts on the Huffington Post. Follow Lisa on twitter @LisaTener and Facebook.
Guest advice and opinions are not necessarily those of theglasshammer.com
