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Three Steps to Getting a Kickass Mentor: Unfiltered.

April 15th, 2010 | 10 comments | Unfiltered

One of the things I’ve been super-jazzed about since I graduated last year has been this whole relationship-building thing. Not limited to those that include romance and flowers, I’m talking about new friends, working relationships with colleagues, and my favorite, the relationship one can have with a mentor.

Do you have a mentor? If so, was it someone who was assigned to you? Did you seek this person out yourself? Essentially, there are two species of mentors – ones that are assigned to you, either by an employer, educator, coach, or boss and then there are the ones that you seek out, serendipitously meet, or just kind of come into your life and take on that role.

While I can’t help you with the first camp, I can speak to how to work on the whole finding a mentor thing.

There are three steps that will help you get on your way.

1. Identify the type of mentor you’d like. In a professional/career-type mentoring relationship – are you looking for someone who can advocate for you and your skill and help guide you through your career? If so, perhaps you should look to someone who is a couple (or several) levels above you in the hierarchy. If you’re looking for someone you can vent to, I’d recommend sticking to someone more around your same position, someone who understands the day-to-day of working at your level. While it’s great to have a senior staffer who understands you and how you work and what makes you tick, sometimes you just need to grunt about junior-level stuff. And that’s totally okay.

I’d also recommend that you have more than one mentor – find someone in your organization and find someone outside. The more people you work with, the more people you meet, the greater chance you have at people advocating for you when the time comes. It’s never a bad thing to have good people around you.

2. Get creative with your approach. Chances are, the person you’ve identified as your mentor-to-be is incredibly smart, has their shit together and has a lot of knowledge to offer up. That being said, they probably have lots and lots of people they’re working with. They probably have people coming to them all the time with questions, with the hopes that they’ll get an answer, let alone, a mentor.

With Aaron, that was how it went down. He was speaking for a bit at the Mashable party at SXSW and he sounded like he knew what the hell he was talking about and that he could possibly have some nuggets of goodness to pass on to my almost-grad self. I thought he might be an important person to connect with. So, armed with my newly acquired flip cam, I marched up to him and asked him to answer one simple question – “what one tip do you have for the almost-grad?” Following the interview, I was again impressed with his answer, how much he “got it” and was hell bent on learning more. So, I told him just that, and the rest, as they say, is history.

3. You have to give back. The biggest part of being someone worth mentoring is just that – being worth mentoring. You can’t just run up to someone and take, take, take and not offer up anything in return. Granted, there isn’t much by means of knowledge that I have to lend these folks that have taken me under their wing. But I do bring boundless enthusiasm, an eagerness to learn and turn that around and offer up that knowledge to the people I’m mentoring. Be a rising star, be eager, do good work that is worth recommending, and it’s just a big happy cycle of rainbows, sprinkles and brain power.

In the end, it’s all about surrounding yourself with great people. If you want to make it in this biz (PR, marketing, digital, social, emerging, LIFE, whatever) you have to continually surround yourself with the best and the brightest. I’m fortunate to have a handful of these people in my life. I thank my lucky stars every. single. day.

So what’s your take on mentoring? Over-rated? Best thing ever?

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  • http://www.theincslingers.com/blog Simon Salt

    Sydney, great post. I've been a mentor for the past couple of years for the Texas State University Marketing program. I love having mentee's, firstly because of the enthusiasm that you talk about – that is definitely something they give back, secondly because they come to me with amazing questions, that actually make me stop and think, which I love. Lastly, I love being a mentor because it isn't just about being the person with the knowledge, its about sharing that knowledge with someone you know will share it with others. Keep passing on your knowledge like this.

  • http://www.alwaysjacked.com Alan Kercinik

    Mentoring is a big deal, IMO, and not a formalized part of our industry. My dad was an electrician and when you start in the trades, your title is apprentice. I always kind of liked that. I've gotten a lot out of both being mentored and mentoring. And still do. Even though I am old.

    One thing about finding a mentor: think about want versus need. I think most people, by nature of being people, want people who advocate for them when needed. But a lot of people also need someone who forces them to develop skills that might be underdeveloped. There's self-awareness that goes with finding someone who is going to truly help you grow long-term, and that's worth considering.

  • mikediliberto

    Dude, Best thing ever.

    Seriously though, great post, as always. Mentor-ship, as Alan mentioned in his comment, is not something that is formalized in our industries, but it should be. Where would we be without our mentors?

    Finding a mentor is something that has driven several of my job choices, and I have never regretted choosing a job so that I could report to a person that is a mentor to me. My first mentor summed up well the search for the right person: He said, “look for someone that will always tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear”.

    Over the years I've learned a lot, and hopefully given a lot back as well. In the end, having mentors has also helped me to learn indirectly. I came away from each of these relationships better equipped to be more introspective with myself, to analyze where and how I need to grow to be a better, more well rounded professional.

    Looking at where I was when I entered the workforce ten years ago, and where I am now, I can see the impact that these mentors had on my life, both personally and professionally. Being now in a position where I have employees reporting to me, I do my best to mentor my people to help them develop themselves.

  • http://sydneyowen.com Sydney Owen

    Thanks for stopping by, Simon. I think asking questions is huge – especially because for whatever reason, a lot of undergrads/new pros are nervous about asking. Good to know that the questions are one of the things that you love about mentoring!

    Hope to see you around again soon – both here and in Chicago and/or Austin. :)

  • http://sydneyowen.com Sydney Owen

    The self-awareness thing is something I'm becoming all too familiar with lately. While there are some things that I'm doing well, there is most defnitely a lot for me to learn, and that's my favorite part of the job.

    The best part about the mentoring thing is when a mentor will actually sit down and take the time to teach. There's a lot to be said for a mentor that will answer questions and guide – but for someone to take an hour out of their busy day to sit down and actually teach… it's amazing. We're all so crazy swamped – taking that time means the world and makes a HUGE difference.

    To Simon's point – there is a lot to be said for surrounding yourself with people who challenge the way that you think. That is something that I enjoy about talking with you when we have our little pow wows. There is always more than one way to approach whatever needs approaching.

    Thanks for being here! Good to see you around these parts!

  • http://sydneyowen.com Sydney Owen

    I may be reading into your comment, but when you say “came away from those relationships” – have your mentoring relationships come and gone with your different positions? Are there mentors that you've had for a long time, through different positions/places in your career? Have you worked with a mentor and kept that relationship alive and thriving beyond your time working with them wherever you worked together?

    I've seen some mentors come and go, a lot having to do with location and timing and their role in my life. I think as time goes on, I'll be interested to see who comes into my life in this regard and who fades out.

  • http://twitter.com/akeats Adam Keats

    I'd add to not forget to regularly look at your mentors and make sure they're still a good fit. Kinda like a 401k portfolio, maybe once per year. As you advance in your career (and life), your needs can change and you should make sure you still have the right mentor mix to help ensure your success.

  • mikediliberto

    Great question, and no you're not reading into it too deeply. My mentoring relationships have come and gone over the course of my career, for a variety of reasons. Most often it has simply been that I changed positions or changed jobs; in almost all of these cases I have relocated to a new city, so that made it even harder to maintain connections.

    It also has a lot to do with where I was in my career; many of my mentors had a specific role to play in my life, and once I had advanced to a certain level or decided that I needed to change course a bit, I often found that I needed the guidance of someone with different experience. To Adam's point below, I certainly have been conscious of checking in regularly to make sure the relationship is still a good fit.

    Regardless, I try to keep in contact with all of my mentors on a regular basis through phone calls or facebook.

    You made a point in your post about having mentors both in and out of work, and I've often found that the relationships that I have with mentors outside of the office last longer

  • http://rbc-news.ru/ buratino

    Ну насчет конкретного спама в блогах я тоже против этого но а если чел коментирует статью при чем в тему и такие посты удаляют то это имхо бредятина полная

  • Nay-Nay

    I’m looking for a mentor that can help me get a head start of what it’s going to be like to have a career in the Medical Feild as a RN. Do you have any suggestions that would be helpful to were I should start looking.