Full confession:\u00a0in my career, I’ve not had great success with formal mentoring programs. Maybe it’s just me.<\/p>\n
Once, I had breakfast with a “mentor” who was assigned to me. We had nothing\u00a0 in common. We’d try to get a conversation going, only to have it run out of gas. I\u00a0kept trying, but it was really hard. \u00a0It was the longest breakfast I ever had, and all I had was oatmeal.<\/p>\n
A mentor is someone who knows you, who’s interested in your career, who feels a connection to you. Someone you can trust, share your concerns, go to when faced with dilemmas. It’s hard to\u00a0successfully assign\u00a0a match for both the mentor and the mentee.<\/p>\n
But I have had many<\/strong> people mentor me. How is that possible?<\/p>\n One way to do this is to reach out for a conversation. Like\u00a0“having a cup of coffee” with various people. So, if someone has a really interesting role, or has done some interesting things, drop them an email “Would love to have a cup of coffee\/meet for lunch\/meet for breakfast\/just meet\u00a0to talk about your career and how you got to be “fill in blank”. Would it be all right for me to set up something at your convenience?”<\/p>\n It’s much less stressful than the formal “will you adopt me, pay for my wedding, forever be there” mentor set ups.<\/p>\n Everyone says yes. It may take some time, but you won’t hear no.<\/p>\n This\u00a0lets you get to know the person, and gradually develop a potential <\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>mentoring relationship. At the very least, you’ll spend an hour with someone who will share their experiences with you. At the most, it might evolve to a true mentoring relationship: someone in the organization who feels responsibility for you and is there to help you. BTW, it’s great when they’re senior. But it’s also just as rewarding when it’s a colleague.<\/p>\n If you don’t have a mentor, and always had mentor-envy, try it and see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Full confession:\u00a0in my career, I’ve not had great success with formal mentoring programs. Maybe it’s just me. Once, I had breakfast with a “mentor” who was assigned to me. We had nothing\u00a0 in common. We’d try to get a conversation going, only to have it run out of gas. I\u00a0kept trying, but it was really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mentors","tag-managing"],"yoast_head":"\n