Given how important mentorship is, it is surprising the limited guidance on how to be a great mentor. While mentorship comes in many flavors, common approaches can be distilled to help others develop.
Let’s dive into some tips to maximize your contribution as a mentor:
1. Connect to Other Mentors. While it may be true that the best mentors know the industry and profession well and can shepherd you in these areas, it’s not the full story. Anthony Tjan, CEO of Boston Venture Capital explained “Rarely can one person give you everything you need to grow.” In this case, mentors should establish a mentor group so they can share techniques and resources, support each other, and occasionally refer their mentee to another based on a selected area of expertise. The Firm Credit Suisse does a multiple purpose mentorship when assigning a new analyst to projects because they realize that the analyst needs more support than a single staffer can provide. An employee stated, “What I learned in onboarding is only 40% to be successful, but having access to several VPs allowed me to gain the other 60% quickly.”
2. Guide the Soft Skills. According to the Harvard Business Review, in an interview of more than 100 admired leaders and mentors, one crucial characteristic stood out – the best mentors do everything they can to imprint their goodness onto others so they can be fuller versions of themselves. When mentors focus on character rather than competency, it makes all the difference. Sure, mastering skills is an essential element, but so is the soft skill investment - helping mentees live their values and increase self-awareness, empathy, and capacity for respect. These are the traits that can engender the best relationships.
3. Be an Energy Giver. Anthony Tjan mentions the benefit of considering how an idea might work instead of it not working. He shares the 24x 3 rule for optimism. Each time you hear a new idea, see if it is possible to spend 24 seconds, minutes, or a day thinking about all the reasons why it is good before you critique any aspect of it. While it has been said by Economist John Keynes that the world prefers conventional failure over unconventional success, what would it be like to help your mentee encourage exploration in the latter direction? Optimism and belief in the person can go a long way.
4. Handle Power Responsibly. Since mentors are in the dominant position, do not wield power inappropriately. Mentorship malpractice can happen when you take credit for mentees’ ideas, discourage them from seeking additional mentors, usurping lead position on their projects, or when you encourage that they further your personal projects rather than have them develop their work. The relationship is about the advancement of the mentee, and these actions serve to isolate them from broader learning and development.
Mentors are bestowed with incredible power to share their wisdom and teachings with others, and rewardingly, their positive impact usually reverberates well beyond their time spent together.
Quote of the Day: “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.” — Winston Churchill
Q: Who is your mentor? What makes that person so incredible? Comment and share below, we would love to hear from you.
The next blog in this series 3/3 will focus on how to thrive as an excellent mentee
As a Leadership Coach, I partner with others to support them in their goals, contact me to learn more.
How do you mentor others to maximize performance?