Seven Tips to Help You Find Your Mentor

TIPs to progress working with a career mentor

1. Firstly a mentor is someone who could have several years more experience and feels they can assist in your growth by sharing knowledge and offering advice that can help in your development.

2.In essence it’s about having a professional relationship with someone who knows what you’re going through and can provide feedback as well as assist you by introducing you to another network.

3. The key is to ensure it’s someone who is a good fit with you, with the time, knowledge, patience and maturity to assist you.

4. Look for someone who has achieved results and, as importantly, has created the results in a way that resonates with you.

5. Then consider

• Approaching a professional industry body, business association or alumni from your university days,
• Someone you already work with where you could achieve the same outcome with some targeted and regular advice,
• Someone recommended to you by a colleague,
• Approaching the connections you made when exploring people to interview.

6. If you’re unclear make a list of people in your life that you respect, admire and identify with. You might find that you would benefit from talking to a number of people about different aspects of your career exploration by creating a group of people you can tap for advice.

7. Then be clear about the arrangement:
Consider

• The length of time you may need
• Type of on-going support, encouragement, and advice you’re after
• How you’ll communicate (phone, email, Skype, face to face)
• What you want to learn from this person.

A Quick Word About Being Coachable 

Whenever we seek counsel from another, be it informally or more formally, there is a rule that we must all understand…. Be Coachable.

This means be open to other opinions. 

The best advice may be the hardest advice to hear and a good coach, mentor or buddy may highlight behaviours, traits or stuff you don’t want to hear.

So if you’re the type of person who resists other’s advice, suspend this behaviour while working through the coaching of your side projects. 

That doesn’t mean just blindly following instructions – it does mean participate fully in the opportunity to redesign your career.

Focus on whether the discussion and advice you are receiving is working, and then ask yourself will this get me to my next goal?

 

---