How To Find The Right Mentor

Many leaders want to grow, to advance in their careers, and some want to grow as human beings as well. One of the tools we can use to grow in every sense of that word is by having mentors. Mentors can be one way we accelerate our learning and potentially accelerate the process of becoming who we want to be. It is not a cure all for solving all our career or life challenges. But it can certainly be helpful.

I have had some experience with mentors. Some were quite helpful and others were not as helpful.

We may be wondering what we should be looking for in a mentor. Here are some tips to finding the right mentor.

1. We have to be ready. We have to be at a point in our life and our careers where we want to learn. We want to grow. And we are open to help from others to get us there. This is critical. If we feel we know everything, asking for advice from a mentor will be pointless. We will be wasting their time and ours.

2. Do a readiness check. To ensure we are ready for a mentor, we need to do an internal check, a soul check if you will. We need to start from a place of humility. There is much we don’t know and much we need to know. We want to minimize our mistakes and accelerate our growth in our careers and lives. We must make the commitment to listen, even if the advice we hear is not always pleasant. Growth can be painful. It typically is. So count the cost ahead of time.

3.The right mentor matters. We need to define what we are looking for in a mentor and why we feel we need one. Perhaps we want to get further in our careers; it could be many different kinds of jobs. Perhaps we are a new mother or father and want to get advice from those parents who we admire and want to learn from.

4. A good mentor knows more than we do. If we feel a prospective mentor does not know much more in their field than we do, it may not be a great fit. A good mentor will be someone we admire. Not only do they know more than we do in our field, but they are doing it the right way. How they do their job is as important as the job they are actually doing. We might want to do our job and grow in our career the right way. Treating people well, not cutting legal or ethical corners. We want to grow in our vision and impact in our profession and we want to be around people with similar values to us and who have vision and want to impact the world in a positive way.

5. A great mentor is a great listener and asks great questions. They will not tell us what we should do. They will not give us a roadmap. They will not tell us how they grew in their career and then tell us we should use exactly the same approach. A great mentor will ask us great questions. They will want to know what our goals are, what our values are and what vision we have for our career and our life. They will ask us about legacy and what we want to leave behind. They will ask us if our lives and careers are all about us or about serving others and some higher purpose.

6. A great mentor will make us do the work. They will not do it all for us and write a big report with all the career steps laid out. They are there to guide and advise and ask us great questions. But ultimately, the responsibility for growing in our careers and lives is up to us. It is our responsibility not theirs

7. A good mentor will share our values. They will also have a balance with being encouraging and affirming while also seeking to push us forward in a gentle way to achieve the goals we say we care so deeply about. Values matter. If we say we want to be humble servant leaders who strive to be about the team and not so much about our own agenda, and that we want to make a positive difference in the world; we need to find mentors who share those values and objectives. This is critical. Mentors who have values and goals different than us could well lead us down a path to becoming exactly what we don’t want to become.