It is essential that you thoroughly understand this familiar but seemingly mysterious figure in the job world, the mentor. Everybody needs a mentor--not just the people at the top, not just those who make a big splash and become the subjects of biographies, but every man and woman who holds a white-collar job.
Your mentor if you have one and he/she is the right one for you can easily double your job security. This comforting and protecting person can keep you on the payroll when others around you are being thrown overboard willy-nilly. On a more positive note, your mentor can also open your path to raises and promotions-and that, after all, is the best kind of job security.
My studies of the career scene have convinced me that most employed men and women have only vague and often faulty notions about mentors. Some have mentors. Some don't. Some think they might have but aren't sure. Most assume that a mentor is heaven sent; you get one if fate is on your side, and if you don't get one, there is nothing you can do about it. It is necessary to show you that, in this respect, your fate is actually in your own hands.
You need a mentor. You must have one. You can acquire one through your own efforts.
What Is a Mentor? -
There are two main elements in my definition of a mentor. If somebody does not display these two characteristics clearly and unequivocally, that person is not a true mentor--and, as we will see later, should be approached with caution. The definitions:
- A mentor is a man or woman who has a genuine fondness for and interest in a lower-ranking, and less experienced employee. Notice that word genuine. We will come back to it.
- A mentor is a man or woman who holds a position of power in the organization. He or she isn't necessarily one of the organization's major power brokers, nor necessarily a member of the top brass. This part of the definition means only that the mentor has enough power to exert tangible influence on the protégé's career.
Thus, she was relieved and comforted when an apparent mentor appeared on the scene. This was an older woman with the title of assistant vice-president. The young woman's duties took her regularly into the offices of people at that managerial level. She and the older woman developed what looked like a mentor-protégé relationship very rapidly. "Why don't we have a drink together after work?" the older woman would suggest. "Maybe I can give you some pointers..."
It seemed like a lucky break, an ideal turn of events for any jobholder with fears for the present and hopes for the future. What the young woman failed to perceive, however, was that the older woman lacked both key characteristics of a true mentor.
In the first place, she did not possess power to any substantial degree. The younger woman was fooled partly by that grand-sounding title, assistant vice-president; it made the holder sound like a much bigger fish than she really was. Banks often bestow such titles, as do other organizations that deal personally with large numbers of clients. The title is designed more to impress clients than to serve as an accurate indicator of rank, prestige, and power.
In the second place, the older woman's interest did not spring from motives of genuine fondness or an honest wish to be helpful. Rather, her main motive was to use the younger woman as a spy. The older woman wanted to know what certain other assistant vice-presidents were up to. She and they--a group of five or six-were all tacitly felt to be in line for a bigger job that was soon to be created in the bank's trust department. The new job was viewed as a particularly juicy plum, and a good deal of secret maneuvering and dark-comer whispering was afoot.
The episode ended badly for the young woman. The coveted job eventually went to a man--one of the assistant vice-presidents on whom she had been spying for the woman she thought was her mentor. The man had become aware of the spying toward the end of the contest, had been at first annoyed and finally enraged by It, and had resolved to avenge himself if he ever got the chance. He was an extremely vengeful man. His new job gave him new power. Nothing was ever said directly, but the young woman slowly came to understand that she had been dropped from the special fast-track group. She remained dead-ended for years.
Her supposed mentor neither had the power to protect her nor gave a damn.
A Mentor's Motive
We get back to that word genuine. If you understand what motivates a true mentor, you will be in a better position to the truth from the false.
One element of motivation is the ordinary, selfless wish of the veteran to help the rookie--the same motive that makes a teacher want to help a student, makes a mother counsel a bride, makes neighbors drop in to welcome a newcomer. If selfless is too sentimental a word for your taste, all right, call it simply friendly. Perhaps there is a certain amount of self-interest involved. People undoubtedly behave in this generous way because it makes them feel good; it gives them a feeling of importance; it advertises the scope of their experience. On the other hand, don't make the mistake of being too cynical about this universal human act. We like helping those of less experience because ... well, just because that is the way humans are made.
Another important element of motivation, no doubt, is a kind of mirror effect. The mentor sees his or her earlier self in the protégé. As the protégé advances along the upward path of a career, the mentor can derive vicarious enjoyment from the process.
Various kinds of overt self-interest may also be involved. The mentor may be in the process of building an empire and seeking trustworthy allies, for example. Or perhaps the mentor feels over loaded with responsibilities or problems and needs a helper who is more than just a paid assistant. Such self-interested motives exist compatibly with the purely generous motives in a true mentor. It is only when the selfish motives dominate the relationship--as in the case of the woman bank officer--that the supposed mentor must be suspected of being false.
The Many Kinds of Mentor
As you start looking around for a potential mentor, it will be essential that you make your field of search broad enough. Don't make the very common mistake of narrowing it by looking for only one kind of mentor. There are, in fact, many kinds. If you pass over some of the less easily recognized kinds in your search, you could be missing valuable opportunities. The four main kinds of mentor are:
THE PARENT FIGURE: This is the classic mentor, the most easily recognized, the kind most people would describe if you asked them what a mentor is. The parent figure is the venerable, gray-haired, battle-seasoned man or woman who adopts a protégé young enough to be a son or daughter.
THE WHIZ KID: This mentor may be only slightly older than the protégé but is, of course, senior in experience and power. He or she is a fast-track climber, typically a business-school graduate, very often somebody who scored brilliant career successes at an unusually early age. Don't overlook this person in your search. A large difference in age is by no means necessary to a pleasant and productive mentor relationship.
THE LEANING MENTOR: This person is often brilliant in his or her central areas of interest but lacks competence in other areas. Instinctively feeling this lack, the mentor adopts a protégé who is able and willing to supply the missing talents. Howard Hughes, for instance, a brilliant and imaginative business strategist, had scant patience for the day-to-day demands of business life and never learned how to deal with people effectively in situations of stress. He knew this. Hence, early in his astonishing career he adopted young Noah Dietrich as a protégé, and he leaned on Dietrich ever more heavily as the two of them moved from one success to another.
THE FALSE MENTOR: As we have seen, this is the person who looks and acts like a mentor but is not. Becoming entangled with such a person won't necessarily do you great damage; you can learn from somebody who lacks power, for example, and perhaps you can make a friend. But even if the relationship has these benign results, it is essential that you recognize it for what it is: something other than a true mentor relationship. Don't be lulled. You still lack a true mentor and, lacking one, are not as secure in your job as you could be.
In searching for your mentor you need not confine yourself narrowly to your own department. Your best mentor may turn out to be your immediate boss, or somebody else who is directly in line with your particular function. If so, that can make it easy; you are or can be in regular contact with this person and may not need to try too hard to establish a mentor relationship. But if you are not so lucky, look beyond your immediate office neighborhood. As we will see, there are ways to make contact with a potential mentor even though he or she is fairly far from your place in the organizational scheme.
Nor need you restrict yourself to people of your own sex. Until comparatively recent times, the great majority of mentor-protégé pairs in most industries were of the same sex-male. This, of course, came about because most positions of power in most businesses were held by men. It was quite rare that a man in a power position would think of grooming a woman for eventual executive status. Today, however, changes are happening rapidly. More and more women are rising into decision-making jobs--which means that women are becoming both mentors and protégés in greater numbers than ever before.
The changes, though rapid, still have a way to go before they produce equality. Men still dominate most corporate power structures. Thus, if you are a woman, the statistical odds are that you will find more potential mentors of the opposite sex than of your own. Don't let this disturb you. A mixed-sex mentor relationship can be wonderfully productive. I've observed and admired several. A particularly appealing example was portrayed on TV a few years back in the Mary Tyler Moore show. Edward Asner played, to perfection, the role of a mentor of the Parent Figure type. In real life, such a mentor--tough but affectionate, fond of his power and fond of using it--can do much to strengthen his protégé's job security and steer good things her way.
The obvious danger, of course, is sex. If a man offers job favors in return for sexual favors, then he doesn't fit the definition of a true mentor and should be handled with the greatest caution, as should any false mentor. But sex problems can arise even in what starts out as a genuine mentor relationship. These problems are a special case of the general hazards of sex in the office.
Sex can be part of the glue that binds two people together, as in a marriage. But unless you are very careful and very lucky, it can enormously complicate your life if you allow it to become part of a mentor relationship. My advice: don't. Why take the risk? It may work out, but the odds are it won't. A sex-based relationship will expose you to whisperings, jealousies, and scandals, will cloud your judgment and your mentor's judgment of business situations and career problems. Avoid these complications if you can.
Be particularly careful about body language. Don't send out signals that you don't mean to send. Nonsexual touching and kissing come naturally to some people but not to all. Avoid them unless you are absolutely sure your mentor will interpret them in the way you intend--as gestures of simple liking. Better yet: avoid them entirely. Your mentor may interpret them correctly but some observer may not. Before you know it, you are the subject of gossip. The whispered rumor gets juicier as it goes from mouth to mouth. All that really happened was that you touched your mentor's hand to express your fondness--but the grapevine report is that you are involved in a torrid love affair. You don't need that.
Strategies
The process of acquiring a mentor begins, of course, with identifying somebody who you think can fill this role for you. As we've seen, this might be your boss, somebody else with power in your department, or someone who isn't directly in line with your function but still is close enough to understand it well and to exert influence on your career. For example, let's say you work in a company's paralegal research department. Your mentor might be your boss, the chief of legal research; or perhaps the lawyer to whom your boss reports; or maybe another company lawyer who has no day-to-day contact with your work.
The person you pick must have power and the promise of more to come. Keep your ears open: whose name keeps coming up in conversations? Who is being talked about as potential top executive material?
The person you pick should also be someone with whom you think you can establish an amiable and mutually serving relationship. As we are going to see, the mentor relationship is a two-way street. You cannot merely take but must also give. Don't ask only, "Can this man or woman help my career?" Also ask, "What useful service can I offer?"
Don't be put off if your eye happens to alight on a potential mentor who already has a protégé. I've known mentors to have whole families of them. This sometimes happens when an executive moves through several companies, picks up a protégé at each, and stays in touch with them all and continues to follow and aid their careers after moving on. Or a mentor may adopt two or more protégés at the same place. It isn't common but isn't rare either. A mentor can have fond relationships with several protégés just as easily as a parent can love more than one child.
Don't rush this process of sizing up possible mentors. If you have been in your job or with the organization for a long time, you may already know where the power lies, whom to avoid, and so on. Indeed, perhaps you already have the beginnings of a relationship with a mentor but haven't actively pursued it-which, of course, I now urge you to do. But if you are new to the job, you must proceed more slowly.
Take time--six months if necessary, even a year--to understand the organization thoroughly. Who has the real power? Who is being readied for bigger things? Who is a protégé of the really powerful? (Yes: your mentor will in all likelihood be, in turn, the protégé of somebody still higher up. You may come in at the end of an entire chain of mentor-protégé relationships-and will yourself become a mentor, in time, to someone below you.)
As a newcomer you will probably be granted a honeymoon period--a time in which to learn the job, show what you can do, settle into the organization. Mistakes will be forgiven during this period; people will root for you and help you. That is pleasant--but be aware that this is also a period of high danger. People will be sizing you up, jockeying for position around you, and assessing you as a possible future ally or enemy. For your safety, remember one rule and re member it well: during this period, keep all your personal opinions to yourself.
Stay strictly neutral. Don't take stands on matters you don't yet understand. Don't take sides. Don't get sucked into schemes. Politely rebuff all attempts to recruit you into alliances.
This is the period when people are going to buy you a drink or take you for a walk after lunch and ask, say, "What do you think of Joe Smith?" Don't answer--or if you must say something, be neutral. Joe Smith could be your future mentor. The person quizzing you could be. You don't yet know enough about the place to start joining teams. Respond to the question by mumbling something polite: "Oh, he seems like a nice guy from what little I know of him."
Having identified one or several possible mentors, your next problem is to make yourself known to them and see whether a productive relationship can be established. How do you do this? There are three kinds of action that I can recommend:
1. Turn in a good job performance and make sure people know it. Just as every parent wants bright kids who bring home good report cards from school, so a potential mentor is attracted to the best and the brightest. Remember that your mentor, in time, will be sticking his or her neck out for you, recommending you for promotions, writing praise-filled reports about you, making promises about your probable performance in this situation and that. You won't want to make a fool of your mentor by failing to live up to these expectations. Nor would your mentor enjoy such an outcome. Hence, he or she will be drawn, in the beginning, to somebody who shows promise of responding well to unknowable future challenges.
A woman executive at Union Carbide put it this way: "I don't have any special protégé. I'd like to. It would be rewarding. But this person would have to be somebody I could be proud of" Turning in a superior job performance won't help you a great deal unless people know about it, of course. Be aware of the need to catch the eye and ear of your potential mentor. If you put in extra hours at your job, doing more work than is actually required, find some casual and non-complaining way to let this be known to many people. If someone praises you for the high quality of your work, look for a graceful way to broadcast this helpful fact.
2. Ask your potential mentor's advice. People enjoy being asked for advice; it flatters them, makes them feel important. Moreover, asking a possible mentor for advice is a way of instantly establishing the kind of teacher-student relationship you want. It gets you started on the right foot. But you must handle it intelligently.
Don't pester the man or woman with a lot of trivial questions. Rather find out what the person's major area of expertise is and ask just one or a few big questions: "I'm told your special field is cost accounting, Ms. Parker. I'm working on this Navy contract, and I've run into a problem that has me stumped ..."
What you hope is that the mentor-to-be, flattered by your approach and intrigued by your problem, will take the time to give you a short course in certain aspects of cost accounting. "Sure, I'll be happy to help you. Why don't we get some coffee and go somewhere away from these phones . . ." That's the ideal outcome. If it doesn't happen--if the man or woman is busy, distracted, uninterested--don't try to wheedle more time than he or she is ready to give. Come back another day--or try another possible mentor.
And be sure you don't upset your boss by going outside the department for advice. Some bosses don't mind if their people roam around the company in search of needed answers; indeed, some encourage such roaming, on the theory that getting the job done right is what's important. Other bosses, however, resent any behavior that they interpret as sneaking around behind their backs or going over their heads.
We come back to what I said before about taking time to study your job environment with care before making moves to acquire a mentor. If you decide to approach a potential mentor at some remove from your daily work, be sure you know what your boss's reaction is going to be. Don't guess; know. If you are not sure, ask him or her. "This cost-accounting problem has me stonewalled. Somebody told me Ms. Parker is a genius at this kind of thing. Do you think maybe she could give me some guidance?"
3. Offer to help with some specific problem. First find out what is important to this man or woman, your potential mentor. What is worrying this person right now? It might be something temporary: a need to organize a sales meeting, for instance. Or it might be something quite trivial: perhaps the person has been sending out irritable memos about inefficient use of the company parking lot. Having discovered what is disturbing the man's or woman's sleep and digestion these days, do some research on it, some thinking, some looking around. Then go to the person and offer to lift some of those worries onto your own shoulders. "Mr. Willard, I heard you say you were concerned about getting those figures from the government in time for the meeting. Well, I made a few phone calls this afternoon, and it turns out there's a way..
Concentrate on relatively small, even trivial problems. Don't make the mistake of marching into the person's office with a grandiose solution to a major problem: "I've worked out a way to increase the company's earnings next year!" Do that and you put yourself into a negative position. You are telling your potential mentor, in effect, that you see the big picture more clearly than he--more clearly than all the top executives who have been worrying about earnings for years. Perhaps you do see it more clearly, but it is a mistake to say so now. Wait a few years. In time, your thinking on the big questions may be sought, possibly by your mentor. You will then know you are heading for higher ground.
