“In every film. where there's a character who is good at something or does well, at the end, it’s always because they have a mentor. It's not because it's luck or to make the plot of the film make sense: it’s because people that have got experience can pass that experience onto you, so that you don’t have to learn the lesson yourself. ”
Zach Nicholson at Wave Talent
Having a good mentor can open a lot of doors. A mentor can help you hone your career aspirations, expand your network, introduce you to hiring managers, help you meet relevant peers and assist you to work on development goals.
Though 76% of people believe having a mentor is important, only 37% of people have one. There’s confusion about what counts as mentoring and reticence about how to go about getting some mentorship.
So how can you build a pool of mentors? How can you find new mentors when your career aspirations or focus changes? If your company provides a mentorship program, should you look to augment it yourself and if so how? And how should you work with mentors to maximise the value of the time you spend with them for both parties?
What is mentorship?
Mentorship origins
The word ‘mentor’ originates from ancient Greek epic poetry. In Homer’s Odyssey, when Odysseus leaves his kingdom of Ithaca to go and fight in the Trojan War (portrayed in the Illiad), he leaves his son Telemachus under the guidance of an older man called Mentor. Periodically the goddess of wisdom, Athena, impersonates Mentor and gives Telemachus valuable and nurturing advice.
“The name perhaps ultimately means "adviser," because in form it is an agent noun of mentos "intent, purpose, spirit, passion" from PIE *mon-eyo- (source also of Sanskrit man-tar- "one who thinks," Latin mon-i-tor "one who admonishes"), causative form of root *men- (1) "to think."”
Online Etymology Dictionary
Today most of us are familiar with the concept of mentorship, but in fact popularity of the term ‘mentor’ increases sharply from c. 1980 to the current day. It’s correlated to the shift from careers for life to shorter, multiple jobs.
Popularity of the term Mentor in the Google Books corpus since 1800 (for more information on Google Books Ngram viewer, see here)
Peter Capelli, Professor of Management at the Wharton School states that
“Companies had a surplus of white-collar managers, and reengineering waves in corporations were about getting rid of people…Companies told mentors, ‘We’re trying to get rid of people, so we can’t promote your mentee.'” Although bosses continued to play an important role as mentors when they could, the supervisor-subordinate model waned and companies sought other ways to help workers navigate their way in the workplace. According to Cappelli: “Companies said, ‘What do we do for these folks? Bosses aren’t helping them anymore.’ The idea became to find mentors who weren’t necessarily someone you worked closely with or for. Instead of your supervisor, your mentor became somebody you could bounce ideas off of and get career advice from. It became more low-impact.”
Knowledge at Wharton; Workplace Loyalties Change but the Value of Mentoring Doesn’t
Today’s mentoring model is even more deconstructed, especially in the technology industry. Formalised programs are less and less common, with networking communities and ‘speed’ mentoring becoming ever more common. As a result it’s best to approach mentorship as a series of advice conversations and not to get too hung up on a formalised relationship.
How mentorship typically works
The majority of mentorship models are unpaid, and usually not formally rewarded or recompensed. A senior or peer will volunteer their time to provide advice within informal and formalised schemes. It’s important to understand that your mentor is volunteering their time and to think about ways that you can provide them with value (often called ‘reverse mentoring’).
"Reverse mentoring is incredibly important - there have been times as a mentor when I have heard things from my mentees which have made me a better leader. For example one of my mentees was struggling with gaining senior visibility for her work and feeling appreciated for long hours, and it made me realise that I could do more to amplify what members of my team were doing, and more to encourage and celebrate them to improve morale."
Tulsi Patel, Lead Product Manager at Hertility, part of the Bloom mentorship scheme
Mentorship differs from coaching in that coaching relationships are
- Focused on the purely professional (whereas mentoring often has a personal connection)
- Coaches are often business generalists, whereas mentors may have deep functional or operational expertise
- Paid rather than voluntary
- Formal, rather than informal relationships
What’s the value of mentorship and why is it a good idea to have one?
Mentors provide value in the form of
- Coaching and advice: assisting you with workplace challenges and opportunities
- Career guidance: steering you towards achieving your career goals
- Additional experience and knowledge: preventing you from having to reinvent the wheel
- Network: a mentor can make new connections for you
- Structure: agenda led, outcome focused conversations with your mentor can assist you to clarify your goals and continue to progress towards them
- An alternate perspective: a different way to look at situations
Mentees can provide value to mentors in the form of
- Alternate perspectives: just as a mentor’s lived experience and position in an organisation’s hierarchy can add value to the mentee, equally the reverse is true.
- Additional knowledge and experience: mentees may have industry, technical, skills based or operational experience and knowledge that the mentor might not have.
- Active assistance: mentees can always offer to help mentors with tasks. That might be as simple as providing feedback on all hands presentations or helping them with a managerial topic that they’re thinking through. Make sure it’s a two way street.
- Expanding network: typically the majority of hiring happens at the lower levels of the organisation. Just as mentees are looking for value from a mentor’s more senior network, equally well a mentor might be looking for referrals.
Additionally a Gartner study in 2006 examined the impact of mentorship on over 1000 employees employed at Sun Microsystems over a 5 year period. The findings were that
- Mentors and mentees were 5x more likely to receive a salary increase
- Mentors were promoted 6 times more often than those not in the program
- Mentees were promoted 5 times more often than those not in the program
- Retention rates were much higher for mentees (72%) and mentors (69%) than for employees who did not participate in the mentoring program (49%).
When looking for mentorship therefore, remind yourself that it is a two way street: you’re not asking for favours, you’re offering a value exchange.
What sort of person is likely to get a mentor?
Interestingly the Gartner study also found that mentoring was least effective for the highest performers, with lower performers benefiting more from mentoring than those in the top quartile.
“Research shows that protégés influence the amount of mentoring they receive,” according to Klein. “You’re more likely to get mentored if you’re talented, have an outgoing personality and are career- and goal-oriented. Once a mentor sees that you’re eager, the more likely it is the mentor will want to spend the time and social capital on you, introduce you to the right people, and so on.”
Knowledge at Wharton; Workplace Loyalties Change but the Value of Mentoring Doesn’t
There is a correlation between high performance and mentor attraction. But this is only because there is a tendency for higher performers to have already mastered the ‘mentorship skill’. The mentorship skill can be defined as the practice of asking multiple people for advice and input on a topic; and then using that information to make a decision.
“Something I’ve noticed while I’ve been mentoring … is that how these founders think about mentoring actually is a predictor of their success…they get much more time out of these important people than they would perhaps deserve, which is a real skill, and something which these guys have mastered…But I think the corollary is also true. The people who don’t master mentoring never actually seem to get off the ground. So if I invest in a company and I don’t hear from them for a month, I’ve sort of mentally almost written them off, because they’re not going to master the skill. They think they’re going to be doing it on their own and that’s a fallacy. They won’t be able to do it. So great mentors attract great founders and great founders attract great mentors… The reason why those successful people I’ve mentioned earlier are great founders is because they ask lots of people their advice, and they listen to lots of advice, and then they come with their own decision.”
“Mentors - The Entrepreneurs’ Unfair Advantage”, Russell Buckley
Putting it another way: not asking for advice leads to worse outcomes, and asking for a lot of advice leads to better outcomes. Hence why formalised mentoring confers less benefit on those who are already used to asking for advice.
