Three reasons to find a mentor now
I had a job once that ended up not being a great fit. I was a round peg trying to fit into a square hole, so it just wasn’t going to work.
Even though I didn’t leave there with a pension and a gold watch, I still count my time there as very valuable because I learned a ton. Most of what I learned came because I had a great mentor.
In many places, the benefits of having a mentor get overlooked. You can transform the next year by finding someone with more experience to latch on to and learn from.
Here are three reasons to find a mentor:
1) You can learn from your mentor’s mistakes.
Your mentor has been been around the block. He’s tried new things and some of them haven’t worked out. He’s said the wrong thing at the wrong time. He’s invested in the wrong stuff. He’s let the wrong people influence him.
Your mentor has made all the mistakes that, without guidance, you and I will make. Take advantage of someone who has already made those mistakes and save yourself the trouble.
2) Your mentor can see stuff in you that you can’t see.
I’m lousy at seeing my gifts and abilities. And I’m lousy at seeing my faults and idiosyncrasies.
A mentor will be able to spot potential in you that you don’t have a clue is there. And she’ll also be able to spot the baggage.
Having a mentor will broaden your understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses by showing you things that you can’t see.
3) You’ll play at your mentor’s level faster.
Having a mentor is going to mean you’ll have a regular stream of information, wisdom, accountability and hopefully friendship.
It won’t be long before your mentor begins to view you and treat you like a peer rather than someone to be trained. And eventually you’ll view yourself that way, too.
When you view yourself as a peer to your mentor, you’ll start to act like a peer to your mentor. All of a sudden you find yourself doing all the same things a person whose success and wisdom you wanted to capture in the first place would do. You’re playing at your mentor’s level.
Mentoring can be useful in many dimensions of life. It’s not just a business thing. This year, for instance, I’m making it a goal to reach out to some friends with older daughters to start preparing for what the teenage years are going to be like around our house. I want to learn about the parenting decisions these friends have made.
Ron Edmondson has a great series on mentoring on his blog. If finding a mentor is something you want to do, here’s Ron’s post How Do I Find a Mentor?
Once you find a mentor, Jon Acuff has a great post called Three Things You Should Never Say to a Mentor which is very insightful.
Who’s one person in your life who you would consider a mentor?
When we found out we were having twin boys, we approached a family with boys who were in middle school and were still polite, functional creatures in society. But they were also well on their way to becoming Men. We liked that mix, so we asked them for their secret. The mom was a tiny woman, barely five feet, with a sweet Mississippi accent. And she could wrangle her boys with just one look. Years later, I still quote “My Annie” for her wisdom on raising children and boys. And she’s still one of the first people I ask if something comes up we don’t understand. I think finding someone who has raised children that you’d like to have yours emulate is really important for parents. Some things just can’t be learned in a book.
That’s a good example, LL. Pick someone with great kids and figure out what they did. Of course, that probably doesn’t work 100% of the time. There are great people with bizarre kids and vice versa, but it probably works as a general rule. Good stuff!
“I’m lousy at seeing my gifts and abilities. And I’m lousy at seeing my faults and idiosyncrasies.”
I think my issue is that I pretty much know what my gifts and faults are, but I lack guidance on how to leverage or correct them.
I follow that.
I think that’s the benefit of the person on the outside. Someone can look at me doing things and say, “Well, it looks to me like __________ and because of that you need to _____________.” But it’s gotta be the right person. Someone with your best interest at heart. Or that you’re paying to help you.