Elevate Your Capabilities and Career Through Mentoring

Mentoring isn’t just for young recent graduates or professionals. People of all ages, backgrounds and career levels can benefit from a mentoring experience. According to John C. Maxwell’s book, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, “More than four out of every five of all leaders that you ever meet will have emerged as leaders because of the impact made on them by established leaders who mentored them.”

For organizations, mentoring is proven to increase employee satisfaction and retention. Data from an Emerging Workforce Study showed that 35 percent of employees who don’t receive regular mentoring plan to look for another job within 12 months.

I was fortunate to have a number of mentors in my life and career, but I lucked into these relationships. If I knew then what I know now, I would have been more intentional and deliberate in selecting mentors and dedicated more effort and commitment to making the most of those relationships.

I am excited to share some insights from my own experience, mentoring best practices and an overview of specific steps you can use to identify, initiate and build a mentor relationship that’s as individual as you are.

One of the best examples happened within our industry and it illustrates how to build a mentoring relationship and the impact it has. I was matched with a CFO because I needed help developing my business acumen. I was in my 40s and running multi-million dollar businesses, but I would get sick to my stomach during the monthly business review when I had to explain the financial results. My mentor worked in Connecticut and I was in Chicago. We would talk every week on the phone. At first, I found our weekly talks a bit awkward. I didn’t know her. I was nervous before every phone call, wondering if I was prepared to ask her my burning questions and learn from her about building my skills. I also wondered how I could possibly provide value to her. After a while, we got into a rhythm and she gave me some great insights. I adapted some of the skills she used for business reviews and learned to embrace the reviews. They no longer intimidated me or made me apprehensive. Although she was the same age as me, she had different expertise.

All mentoring relationships develop over time. You may talk frequently (every week) for 3-6 months, not talk for a year and then re-start the conversation where you left off with other goals in mind. That’s the beauty of these mentoring relationships. It’s rewarding to see people you’ve mentored work through challenges and achieve success. Steven Spielberg said, “The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.”

Eric Parsloe at the Oxford School of Coaching and Mentoring provides a comprehensive definition of mentoring: “Mentoring is to support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order that they may maximize their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance and become the person they want to be.” Here are some additional concepts to consider when thinking about mentoring:

• The mentoring relationship may be based on either personal or professional development.
• The “mentor” is usually an experienced individual (although not necessarily older) who shares knowledge and advice with a less experienced person or “mentee.”
• Mentors become trusted advisers and role models. They support and encourage their mentees by offering suggestions and knowledge, both general and specific. Their goal is to help mentees improve their skills and advance their careers.
• Mentoring is a two-way mutuallybeneficial learning situation.
• While some people think mentoring starts with the mentor, there’s more success when the mentee drives the mentoring relationship.

Mentoring is different than sponsoring and coaching. Sponsors typically work in the same company or industry and they “champion” a fellow employee and their success. As an advocate, a sponsor might volunteer or nominate a co-worker for advancement. Coaches provide direct advice regarding ideas and approaches and coaching is typically not a mutual learning environment. A coach is generally paid, whereas a mentor usually makes a voluntary commitment. Good coaches are professionally trained, qualified and often certified.

A mentoring relationship is a two-way learning partnership based on mutual trust and respect. The relationship requires time and energy but has personal and professional benefits for both mentees and mentors.

A mentee may experience:

• Career advancement
• Leadership development
• Knowledge and skills development
• Insights into best practices
• New perspectives
• New connections

A mentor may experience:

• Job and career satisfaction
• Personal satisfaction
• Skill improvement
• Leadership development
• New perspectives
• Network connections

Once you believe in the value of mentoring, the next challenge is learning how to develop a mentoring relationship. There is a four-step process that you can use to be very intentional in finding a mentor and building a mentoring relationship that suits your unique needs. The four steps are:

STEP ONE: Find your why. During the first step, you complete a selfassessment that helps you analyze the skills that you have and potential gaps. These skills may be in the areas of leadership, communication, managing skills, business skills, or other areas that round out your personal and professional development. The self-assessment helps you establish high-level improvement goals by ranking your skills from one to five and then circling the top two to three areas that you need to work on (email me at kjvan777@gmail.com to learn more about a self-assessment worksheet that I have developed).

STEP TWO: Find your mentor. Based on your self-assessment and your improvement goals, you have your “why.” Now, you need to find your mentor. Look to people who exhibit the very quality or skill that you want to develop. Don’t limit yourself to your company. Look in associations, at members of other organizations or your LinkedIn contacts. Once you identify a potential mentor, your “ask” should be personal and appropriate. Here are a couple of methods for initiating a mentoring relationship, but feel free to develop one of your own:

• Send an email and make a phone call. An email followed by a phone call or a face-to-face meeting is a good method because it gives your prospective mentor time to think through your request prior to responding.
• Schedule a meeting over coffee. This approach works if you don’t have a preexisting relationship with a potential mentor. This method gives you an opportunity to establish a rapport, determine if you really want him/her to serve as your mentor and lay the groundwork for asking him/her to consider a mentoring relationship in the future.

STEP THREE: Meet with your mentor. Once you have secured agreement from your mentor to join you in a mentoring relationship, you should write down your goals and potential steps to take for achieving each goal prior to the first meeting. During the initial meeting with your mentor, you should accomplish the following:

1. Get to know each other. Begin with an informal conversation about your background, career, career goals, interests and hobbies. Ask questions about your mentor’s interests, career path and educational history. Determine some commonalities and begin developing a rapport.
2. Outline expectations. Discuss how often and when you will meet, as well as how long meetings will last and where they will take place. Decide who will set the agenda for each meeting and how to measure progress. Agree on a plan to generate feedback when goals are not achieved and to celebrate successes. Also discuss how long the mentoring relationship will last and schedule a mid-point check-in meeting.
3. Sign a mentoring agreement. This agreement should include an acknowledgement of confidentiality, commitment to the mentoring process, as well as outline goals of the relationship.
4. Review goals and objectives. The mentee should share their goalsetting notes and ask the mentor to provide insights and guidance. Choose one or two goals to focus on during the mentoring relationship and for follow-up at future meetings.
5. Confirm a date and time for the next three meetings. Mentees and mentors should meet at least every other week, not just once per month.

STEP FOUR: Schedule ongoing meetings and a review. Mentoring relationships should be mutuallybeneficial and based on chemistry and trust. If these essential elements are missing, it is alright to end the partnership. No harm, no foul. But you should give your relationship time to develop by conducting at least four meetings. Then, at the mid-point check-in, either party can end the relationship with no questions asked.

If you want more information or to request a mentoring toolkit that compliments this four-step process, please feel free to email me at kjvan777@gmail.com. I offer various workshops and programs to help individuals, companies and organizations understand and capitalize on the value of mentoring. Visit KJcompany.net where you can download information on these workshops and learn more.

I’m passionate about mentoring, particularly in the electrical industry, because I grew up in the industry and was fortunate to have several awesome mentors help me along my career path. Now, I am dedicating my time to empower people in our industry as a way of giving back and helping the industry move forward.