One of the most potentially powerful things for the success of any career is an effective mentorship. For most of us, however, we struggle to know where to find a mentor, what a good mentorship looks like, how to model mentorship, and what we should be getting out of the experience.
Mentorship is more than just grabbing coffee with an executive you happen to know. It is a commitment that takes hard work, a personal investment, a willingness to share more than just your advice and experience. It involves time and resources, too.
If you want to know what quality career mentorship truly looks like, whether you’re interested in mentoring or seeking out a mentor, read on.
7 Qualities to Look for in a Career Mentor
1) Definitive Goals
One of the mistakes people make in a mentorship relationship is treating it like any other relationship. They don’t give it focus and purpose. Every mentor-mentee relationship should have a goal in mind. For that to happen, both people in the relationship should know what they want out of it. For the mentee, they should know where they want to end up and what they want to leverage from their mentor based on their position and experience.
For the mentor, they should know where they are gifted and experienced, what connections and resources they have that will be most valuable for their mentee, and how they can push them to achieve their goals. These goals should be defined from the outset and be part of a concrete conversation.
It should be pointed and direct, not vague. The mentor should help the mentee define where they want to be and create goals, roadmaps, and overall trajectory.
2) Tough Love
You want a mentor who isn’t afraid to be honest. You want a mentor who isn’t afraid to hurt your feelings. While there is a difference between tough love and verbal abuse, most of us can tell the difference. Have that conversation with your mentor about feedback. They should be able to call you out when you mess up or drop the ball and help you get moving in the right direction again.
The key, of course, is constructive criticism. Your mentor should give you the tools to correct and grow from any missteps along the way.
3) Personal Investment
A mentor should not be there simply to tell you about all of their experiences and accomplishments. While you may be able to glean some wisdom from stories of their success, that is not what will be effective for you long-term. What is effective is that they invest in you and your unique circumstances and challenges. Mentorship means addressing your situation and applying their expertise to you, not assuming that where you are is where they have been.
4) Problem-Solving Skills
Mentorship is all about addressing challenges head-on. For a mentee, you need to seek a mentor who is proficient in problem-solving. They need to be able to address your situations without relying heavily on their own anecdotal solutions. They should help you think critically, pose great questions, guide you to develop solutions, and offer advice only after they’ve helped you work through your situation for yourself.
5) Initiative
In the professional world, we can be easily intimidated by the success of others. Whether or mentor is a high-level executive or a wildly successful entrepreneur, there is no doubt a barrier that can arise between mentor and mentee where power, prestige, and money is concerned.
A good mentor recognizes that their mentee may be uncomfortable asking questions or approaching them at first for fear of imposing. Because they recognize this, they actively pursue their mentee and make an effort to break down any barriers or intimidation factors until the mentee is comfortable in their relationship. They make building a rapport a priority because they know without it, the mentorship relationship does not and will not work.
6) Intuition
Good mentors ask the right questions. Something you will notice as you go through mentorship relationships (because you shouldn’t have just one) is that the most effective mentors ask a lot of questions. They’re not all about telling you what they think you should do or regaling you with stories of their success. They’re about pushing you to think critically and they have an intuitive spirit that moves them to ask really good questions.
They always seem to know how to get to the heart of the issue.
7) Flexibility
Lastly, effective mentors are masters of flexibility. They understand that over time, your relationship will change. You will grow, you will gain experience, and it may even come to match theirs and so might your success. You will likely see other mentors, and they will be okay with it. In fact, they’ll encourage it!
Ultimately, an effective mentor wants to see you succeed. Their mentorship is not about an ego trip. It is about truly helping and nurturing another individual and their career. They will be flexible with the ebb and flow of your career, whether its shifting goals and detours or when you surpass them and see other mentors.
They just want you to succeed: whatever that happens to look like.