Career Growth - Choosing the Right Mentor

Tekena Fubara

©TC Fubara

Over the years in my experience of coaching young people, one of the questions I frequently get asked is ‘What next do I do with my career?’ I have also seen this in very mature professionals, including myself at some point, and I am quite sure there is a huge brigade out there who may have had this question even to the very tail end of their career. There is a range of coaching techniques and tools which may help you arrive at a focused decision. However, I have found that in addition to having a Coach, a Mentor can be a really valuable asset to drive you in the right direction. I must buttress here that there is a difference between a Coach and a Mentor, with the Coach providing tools to help you drive yourself and the Mentor actually driving you. By working with Mentors you build knowledge about what you want and don’t want fairly quickly to support coaching tools.

Now, the connotation ‘Mentor’ usually conjures for most people the view of a sage figure who can pull all sorts of strings in your favour as well as overwhelm you with all manner of inspirational ideas never thought about. This does not always have to be the case. In fact, a true Mentor will most likely be just about any regular guy or lady, who may not necessarily have been a great achiever themselves, but who knows exactly how to add value to your thought pattern, decisions and your life in general. This begs the question then as to what makes a good Mentor? For which I say, you would want to look out for those key qualities displayed by the Mentor which are relevant to your situation.

As there are different qualities that can be displayed by different Mentors, and as you may need different characteristics from each at several points, it might be worth considering having more than one type of Mentor, as this is what successful people seem to do. I have grouped the various types of Mentors that you may get into three broad types and these are:

• 1.     Professional Capacity/Technical Mentors,
• 2.     Professional Growth Mentors, and
• 3.     Personal Actualization Mentors.

The Professional Capacity/Technical Mentor is ideally someone with great ability in a specific skill in a particular discipline you may be pursuing, who can nurture you to build all the relevant competence you require to be proficient in discharging a particular duty. You need to make sure you identify who is really competent, is willing to transfer their knowledge to you, while you must ensure that you extract all you can get. Here, the Mentor does not need to have any particular feelings towards following your future career, but a willingness to let you succeed in a particular role. To find these Mentors, take a proactive step to look around your business to identify very competent people.

The Professional Growth Mentor ensures that you are moving from where you are, having just spent some considerable time and effort to attain key skills, knowledge and experience. He/She is there to constantly challenge you to move from the status quo to the next diagonal progression path. In this Mentor role, you absolutely need someone you can truly trust, who can talk to you openly and directly, even about your weaknesses. They must also be able to trust you enough to be comfortable for you to sometimes fight back their challenge. But it is most important that they can hold you accountable if you haven’t taken any action towards the next steps in your career and can effect measures to push you to make a decision. To benefit here, take a proactive step to seek one within your business and outside your business. The more independent they are, sometimes the better.

The Personal Actualization Mentor is usually difficult to find and here you must display extreme caution in putting someone in this shoe. This Mentor must be someone with vast breadth and depth of experience and a high level of self actualization. Most importantly, their relationship with you must be really symbiotic where they see a benefit in building a mutual relationship. You both must be absolutely comfortable with each other to share your innermost feelings and be able to go out on social events together, such as a dinner. The role of this type of Mentor is to bring their life’s philosophy to bear in you where they guide you with thought-provoking views that gives you a different paradigm and perspective in both your career and in life in general. Here, never go to seek for a Mentor, but allow the relationship to just spark up from your everyday working life as this one in particular needs deep friendship.

Next Steps….

Now, go out and make the best use of Mentorship and be successful. But don’t just jump straight away now asking every Tom Dick and Harry to be your Mentor. You normally don’t get married to someone straight after just saying hello to them for the first time. Instead, seek support from them on a specific item for a limited duration. If the right chord is struck within the relationship, build it. Otherwise, you can therefore walk away on good terms.