“All I did was open the door so he [President-elect Obama] could walk through and share what he was all about…”
—Illinois Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, Barak Obama’s mentor, speaking about mentoring Obama in the early days of his political career
Throughout most of my working career, I’ve engaged with mentors. To me, a mentor is a guide—an individual who has been where I am going or where I want to go, and genuinely seeks to help me get there. It can be a big journey—for example, a career change; or small steps, such as developing new problem solving skills. At its best, mentoring is not done by a mentor for personal gain—that is something I feel is important. I’ve had mentors who were men, women, younger, older, similar to, and different from me. Choosing a mentor depended on the particular set of skills I wanted or needed to develop.
Mentors should vary based on the stages of one’s career. At early and mid career, I often sought a mentor who personified the person I wanted to be at the next stage of my career. I’d look for someone several levels ahead of me who demonstrated many of the same skills I wanted to develop. So, if I were a salesperson, I’d look for a very successful sales manager to be my mentor. Mostly, I sought mentors who would continue to build upon skills I already had or confidence I was still developing.
Over the years, that changed. Now when I seek a mentor, I often look deliberately for a person who is different from me. I actively look for mentors who help me improve in areas where I am less confident. For example, I tackle most problems directly and head on; that is my style. And while that style serves me well at times, it also creates a level of stress in my problem solving with people who may be adverse to conflict. So my growth is to learn to tackle an issue in a more sophisticated, less-direct, less-confrontational style, offering more than one way to resolve a problem.
My current mentor is a woman quite different from me: I’m a business developer and salesperson while my mentor is a CEO and exquisitely skilled at program design and operations. My mentor never met a financial spreadsheet she didn’t embrace. I, on the other hand, consider finance to be just one more component of the sales process. My style is brash, funny, and outspoken while my mentor has the unique skill of modulating her style based on the people in the room. She rarely tackles an issue head on, preferring to study the situation and approach it from many possible angles (I call it entering an issue from the side or oblique problem solving).
Now, I often take advantage of both “formal” and “informal” mentoring relationships. For example, one of ABI’s Board members is particularly skilled at asking tough questions in a manner that doesn’t invite a defensive response, so I seek that Board member’s opinion when I face a similar situation.
What is the best mentoring advice I’ve ever received? Carol Mills Baldwin—member of the Adobe Board of Directors with a remarkable career encompassing executive-level positions at HP, Juniper, Acta, and Adobe—said in a roundtable at the Churchill Club that she never stops trying to improve her weaknesses. Never.
Excellent advice.