Over the years I’ve used mentors for many different reasons: to develop strategies that could enhance my career, or tackle short-term issues that might arise with a work colleague. Sometimes I need help developing skills to more effectively engage with executives, or I want to test communication styles as a senior-level woman dealing with groups of male colleagues. I believe mentors are an excellent, productive way to model new behavior.
I engage short-term or single issue mentors for a number of reasons. It can be difficult to find one mentor that encompasses many different qualities. I like engaging with different people around different issues—my learning feels more robust and interesting. When I can actively isolate a particular issue I seek advice for, and match that issue to someone who may have a very different set of skills from me, then I shake up my own thinking and move beyond my comfort zone. So I use different, short-term mentors, both male and female—to address specific issues I seek to change or need counsel understanding.
A great example is an issue I sometimes struggle with—I have a tendency to take a dissenting opinion within a group as a personal challenge rather than what it is—simply another opinion. I’ve learned that when I think it might be personal, it often is not, and if I feel baffled or threatened, I call on a very specific male mentor for his help.
He taught me excellent strategies to de-personalize, showing me tools to slowdown my response, look at the issue rather than the person, break the issue down in pieces. These strategies, obvious though they might seem, have been particularly helpful because I have time to think of better responses, or better still, withhold a response until I am able to de-personalize it.
I don’t bring any other kinds of issues to this particular mentor–I contact him for this specific issue. We discuss, often over the telephone, and I leave the conversation feeling more skilled, with more concrete tools in my tool bag as a result of the mentoring opportunity.
I have a mentor I specifically use to help me enhance my current job or evaluate potential new jobs. We met several weeks ago to talk about career strategies for making my current career more intellectually engaging and interesting, without changing jobs. In an hour over coffee, she outlined a strategy that could infuse new interest if a specific set of conditions were in place. She counseled the most effective way to package the strategy and present it for agreement. I was thrilled with the results.
I know this is not mentoring in the “traditional” sense—a long term relationship that often promotes significant career advancement: but I find the combination of different advisors, or mentors, helps me address issues that I can work on over time.