Who needs a business mentor?

Everyone should have a mentor – someone who is not too close to your day to day working situation, with the experience to offer insight and counsel, who can support you with an outsider’s view.  And the higher up the corporate ladder you climb, the more you need a behind-the-scenes business sensei.  But finding the right mentor isn’t straight forward.  Where one mentor can inspire and motivate, another can treat you like a disappointing pupil.  If your mentor is sharing their words of wisdom for the love of doing it – and the occasional cup of coffee – then they obviously have an instinctive urge to teach.  But, dangerously, they might just have an instinctive urge to hear the sound of their own voice.  Opening up about your working issues and ideas is a revealing exercise and unless you trust that your mentor is genuinely motivated to help, a mentor session can feel more like a TV crime drama grilling than a supportive catch up.

My own mentors found me.  Two are ex-clients who I advised on PR, corporate positioning and communications.  Things changed and we all moved jobs but we stayed in touch.  And our informal meetings changed from chit chats into in-depth discussions about business, management, finance and life.  The focus switched from a two way catch up to a focussed assessment of my business and ‘therapy session’ into my working challenges.  I relish the opportunity to run things by them and often do make decisions with a nod to ‘what would my mentors do’. 

I’d say ‘what’s in it for them?’ if I wasn’t also a mentor myself.  I recognise the satisfaction and reward of sharing knowledge and the feel-good factor of helping someone with some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way.

So if you haven’t got a mentor, then keep your eyes open and try to cultivate one.  The perfect mentor doesn’t prescribe the solution to your business challenges, puff you up in a sycophantic way or reprimand you for getting in tricky situations.  They encourage, advise and illuminate opportunities.  They hold a mirror up and help keep the focus clear.  After a good meeting with a mentor you look in the mirror and like what you see.   

By Lucy George