How to engage a career mentor
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If you’re serious about progressing within your organisation, one of the most effective things you can do is find and retain someone as a “Career Mentor”. This ally can make you aware of opportunities as they become available, help you to create opportunities where none appear to exist, make a successful move on them when they do, and help you develop your experience, reputation and CV ready to progress into your next role.
However, the real challenge is finding the right mentor – much like with marriage it can be painful to get out of the wrong relationship! So you need to get it right at the outset. You need to make it easy for the right person to say yes to mentoring you, while also taking steps to being sure yourself they’re the right person to support you.
Here’s how to go about it the right way –
As with the majority of people, when the pressures of your job take over it’s easy for your career to go the bottom of the pile. If you can create a situation where you’re accountable to somebody senior, who you look up to, for taking career action by the next meeting – you’ll focus on it more.
However, the real challenge is finding the right mentor – much like with marriage it can be painful to get out of the wrong relationship! So you need to get it right at the outset. You need to make it easy for the right person to say yes to mentoring you, while also taking steps to being sure yourself they’re the right person to support you.
Here’s how to go about it the right way –
- Find someone within your company who has a larger overview of job opportunities and has either already developed their own career beyond yours or who has a CV like the one you’re looking to build. It’s great if you already have a connection with them (eg you went to a presentation they gave), or you can ask people to recommend someone.
- Before diving in feet first and asking them to “be my mentor”, find a specific issue to ask for help with which you know they have an interest in and are very good at.
- Contact your potential mentor, mentioning your connection with them or the person who recommended them. Explain the issue you need help with, and ask if they’ll help you by spending three short sessions/meetings to coach/advise you. These should give you enough time to build a good relationship with your potential mentor and to gauge the chemistry between you.
- If you get value from your potential mentor and the relationship is working well, ask if they would be open to exploring another issue or – if things have gone really well – ask them if they would consider changing your relationship into a more formal/longer-term mentoring process.
As with the majority of people, when the pressures of your job take over it’s easy for your career to go the bottom of the pile. If you can create a situation where you’re accountable to somebody senior, who you look up to, for taking career action by the next meeting – you’ll focus on it more.