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Who Needs A Mentor? Just About Everyone.

Francoise, our lovely mentor

Image by laihiu via Flickr

AdvancingWomen.com

Absolutely you need a mentor.  Most successful women have had one.  Sometimes it is their boss, father, mother, more experienced colleague or someone respected in their field who they sought ought and convinced to mentor them.  But without a doubt, the time between where you are and when you become a success is dramatically compressed when a mentor shows you the ropes.

In fact, research indicates mentoring is one of the crucial and important factors in business and career advancement. Having a mentor or going through some type of mentoring program dramatically increases one’s chances for success. Although it is not fatal to lack a mentor, it certainly helps one a great deal to have one, both in technical and conceptual knowledge, learning from a broad base of experience and rapidly gaining a wealth of contacts.

Mentoring can be a shortcut to career success because it provides a safe, protected environment in which one can learn. One benefits from the mentor’s experience without having to go through the trial and error of learning those same lessons over the years; time is compressed, mistakes don’t have to be repeated. Valuable lessons, knowledge, attitudes and recognition of opportunities are passed on.

The mentor guides his or her protege or partner in developing skills, methods and work habits which the mentor developed painstakingly over her entire career.

An equally important aspect of mentoring is teaching one’s less experienced partner how to network and who to network with. The mentor becomes, in effect , the gateway to the business experts and resources his partner will need. Frequently the mentor provides the introduction, and by taking his partner under his tutelage and introducing her in this manner, his endorsement provides an entree and an acceptance by other experienced business people that the younger person might take years to achieve on her own. In fact, she might never achieve that acceptance on her own because business cliques can be quite closed and intolerant of newcomers, particularly women.

When major decisions or choices arise, the mentor can be an effective source of advice and encouragement, sizing up not only the business situation, but evaluating your skills , attributes and natural talents and bringing to bear seasoned judgment on where you would best fit and what are the right choices for you, not just as a business person, but as an individual.

Finding A Mentor – The First Challenge

No doubt about it, finding a mentor can be a challenge. Mentoring demands a broad base of experience, a high level of skills, and an ability to teach and nourish. Generousity and openness are required of a mentor. A second obstacle is the fact that there are many women who want and need to be mentored and few mentors to help them. Those in a position to mentioned have reached a position where they have great demands on their time.

Each of the following approaches can add a piece to the mentoring puzzle which you are trying to solve:

The Direct Approach. Search out the person you admire most in your field, and one with whom you feel comfortable. Ask to speak to her at a convenient time. Then you can explain you know how busy she is, but you genuinely want to improve your skills and knowledge and ask her if she would be willing to spend a small amount of time…..even 30 minutes a month, reviewing your situation and mapping out a path for your progress. You can even ask her to give you homework in the form of books to read or presentations to attend. Most people, however busy and important, are flattered by this approach and probably will be willing to help you. Some may not have time to see you in person but will gladly mentor you by email.

An Electronic Support System. Although not as warm and fuzzy and personal as a real, live mentor, sites on the Net like  AdvancingWomen.com, and its Advancing Women in Leadership Journal, were designed as an electronic support system for women, to help them meet their many, multifaceted challenges. If you read and follow the advice given, you will be reaping the benefit of successful women with deep experience who are , in effect, mentoring you electronically. If you want specific advise, don’t be shy, ask for it. You can do this by writing to the editor and asking if the website will address a particular issue. Preferably you should frame your questions in a way that the answers will apply to more than just one person, but to an entire group facing a particular work situation. You can also put your questions on one of the bulletin boards and get a lively, hopefully informative discussion going.

Mentor Yourself. At a meeting AdvancingWomen.com‘s Gretchen Glasscock attended in Austin with some of the national leaders of the Women’s Department in the Department of Labor, a regional director said she had met the mentoring challenge this way: “Everything you really need to know is inside yourself.. You just have to focus on the areas you need to develop and then do whatever it takes to make yourself into the person you aspire to be.” Although this approach may not give you everything you need, it certainly will increase your self reliance and take you a long way down the road to career success.

For more on this subject see:
Get A Mentor To Help You Learn The Ropes

85 Broads

85 Broads is a network of trailblazing, visionary women who aspire to use their talent and leadership savvy to effect professional, educational, economic, and cultural change for all women globally.

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15 Worthy Books for Business-Minded Women | Business Pundit

15 Worthy Books for Business-Minded Women | Business Pundit.

Some of the books covered are extraordinarily helpful for women.  Some of our favorites are as follows:

8. Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide

by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever

Babcock and Laschever explore why women hesitate when it comes to asking for what they want. Using a number of academic studies, the authors illustrate how women’s hesitation to negotiate comes from a fear of destroying the personal relationship involved, while men see it as a routine part of
business. Women will forsake an opportunity to negotiate if it means avoiding conflict. This hurts individual women in the long run, as they forsake additional money, prestige, or other benefits. The book empowers in the sense that it underlines what women can do to improve their own lot. In a word: Ask.

6. Be Your Own Mentor: Strategies from Top Women on the Secrets of Success

by Sheila Wellington and Betty Spence

Mentors are crucial to anyone’s
business success. But how do you find one, especially as a woman? Wellington shares how to locate good mentors, but, crucially, also shows women how to mentor themselves. Using surveys, statistics, and interviews with famous and successful women, Wellington gives women the keys to advancing their careers and overall standing in society. Her specific tips, which include managing work/family guilt and gracefully getting out of a dead-end position, are career basics for women of all experience levels.

AdvancingWomen definitely believe both these books will help you get on the right path to success and come in handy as you continue your journey.

Get A Mentor To Help You Learn The Ropes

Get A Mentor To Help You Learn The Ropes – AdvancingWomen.com

Gretchen Glasscock

Being mentored by the right person is an important and viable bridge to achieving your career goals. Mentors can serve as role models and gateways, introducing you to the right people. Having savvy mentors is one of the key levers that can lift you from obscurity and fruitless toil to success. Because top leadership posts are occupied primarily by men, women must build the skills to enlist men as allies and mentors. As Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, said “Before you become a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”

Therefore, the leaders you work with (or network with) should welcome the opportunity to mentor you, if you ask them directly and make it easy on them, not taking up too much of their time. When you network (an extension of mentoring), it’s a good idea to reach out to men’s established, powerful networks as well as the newer women’s networks.

  • Get a mentor. For many daughters of prominent men, their father is their first mentor. From the age of about five, the author, along with her brother and sister, was in “entrepreneur training” with her father.  He would take us on business drives to oversee his properties, then point out a building and ask us what we thought it was worth.  The correct answer was, “Whatever you can get for it.” He also taught all of us to play poker, as a way of learning business and betting strategy.  But this isn’t just the author’s story; Governor Kathleen Sebelious of Kansas, the first daughter of a Governor in U.S. history to be elected to the same office, learned her lessons at her father’s knee. And Cheryl Miller, the first female analyst to call a nationally televised NBA game on Turner Broadcasting Team, was mentored by her dad.
  • If your dad’s not the mentoring type, look to your mom or a teacher. Mothers can be mentors, too. Sharon Avent, president and CEO of Smead Manufacturing Company (a privately held, women-owned company founded in 1906 that manufactures and distributes home and office filing systems, supplies, and software, with $315 million in annual sales and approximately 2500 employees) took over as president from her mother.  Another woman leader told a story about her sixth-grade civics teacher, who after a class debate told her, “You know, if you were my daughter, I’d send you to law school.” She took it to heart, determined not to be a tobacco farmer all her life, overcame her mother’s admonition that she should aspire to be a school teacher, and went on to law school and a successful career.
  • Get an incredibly successful woman to be your mentor. Ask for 15 minutes a month, and be willing to do it by e-mail. Gayle Crowell, who was a six-figure executive at a software company (but also a former school teacher) says she’s always willing to mentor, as long as she can do it by e-mail, while she’s waiting in airports or on planes.
  • Turn to your supervisor. Your supervisor might be willing to mentor you if you ask for just 15 minutes, once a month, to tell you the expectations for your position; how well you are meeting them; and a plan to move you along a career path that will take you to the next level (as long as it doesn’t threaten his job, even if it’s a lateral move to another track.)
  • Tap into powerful networks. Join the National Association of Women Business Owners, the National Association of Female Executives, your city’s Women’s Chamber of Commerce, and your Alumni Club. Janet Hanson, the founder & CEO of Milestone Capital Management, founded 85 Broads—a groundbreaking global mentoring network now with 4,200 18,000 members worldwide. It offers ‘Broad2Broad,’ a model for numerous other corporate/alumnae networks.
  • Hire a coach. When the author was on the board of directors of NAWBO, she was enlisted to ask a friend of hers, an enormously successful millionaire entrepreneur, to be the keynote speaker at our awards event.  Linda had never spoken in public or gone beyond high school. She asked me to connect her with an executive coach, another NAWBO member, who helped her give a successful speech to a rousing response.
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