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Some people are lucky enough to find a mentor early on in their career. For others, the search may take considerably longer, filled with false starts and resets. After all, five-year-plans aren’t what they used to be. Career journeys are rarely linear anymore. It’s not about climbing one ladder, but hopping between many. You need to find the right person to give you advice on your unique professional development.
But the perfect mentor isn’t just going to fall into your lap.
Your first (or second or third) boss might be a nightmare. Your department head or CEO might not be available for day-to-day advice. If you’re in an organization with a flat hierarchy, it might be unclear who these people actually are. In such cases, who do you reach out to? What do you look for? If you do find someone you admire, can you be open about your goals and ambitions and ask for advice right away, or should you build trust first?
Then there are those of us who wonder if a mentor is really necessary (or appropriate) for their chosen career path. Perhaps you feel you get more out of online learning or training programs to accelerate your career. Or you’re building your professional portfolio as a jack-of-all-trades, going from job to job or place to place. That makes it tough to hold down connections with those who inspired your previous career steps, however grateful you may be. You might outgrow the advice of those you looked up to. Past mentors become friends, would-be mentors become irrelevant. Are you wasting your time hitching your wagon to someone who isn’t reaching for the heights you are?
In other words, does everyone need a mentor, or is it better to go it alone?
Rest assured, these are questions most people ask at some point in their careers. And while it might sometimes seem like the very idea of mentors is outdated (particularly with new technology giving us access to just about any answer we might have anytime, anywhere), there are plenty of statistics that show mentorship still has value.
If you’re still feeling a bit lost, GLOBIS University‘s Misato Nagakawa has three tips to help get you make the most of that special someone helping to guide your career.
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Transcript
1. Don’t Rush It
Misato Nagakawa:
Finding a mentor is a lifelong journey. That’s what I believe.
Unless you talk about yourself, what kinds of opinions you have towards specific social issues, or what kinds of issues you’re facing in your career, nobody can help you or provide the advice that you are seeking. So it’s a lifelong journey. But if you want to have a mentor, you should keep talking and keep sharing what kinds of issues you are facing, and what kinds of opinions you have.
2. Don’t Limit Your Options
Nagakawa:
I think it’s important to have a mentor, but mentors are not the only [people to learn from] around you. [They] can be a supporter or even a junior. You can learn from younger people, too. So it’s good if you have a mentor, but it’s also good if you have a junior or [someone to support you].
3. Understand Your Needs
Nagakawa:
You can only use the advice of a mentor effectively if you understand about yourself. Because in your life, you are the main character. You know your situation, [and] you know about yourself. A mentor can give you advice from their perspective, but they can’t make a decision [for you]. If you want to [apply] their advice effectively, you need to understand about yourself.
And at the end of the day, you are the one who needs to make the decisions.