Mentorship is Hard — But Important — Work
I’ve been beyond privileged to have had incredible mentors throughout my career. Men and women who saw things in me I could not see in myself and who were not afraid to give me a swift kick in the pants when I needed to step up and/or make a change.
In full transparency, it was fairly late in my career (when I got a boss who didn’t feel I was worth his effort) that I realized just how lucky I was. That my experience was the exception and not the norm. I can attribute some of my blindness to youthful ambition, but I feel like an asshole for not recognizing it sooner and my enthusiasm for mentorship now is in no small part an act of both penance and gratitude.
As we kick off the third year of the MPLS MadWomen mentorship program, I’ve been thinking about the things that made these early relationships so important to my career. At our kick-off meeting we shared some core tenants of what makes a mentorship relationship successful: honor your commitment, don’t give each other the scheduling run-around, set an intention (mentees AND mentors!), come to meetings prepared, and be vulnerable.
But what about the intangible or less obvious aspects of mentorship? I’m super curious for others to chime in, but here are four that for sure helped shape how I think about mentorship:
Mentorship is not a business transaction
It might be a business RELATIONSHIP, but we’ve all seen mentorship checklists that make it feel like your time together is best spent spent rigidly walking through an agenda and ending upon three very precise outcomes with responsibilities and due dates. Now, I’m a big fan of to-do lists and also want mentors and mentees to have productive time together, but I’d advocate for a much stronger dose of humanity in your interactions.
The mentor relationships that meant the most to me involved a deeper connection. Our work-life selves are blurry; we need to bring as much of our lives as possible to these conversations. Be messy. Let yourselves go down rabbit holes sometimes. Revel in just being together with another person who knows some of what you’re going through and can commiserate.
2. Share the load
It’s often implied that a lot of the emotional heavy lifting should happen on the mentee side, but that’s b.s. We're in this together. Mentors are not mystical creatures with perfect lives and all the answers, nor should we pretend to be. Individuals on both side of the mentorship equation should be open, honest and raw in order to get the most out of the relationship.
3. But mentees, please be honest about what you need
Let’s be real: our time is at a premium. And no matter how much we like each other, when we say “yes” to our mentorship meetings we’re probably saying “no” to something else. So, before you ask anyone else to give you a bit of their time, do some soul searching. What do you want to talk about?
To get you started here’s some stuff people have asked to “pick [my] brain” about over the last year, maybe this will spur some conversations of your own:
My background is weird and I don’t know how to sell my experience to get a job.
I’d like to change disciplines but can’t afford to start over.
My boss never gives me feedback even when I ask.
I’m not sure how to quantify my value to ask for a raise.
I had a super weird interaction in a meeting and don’t know how to confront it.
I’m new to town and don’t know anyone.
I want to go freelance but am scared to take the leap.
I want to start a new business but am not sure anyone will care.
A guy I work with constantly passes his ideas off as my own/talks over me in meetings/dismisses my input and I don’t know what to do.
I just feel really flustered/uninspired lately and can’t put my finger on why.
4. Sugarcoating is for suckers
One of my personal pet peeves is when I know someone is pulling punches with me. (So much so that I’ve probably over-corrected and am too willing to just say whatever crazy shit is in my head.) At the highest level, the goal of the MPLS MadWomen mentorship program is to foster connections that help women pull each other up and ultimately achieve whatever they hope for in this whacky business. Inherent in that, though, is a need to be real with each other.
To know when to say the hard things and not just smooth things over. To help each other set realistic expectations. To lay bare the shitty things that happened to us in the past so others can learn from our mistakes. Mentors in particular should seriously ask themselves if they’re saying what someone wants to hear or what they need to hear. The best thing a mentor ever did for me was to tell me to stop pretending to be something I wasn’t when I was interviewing for a new job. She suspected I was faking my way into a position that would be a bad fit and that I would end up hating it and she wasn’t wrong.
Mentorship is something we’ve been told to want, but truthfully it’s not for everyone, at least not at all times. So if there’s just one thing you remember from this ramble, it’s this: be honest with yourselves and each other. About why you’re here, what you need, and what’s on your mind.
//image by Karel Rakovsky