Finding Mentors
Speaking personally, the people in my life who have helped me develop my personal and professional skills seem to have largely found me rather than the other way around. A senior executive once said to me “Well you don’t sow your seed on unfertile soil do you, because it is simply wasted!” I think he meant that if someone does not have the capacity to develop and learn either as a result of their intellect, skills and abilities or the mental ability to accept that they have always have more to learn and that they may sometimes have made a mistake which they have to accept, learn from and move on, then they are not worth mentoring.
Everyone’s resources are limited in terms of time and energy and we should not waste them! Many of my mentors have been outside of my working environment, people who have shown me how to approach life in a different way, or with a new perspective, how to prioritise my daily schedule and the demands people place on me and I am still learning!
A mentor is often described as a wise or trusted counsellor, this means that they must have life skills and have actually experienced and dealt with some of the issues that we now need to address, not just have read it in a book or been told it in a training seminar. Whilst many people can give advice some good some bad, much fewer can impart wisdom. So how do we recognise wise words? Well I think that first we have to have trust in the person that they value us and the impact that their words will have on us and our future.
We also have to trust that they do not have any other vested interest in influencing our behaviour, and that is not always easy to determine at the beginning of a mentoring relationship! Mahatma Gandhi said that a teacher who establishes rapport with the taught, becomes one with them, learns more from them than he teaches them. This is true with a lot of the mentoring that I undertake working with others and we have to be open to new experiences and new ways of doing things. So choose your mentors well and if they choose you then be open to their teaching!
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