Beyond the Myth of the Perfect Mentor

Question: How have you developed your relationship with your mentor and with your network of developmental relationships? What other types of mentors have you sought out?

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Chameleon

My mentor, Craig Muir, is probably the busiest professional that I have ever come into contact with. His time is in short supply because he deals with both the management side of building companies and with the ground operations, thereby essentially doing it all. I believe I have developed my relationship with my mentor by helping him organize and ground his ideas for the future of his firm. Working with him, you quickly learn that he has an idea for everything. More often than not though, he will not convey his plans to others thereby making it difficult to know which direction he wants to move in. I ask ample questions which give my mentor the opportunity to cement down his thoughts in order to better explain and shape his plans. My responsibilities are serving as his eyes and ears on the ground and providing him with the most recent updates as to what is growing in an industry and what milestones and checkpoints we have been reaching with our current projects. My mentor’s and I relationship really began to grow after I did an evaluation assessing the size and the potential of auditory related technology market that exists. I believe that my outline gave relevant details succinctly and included ideas about untapped markets. Since then, we have come to discuss plans to implement platforms and systems of organization for all of the firm’s portfolio companies. We have also developed a more informal relationship as well where we freely talk about the NBA playoffs and how Miami is going to win it all. I’m excited to obtain more responsibilities and projects to sink my teeth into, but also hope that I will also get more face time with my mentor in the future. I have definitely taken the chameleon approach to working with him to mirror and fit the needs of organization and grounding that my mentor needs. It is difficult at times simply because I am not always the most organized person myself, but I am definitely growing to learn that I can be flexible with whomever I work with and always make the best of a situation. Because my mentor commutes 2 hours each way, he only works 3 days a week. I come in 40 hours a week and look to a couple of other executives who are there full time. There are a total of 4 other executives who work in the office and each have their own individual projects that they work on. I have developed relationships with them to learn more about what they do and their career paths which brought them there. It is great to talk these executives in a non-work assignment setting, because I am able to have a conversation with them to learn more about the industry and about my own career interests as well.

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The Cover Page

It has been very easy to get to know my mentor. Jim is a proficient story teller, but with endless anecdotes and a self-proclaimed attention deficit it is often hard to get a word in. So while I feel like I know him fairly well, I can’t say that the feeling is reciprocated toward me. I am starting to be a little more forward with my contributions to the conversations and am trying to find different ways to express myself through my work. But this is challenging. First, because Jim likes to talk more than he likes to listen and second because the “voice” that I would often like to infuse in writing assignments are edited out before they make it to Jim’s desk. Lawyers don’t like my effusive “voice”. I’m debating whether or not to bake cupcakes… but somehow I don’t think this will really get me noticed as smart and competent – I’ll just be “that girl who can bake really good cupcakes”.

Lucky for me, I have a lot of alternative superiors and mentors. I am the lowest on the totem pole… I don’t think anyone would even qualify as my peer. My office is small and very communal; every person in the office offers a developmental relationship. The person I spend the most time and who is the closest thing to a peer is the other intern, Johnny. He is a third year law student and has been interning at the firm for a month longer than I have. Especially during my first week, I learned immensely from him – what to wear, how long to take for lunch. As a law student he has given me great insight into the application process and what life is like in law school. He has also known Jim for a substantial amount of time through the mock trial team at his university. However, I have learned that though he has known Jim longer he isn’t necessarily an expert on what Jim wants. His experience doesn’t completely negate my gut feelings and intuition. We were asked to step up the physical presentation of a report that we completed together and one of my ideas was to create a cover page with an engaging graphic. Pretty basic stuff. To my surprise, this idea was critiqued by Johnny as excessive and inconsequential, Jim most certainly would hate it. But Jim loved it. So I guess my takeaway for this assignment and for my experience more generally is to listen to others and to seek advice but to not be afraid to make a cover page.

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Mentor(s)

I feel like I lucked out with my placement at the Center. I can’t name one person on the staff who hasn’t shown me kindness and a willingness to teach. Most of the staff is made up of middle-aged women who love to eat chocolate and make jokes. There’s this one older lady in particular who is the sassiest and the funniest of the group. She intimidates me more than the CEO does. Although I haven’t been able to find a witty response to the quips she fires at me, I learned to cater to her weakness of desserts and launch brownies at her. The key to fitting in at this office is to have a sense of humor and do good work.

Now, I’ve made friends with all of the staff and enjoy talking about other things that don’t involve work. It puts us on a personal and trusting level. Unfortunately, while I have made a connection with everyone on staff, I have not been able to make a strong connection with my mentor. I always say hello to her and ask if she needs help. However, she either refuses my help, or tells me to work with another person on staff. She is never unpleasant, but she is a little socially awkward around me. But, she does trust me to do a good job. This week we had a leadership forum targeted towards leaders around Houston who are 35 years old or younger. The event was a huge success and I was the main person helping make it run smoothly. My mentor, who had other things to do, trusted me with expensive video equipment to interview the participants. So the relationship is fine, it’s just not strong and personal.

I have found other mentors: I work closely with the Director of Leadership Engagement and with the office assistant. Both are wonderful people and have given me responsibilities that are much larger than simply making nametags. The office assistant is, like Dustin said, the most powerful one in the office. She has been there for years and knows the ins and outs of everything. She knows the answer to any question and is on top of everything everyone is working on. She’s awesome and I’m ecstatic that I’m working closely with her.

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Mentor(s)

My favorite thing about my time at NSF has been learning from the amazing people at the office. Terry Davies is my official mentor, and right-off-the-bat was incredibly helpful and hands-on in getting me to share my goals. She assigned me challenging tasks from day one (I’m sure due to the fact that Tina did such an awesome job last year, and she believed that SME had sent her another superstar! Yikes!) and always provided constructive feedback. I did my best to turn in my best work, on time, and put my familiarity with excel and reading data to good use. I’ve been respectful, curious, and flexible, which have all definitely helped forge a stronger relationship. Unfortunately, with increasing demands at the US Geological Society, Terry only came into the office twice my second week and then had to go out of town for a funeral.

Though I would have loved more time with Terry and am looking forward to continuing our relationship when she gets back, it has been great developing relationships with other mentors who have helped me develop in career and psychosocial functions: Neysa, Lee, and Myra.

Neysa and Lee work closely with Terry and therefore in terms of hierarchical structure of the company, they were the first people that I turned to for guidance. I have mimicked my behavior with Terry towards them and it’s been working great so far!  I’ve had the chance to take on more responsibilities around the office and have also had great non-work-related conversations with the both of them.

I recognize that these relationships don’t follow the typical initiation, cultivation, separation, and redefinition sequence as described in the paper but the reciprocity aspect of its existence was really interesting to read about. I initially didn’t realize that my mentors were also (to a much lesser extent though!) benefitting from my work and feedback. It definitely made me feel a lot less like a “parasite” so to speak, when I took the chance to reflect on how I am contributing -and how I can contribute even more- to the NSF and my mentors in the future.

Myra is my third mentor who I sought out myself. Myra is a computer engineer and worked for NASA for 20 years before coming the NSF! She has been my go-to person to discuss my future goals because she “tells it like it is” and has pointed in the direction of great people to get in contact with based on my goals and interests.

After reading the “Making partner” paper, I have definitely started observing my mentors’ behaviors and have attempted to mimic their different styles. I am still in the process of finding what works best for me, and I’m having a blast with it!

I cannot believe that I have just 5 weeks to go! I have been extremely blessed with all the incredible people that I have met so far and am excited to see where these relationships will go in the future.

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My Developmental Network

Our cohort mentor at Virgo is in neither of the departments I have projects in over the summer. As such, he has taken up the role of an outside superior. Despite not being in either department, he is very well connected, and a great source of exposure. Anytime we may come with a question that has arisen in our process, if he doesn’t know the answer he is always able to point us in the direction of someone who does. Also, because we are in a new environment culturally, he helps with many psychosocial functions. His counseling on personal issues that have arisen have created a trust and friendship between us.

Because our mentor is not departmentally involved with my projects, I have had to seek other forms of mentorship. I am currently working in the design and operational excellence departments within Virgo, and in each I have different types of mentors that have helped me build my developmental network. In the design department, my task is to help with the current redesign of one of the valves. However, with very little experience or knowledge in this field, I have sought a mentor that has kindly taken up teaching me the important aspects of the designs and the problems they face. It is by understanding these problems that I am able to work on my assignments.

In the operational excellence project, we are required to observe the process on the shop floor. I have found that having a mentor who sits in a desk upstairs has not been as beneficial as building relationships with different people on the floor. They are able to answer my questions with more updated information and a personal perspective. My two mentors on the shop floor have been able to give me the coaching and feedback necessary to perform the analysis required to make our project successful.

At the same time as I search for mentors, I find ways to make those relationships mutually beneficial. With our cohort mentor, I have found that he has implemented a very loose structure of what he expects from us. As such, I have worked to create a plan that will enable myself to be as productive as possible while finding ways to keep him posted with new developments and struggles we are facing. By taking a proactive approach, he has been more willing to find more challenging assignments and help in creating our developmental networks. With my design mentor, I have taken notes and requested additional reading material to help me learn more quickly. Because he has seen that I have thoroughly understood the material and am able to prove that understanding, he has trusted me to do the work he has taught me for a new set of valves. With my operational excellence mentors, their coaching and feedback has enabled me to also take their perspective of shop floor efficiency and find ways to make their suggestions a reality that will help them beyond my time here.

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Developing a relationship with my mentor and other lesser developmental relationships has definitely been harder than I anticipated.  My mentor is often out of the office and I typically see him only at scheduled meetings once or twice a week.  One of the members of his research team was assigned to be my direct supervisor, so if I have questions I generally ask her.  However she works from home about half of the time and so questions are generally asked and answered by email, not the best way to build a mentoring relationship.  Generally I have very little supervision and I have learned that if I want feedback, need help, or want to build a network I have to take the initiative.  At first I was nervous about being an inconvenience if I needed to ask a question or make sure my work is on the right track.  However, I have learned that it is better to ask as I have generally gotten really helpful notes that make my work much better.  My mentor and my supervisor both are very busy, but every time I talk to them I get the sense that they really want to get to know me and serve as mentors.  I just have to make the effort to find a time when they are available and do what I can to facilitate a relationship.  I also have been able to learn from the interns who have been at IFRI longer than I have.  Since the other IFRI interns are generally graduate students, they are close enough to my age to relate easily while still having more professional experience that makes them great people to learn from.

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Mentors, Relationships, and Mentor Relationships

In my time at Virgo I’ve developed relationships with people who are above and below me on the heirarchical ladder, as well as my internship peers. My relationship with my official mentor is unique, because he is also in charge of the entire cohort’s stay in Pune. Since we always work in Virgo as a group, and we typically leave the logistical planning of our stay to the one of us who grew up in India, I don’t have many direct interactions with him at all.

            I have also tried to seek mentorship from the CEO of the Virgo, though not very much since he’s only been in town for a week. Earlier this week he invited us all on a few hikes around Pune, and I’ve gotten to know him a bit more through that. I am planning to conduct one of my executive interviews with him in the coming weeks.

            Though I wouldn’t consider them professional development mentors, I’ve also made important technical mentors out of several factory workers and supervisors. After spending time in certain parts of the valve factory, I’ve been able to identify people who can give me the information I need for my project. Some people are too busy, and many of them don’t speak English, but I’ve met a few key people who I know that I can go to if I have questions about the valve-manufacturing process that my peers cannot answer.

            In our first few weeks at Virgo we sat in many different meetings in which we were introduced to a lot of people. One of the these people was the head of the Operational Excellence department, and he in turn introduced us to some of the people that work under him. He said that if we ever had any questions or needed any assisstance that we could ask them. At one point last week I needed someone to explain a key aspect of some data that I had acquired, but I was unable to locate my mentor Ajay so I went with one of the OpEx workers. He was initially surprised that I would go to him for help, but he was able to answer my question. It may not seem like much, but talking to somebody who I didn’t know took me out of my comfort zone and helped me to develop, if not a mentor, then at least an important and useful contact.

            Finally, this week we began a second assignment. I was given an individual assignment and mentor within the Design department. It’s very easy and comfortable for me to take a backseat whenever I’m in a group, so this second assignment has been a good opportunity to develop an individual relationship with a superior, rather than one in which I’m merely another American college intern. I feel like this relationship has the potential to be very good for me to learn technical, as well as general professional skills.

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Finding Mentors

When I got to IFRI, I discovered that I was going to be one of only three or four interns who would not sit up on the second floor in the “open space” with the rest of the interns.  Initially, I was a bit disappointed to be sitting downstairs with the two staff members and the other intern in my department, because it would mean that I would be missing out on the rapport developed between the other interns.  It took two weeks at the most, though, for me to realize how lucky I had actually been.

Before this summer, I didn’t have any background in energy policy.  It’s been invaluable for me to be able to sit with the rest of my department, then, because it means I’m constantly surrounded by people who are experts in the field where I still have so much to learn.  I was apprehensive when I first sat down with my mentor to discuss what I would be doing for the summer, because I didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot by telling her that I didn’t really know anything about energy at all.  She was really helpful on that first day, though, and has continued to be, giving me guidance, direction, and advice on my paper topic, while at the same time giving me quite a bit of free rein to direct my own research.

My mentor often has to be out of the office at meetings, which means that when she is in, she’s usually quite busy with her other work.  Considering that my office is right outside hers, we haven’t had as much time to talk as I had imagined that we would.  I know I’ve built her trust so far with my work, though; last week she gave me a pretty challenging project that I don’t think she would have given me if she hadn’t trusted me.  One of the other reasons I am really glad I ended up sitting in my department is that it has given me the opportunity to develop a great relationship with the researcher in my department.  She has a desk in the same office as me, and she has been so helpful, making sure I knew where things were and that I understood what I was doing.  The office coordinator has been extremely kind and helpful as well.

I know that sometimes I have a tendency to be too shy, to my own detriment, and it can take me awhile to open up and form relationships.  I realize that is something I am still working on this summer, but it has been good to sit in my department with just two other people, because it means I am getting to know them very well, and I am not so hesitant to for advice because I have several great mentors with whom I get to interact very frequently.

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Mentors

At Sharpstown, we have gone through a crazy past couple of weeks, with my mentor (the principal) being out for a good portion of last week and his week getting consumed by budget matters this week. I haven’t yet developed and cultivated and created a relationship with my mentor that I am happy and satisfied with. He has taken me to meetings of other Houston principals and has asked my opinions one-on-one about various topics from teacher candidates to my view on the focus on testing in public schools. But I feel like it still takes more effort than I am happy with. Part of the problem is that school is hectic and things are always coming up (so conversations longer than 10 minutes are extremely rare to come by), but part of the problem is also that I am unsure of how to approach this. From him, I am learning a huge amount about how decisions by school administration are made, but that is mostly from observing and taking part in the meetings and discussions. On a professional level, I feel like I have learned more from other people in the school who I have just started conversations with (like some of the department chairs). That is my goal for the next two weeks; to ensure that before the summer is almost done, I will have made my relationship with my mentor into one that I am happy with and can say is as I wanted it.

But schools offer a huge number of other opportunities to learn from other teachers and administrators. I sat down with the Social Studies department chair one afternoon and had talked with her for an hour about what being a Social Studies teacher is like in a public school, about my concerns as a teacher (which led to her offering me the chance to sub for her during the upcoming school year), and about how teaching Social Studies specifically is like. I have talked with almost every one of the 7 assistant principals about their experiences as teachers and why they’ve stayed in education and what drove them to want to do school leadership. One conversation I had, he reoriented my entire outlook on the difference between schools in different areas of the city. That conversation led to a shift in where I want to start teaching. And I have gotten to know several of the teachers teaching summer school, trying to learn what they feel makes a successful teacher and using what I can to create the kind of teacher that I want to be.

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Mentors, mentees, and everything in between

Between discussions with my cohort and reading through the tumblr, I’ve come to realize how different my mentor relationship is. It seems like many mentors are frequently gone or away, which necessitates that the mentees take initiative and develop other relationships. For better or for worse, my situation is different. Ever since I arrived, Charlie has been great at looking out for me, answering questions, and making sure I’m kept busy. Pretty much daily, we discuss what’s going on and he’ll answer any questions I have and ask me how I like what I’m doing. Quite honestly, there really hasn’t been much I have hadto do to keep busy. I’ve still tried to get know other people in the office (both for advice and new work), and with a smaller, more intimate company like Clean Line, this is actually fairly easy to do; however, I’ve probably been moving more slowly than other mentees, because I could easily get by without trying too hard to reach out.

Thus far, the actions I’ve personally taken to develop the mentor-mentee relationship haven’t been incredibly novel: I’ve been asking good questions, providing clear updates, and also sharing a few personal stories. So far, everything is going predictably, but I’ve been struggling with the question of what it takes to be a good mentee. I know I have a great mentor, so I feel obligated to respond and be a great mentee. In addition, many of the other employees are excited to answer my questions and help me out; all I have to do is ask. I have burgeoning developmental relationships with most of the other analysts in the office, but I haven’t had too many similar level interactions with the VPs. However, just watching some of the more experienced team members’ contributions in meetings has been a great learning tool. All the employees are extremely knowledgeable about the wind and transmission industries, and many can supplant their opinions with useful stories from past jobs. It’s been interesting to note how the other employees warm up to me as I warm up to my position and learn more about the industry. At first, I feel like I was looked at as Charlie’s intern, but after a few weeks (which is actually a surprisingly large chunk of the internship), I’m regularly getting asked by others to help them out. It’s a great feeling to be trusted, and I have to work hard to show them that their trust is not misplaced.

Next weekend, some the guys in the office are going out to Lake Somerville to have a guy’s day, and I feel like I can use the bonding time as a springboard to develop new mentor-mentee relationships with other people. It’ll be a good time to get to know others on a personal level, and the best mentor-mentee relationships are fueled not only by common tasks, but by common interests.

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The Mentor-Protégé Relationship

In Beyond the Myth of the Perfect Mentor the author states that the initiation phase of a mentor-protégé relationship typically takes 6 months to a year, and cultivation will not really occur until the foundation of the relationship has been established. For our purposes this summer though, this time frame has to be vastly accelerated and it falls on us to make sure this occurs. For me, I have made an effort to get to know Goran on a personal level. For example, the first time we met we talked at length about football, hockey and various other sports. Then later that night I received an email from Goran with an article about a breaking news story involving my favorite team, the Buffalo Bills. Now we frequently talk about the latest sporting news, but that quickly evolved into more personal conversations, which I feel has resulted in us moving quickly through the initiation phase. I also feel that a big reason we moved so quickly into a cultivation stage was because Goran is very eager to play a mentorship role. For instance, in only the second week of my internship we went out to lunch and he brought with him about 5 books concerning management and leadership that made a significant impact on him and thought could really aid in my development. Unfortunately as the owner and president of Champion, Goran and I don’t work together on a regular basis, but I always feel welcome in his office and find him receptive and excited about answering any questions I have.

I feel that I have had the unique opportunity to have two mentors at Champion. One is of course Goran, who has been a mentor to me in all aspects concerning management and running a company. The other, though, is my supervisor Kyle Owens. Kyle has become a mentor for me on the technical side of things and has really helped me understand what it means to be an engineer in industry, which is something I have not encountered at all at Rice. The development of this mentor-protégé relationship started because we work together every day and Kyle is the person who I go to when I run into problems with my project. I have also noticed that Kyle loves to teach. As a result, his transition into a mentorship role was a natural switch.

I try every day to learn as much as I can from Kyle and Goran as well as uphold my end as the protégé, so that they can take value from our relationship as well. At Champion Fiberglass I’ve been lucky enough to have two great mentors in two very different fields that are excited to help me grow as both an engineer and leader. For that reason I look forward to the challenges I face each day so that I may continue to learn from them both. 

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Mentors

I am pretty happy with the way my relationship with my mentor is developing so far. First off, my mentor is only 26, which means she’s a lot younger than the other employees in our office. Her age makes it easier to connect with on a non-professional level; she’s full of suggestions about things to do in DC that are geared towards young people. It’s also been really helpful for me to hear about how she ended up working at the Department of Education, and talking to her has me thinking about what the best path is for me to take after I graduate. Finally, she’s always willing to explain how things are done in the federal government, and I have learned so much about how things are run at federal agencies in just the first four weeks of my internship. 

I have a pretty good amount of contact with my mentor on a daily basis. Because she’s the point person for literally anything in the Department that has to do with bullying, she has a lot to deal with. However, she always asks me and the other intern to attend meetings with her, and afterwards we usually debrief on the way back to the office. These debriefing sessions are super helpful for clarifying issues that I didn’t understand during the meeting, and for sharing our opinions on different topics related to education. She usually assigns tasks via email, but I try to make it a point to stop by her office at least once a day to ask if there’s anything else I can do to help.

In terms of fostering relationships with others in my office, I’ve worked a lot with the woman who is in charge of this year’s grant applications. Even though she’s older, we instantly clicked because we’re both pretty sassy, and there’s a lot of laughing and sarcasm whenever we work together. I’m always careful to not let it come off as immature or unprofessional, however.

Although I’ve been working a decent amount with others in the office besides my mentor, I wouldn’t say that I’ve been able to find additional mentors. I think part of this is because so many of the people who work in my office aren’t necessarily in leadership roles. My office doesn’t make bullying policy; instead, they just implement things that are set by the political staff members of the Department of Education. This was disappointing for me to find out, but I’m still trying to observe how the directors of the office handle themselves. For example, I am always making note of how our office’s director conducts staff meetings and handles the conflicts and side conversations that inevitably pop up. Since being VP of Baker requires me to manage others, this is knowledge that will help me when I get back to Rice that I didn’t necessarily expect to gain while in DC. 

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Reflections of a Protégé

My relationship with my mentor has developed immensely over the past four weeks.  My mentor was gone two weeks ago, but I would say our relationship has especially deepened the past week.  I am currently helping my organization launch a large fundraiser.  This task has provided the context for my mentor and I to collaborate in ways that cut across our generational (and other background) differences.  One piece of advice from the “Beyond the Myth of the Perfect Mentor” article that I found particularly insightful is that “the subordinate must take some responsibility for establishing a productive relationship” (pg. 6).  There are times when I want my mentor to simply sit down and “mentor me” in the traditional sense.  However, given the often fast-paced nature of the office, this is just not realistic on a routine basis.  The majority of our conversations are focused on the tasks and needs of our organization.  However, while traveling across town to meetings the past week, I have had some particularly rewarding conversations that have made my work at the organization even more worthwhile. 

Now that I have completed nearly half of my SME, I am really beginning to form developmental relationships with individuals other than my mentor.  Being an intern, I feel it is all too easy to adopt a self-centered expectation about what my organization, my mentor(s), and others will be able to provide me.  However, as discussed in the “Beyond the Myth” article, a mentor-protégé relationship is two-sided: “Keep in mind that developmental relationships must be mutually beneficial to both parties” (pg. 13).  Since I cannot predict what I will be able to gain from my relationships with others, I can only really focus on what I am able to provide to others.  This mindset has caused me to go out of my way to talk with employees who work at my organization’s neighboring nonprofit one floor down.  This mindset has also propelled me to take the initiative and eat lunch not only with my mentor, but also with the manager of communications and administration.  Just today (Sunday), I met my organization’s Sudan Project Manager for dinner in the galleria area.  This manager is from Darfur and moved to America in 2005.  He told me about his time studying law in Egypt as well as about his family and wife in Sudan, whom he is trying to bring to America at this moment.  In this conversation, we also talked about some of the goals of our organization’s fundraiser for the next few weeks.  I loved this dinner conversation because I was able to both professionally and personally engage with someone who comes from an entirely different background and yet whom I have come to greatly admire.  As detailed in the “Beyond the Myth” article, I am still in the “Initiation” phase with my mentors, but I feel that these relationships have true potential to develop much further. 

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How to get hold of the busiest career woman I've met

Speaking just of my ongoing projects, I could not ask for more. I am working on three different projects of different foci (business, clinical, and hybrid), and they all seem to be running very well so far. However, when it comes to my relationship with my mentor, it becomes more interesting. Literally, she is the busiest career woman I have ever met in my life. Just days ago, I was scheduled a meeting on Thursday with her to give updates on one of my projects that she directly oversees. However, she mailed me Wednesday night and said she was on a flight to Chicago for an urgent, mandatory meeting and would have to miss the meeting with me. This has happened a few times since the beginning of my internship. I was not disappointed at all, but I just wish I could build our relationship outside my project. Strictly, my mentor-mentee relationship has not yet gone beyond the sponsor-protégé scope. She asks for specific tasks and provides guidance, while I complete them and return with quality. In order to transform it to a mentor-protégé relationship, I need to make more points of contact with her.

I want to make it clear, however, that the reason that I have not yet been able to emphasize the more personal aspect of our relationship is largely situational. My company just finished moving to a new location, and it took us a while to get organized and settle into a new place. Moreover, now that my company is looking for an official approval for our very first, yet highly potent drug, the FDA has been in our office and inspecting our data for weeks. Most of my company’s VPs have worked overtime for weeks to prepare for the inspection, and so has my mentor. Therefore, I completely understand how busy she is and why she cannot dedicate more time to me. I still have bright six more weeks where I can certainly change the paradigm of my mentor-mentee relationship. As I have explained above, the issue is largely situational, and as soon as my mentor has more room, I am very hopeful that we can interact more.

Instead of clinging to my super-busy mentor, I stepped outside of my comfort zone and tried to meet other individuals who could potentially serve as my mentor. As a result, I have built a sound mentor-protégé relationship with one of the VPs at my company who helps me with one of my projects. We regularly eat lunch together and share our fun personal stories. We happen to have attended east-coast boarding schools that are rivals with one another, and we have similar family backgrounds. Besides the luncheons, he has invited me to his house for one of the remaining weekends, and I am very happy that I have found a great personal mentor besides my original one. I feel very fortunate to have met both mentors who are all very precious and inspirational to me.

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Mentors, Mentors Everywhere

One of my three main goals, to get to know people at the office as more than co-workers, has gone really well so far.  To accomplish this goal and stretch myself, I said that I would invite someone to lunch every week.  For me, this has been the key to finding mentors and building long-term relationships.

At first it was scary to walk into someone’s office and ask them to lunch, but with encouragement from my supervisor, it became easier.  I realized that my invitees usually felt honored that I wanted to get to know them better.  At lunch we have talked a little about work and their leadership advice for me, but getting out of the office has been great for steering the conversation toward more casual topics.  I know my co-workers as real people now.  I don’t only ask about work, but about their families and hobbies.

Connecting with my actual mentor could have been a difficult task and could have “ruined” my internship.  Annie’s fiancé just got a job in Dallas so even though she’s still working for HCL, she only comes in to the office every three or four weeks.  Thankfully I still receive tasks and feedback from her, and I email her regular updates but the thing that really helped us bond was inviting her to lunch on her first visit.  We got to talk about how she ended up at HCL, what she misses about Houston and is starting to like in Dallas, and her leadership style.  As it turns out, the office had recently been to a training that included a DISC-like assessment.  It was neat that we already shared some vocabulary about people’s different processes of working, leading, and interacting with their colleagues.  After going out to lunch, I felt even better about my mentor/mentee relationship at HCL; I felt like I knew and trusted the person behind the emails.

But what is really great about my mentor’s work situation is that it forces me to find other mentors.  Both of my daily supervisors, Chrystal and Emily, have become mentors for me.  I ask them about projects, about how they have dealt with problems in the past, and observe how they handle phone calls and group conferences.  Chrystal always asks great clarifying questions about events and projects and I’ve tried to use this to brainstorm ways I can contribute.  Emily is great with potential donors on the phone.  She’s really sweet, but persistent.  She has taught me how to follow-up relentlessly, but still get friendly responses. With all this mentor-seeking experience, I have even reached out to an older playwright for advice on how to create more connections in the outside theatre world.  Our short coffee date turned into a long conversation and I came away with more knowledge about the field.

Finding mentors has given my confidence everywhere and in these next five weeks, I aim to use this confidence to push myself even further.

[perfectmentor-blog]

Mentors

My relationship with my mentor has progressed slowly over the past few weeks because he is constantly running to meetings and not in the office while I am working. My main interactions with Jeff, my mentor, consist of meetings in which we talk about the bigger picture impact of my summer projects. He outlines his main goals for me this summer and then I work with my coworkers to determine, in detail, how I will achieve these goals. Although Jeff assigns me big projects he does not teach specifically how to perform these tasks. This task oriented sponsor relationship falls to a couple of the other coworkers, which has allowed me to develop a network of relationships in the office. To complete many of my various tasks, whether it be writing content for the website or organizing data on the computer, I often have to seek help from various employees in the office. While we are at work this allows me to develop a relationship with them as though they are superiors, but because of the culture and atmosphere of New Living we can also joke around with each other and treat each other as peers. The lack of a hierarchical structure and the focus on task design helps to foster these types of developmental relationships. Everyone coworker at New Living has specific projects with due dates that they work on throughout the year. There might be a couple people assigned to each project, but for the most part everyone’s project is different, which eliminates any competition amongst peers. In fact, this structure and the atmosphere at New Living helps to foster teamwork and a sense of unity amongst members of the organization.

Because my mentor is not always present and I have had to seek help from others in my organization I have found it easier to seek out other mentors. There is not one mentor in particular that admire most, rather after observing how everyone works and interacts I have been able to determine what qualities I admire most in everyone and emulate those qualities. In away this is similar to the chameleon effect Ibarra describes in “Making Partner.” Since everyone has different strengths and weaknesses I believe it is most effective to recognize others strengths and learn from them in the areas they are best at! For example, one of our sales associates Molly is great at enthusiastically interacting with customers and her energetic personality and knowledge of health is something I admire and seek to learn from her. Amanda, has a different set of skills, as she is great with writing, marketing, and editing the website. I look to her as my mentor when I need assistance or want to learn more about these things she is good at. These are just two of my other mentors at New Living, but I have learned everything from how to mix paint to how to design a website to how to order inventory from various coworkers!

[perfectmentor-blog]

My New Mentor

       I have learned a lot in my first few weeks at Edelman, especially about what it means to have a mentor. When I first heard that I was receiving not only a mentor, but a mentor who had served the role for several years running, I was excited. I thought: “Awesome! I am going to have somebody that will look after me, make sure I am doing well each day, give me tons of challenging assignments/projects introduce me to everyone he knows, etc etc.” Needless to say, this didn’t exactly happen. And I think I am all the better for it.

            My mentor is a Vice President and handles mostly B to B along with some oil, natural gas, and energy clients. In the beginning, since I knew I had a natural “in” with him, I sort of followed him at the heel, essentially asking him for things to work on or people to talk to. The interactions I had with others work-wise were mostly through him. After the first week this changed, but it wasn’t until he gave me an independent assignment that I was able to drop the role of the parasite. He asked me to do some research on field trends; I had never done this before. I was worried about how to go about doing it and I went into his office and fumbled with even knowing what the right questions were to ask. But he intentionally answered in generalities. While probably done extremely inefficiently, I finally decided on a course of action and ran with it and sent it in. Sure enough, it was a success.

This experience taught me a few things. Most importantly though, was this: in the same way that I had to grow naturally into that assignment/project, the mentor / mentee relationship requires natural growth from both parties. We can be assigned mentors, but you cannot assign this kind of relationship and expect it to be successful, in the same way that you can’t “assign” someone a spouse or a friend. Just like any relationship, it must be natural.

And with that, my focus shifted. I ended up being more interested in a different department and began a transition there. Sure enough, a natural mentor relationship began to form with that department head, who I am now officially reporting to. Even though at times I feel like a sound board, he is always willing to give me an in depth view of things and has brought me along on interesting projects. Although the relationship has not fully solidified itself, it is definitely in the making. Since I spend an increasing amount of time with him, I have spent less time with my assigned mentor. And it’s ok.

I still feel the need to stay in contact with my mentor in a more than just an “I’ve met you” kind of way, but I am excited to cultivate this new relationship and see where it takes me!