Ask any successful business person, and they will all admit to having benefited from the advice of a mentor at some point. Many people have achieved great things because someone else believed in them and help them along the way.
Any entrepreneur can benefit from having mentor. The knowledge, advice, and resources a mentor shares depend on the format and goals of the mentoring relationship.
A mentor may share with a mentee information about their own career path, as well as provide guidance, motivation, emotional support, and role modelling. A mentor may help with exploring careers, setting goals, developing contacts, and identifying resources. And as time goes on, the mentor’s role may change with the needs of the mentee.
Some mentoring relationships are part of structured programs with specific expectations and guidelines: others are more informal. But formal or informal, the concept of mentoring is simple, but successful implementation can be challenging. The key characteristics of an effective mentoring relationship in my mind, include the ability and willingness to:
- value the mentee as a person
- develop mutual trust and respect
- maintain confidentiality
- listen both to what is being said and how it is being said
- help the mentee solve his or her own problem, rather than give direction
- focus on the mentee’s development and resist the urge to produce a clone
The first step in finding a good mentor is coming to terms with the knowledge that you can benefit from having one. Understandably there’s a lot of ego, nervous energy and pride involved, but speaking from experience going it alone is admirable but foolhardy and highly flawed approach to taking on the world.
Steve Jobs’ had former Intel manager Mike Markkula. At Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin brought in Eric Schmidt (formerly of Sun Microsystems and Novell) who was appointed CEO when they realised the company’s explosive growth was exceeding their ability to manage it.
So, no matter how incredibly brilliant you think you are, every start-up needs at least one good mentor. Someone, somewhere, has already been through what you’re about to embark on.