Happy National “Thank Your Mentor” Day!
Just after the New Year, I had read an article on the 5 best professional resolutions to make and found a lot of value in the items listed. However, one just really bothered me and was preceded with a post saying: “I’m a mid-level professional and have never had a mentoring relationship.” Later that day and night, I got several really good questions from @carolyngolz, @TorryBruce, @DSchmidtRogers and others which made me really process what a mentor is and how I define a mentor. And so my reflection began.
As I started thinking about what I know or knew about mentors, information gathered mostly from attending sessions at conferences or my observations of others who referred regularly to their mentors, I realized that I thought of a mentoring relationship as a very formal relationship. In fact, I really started hearing my inner voices equate it to dating: you find someone with similar interests and/or backgrounds, ask them to be your mentor (with a little nervousness because what if they said no?!?!), and proceed to have a deep, meaningful relationship. I’ve always perceived that a mentor is someone who is a professional guide, is there to personally support you, has your best interest in mind, creates a two-way street for both the mentor and mentee to grow through the relationship. I still believe this, but now with a different lens.
I started asking myself a lot of questions as I continued to internally process this information, questions such as: Does there have to be a question asked to spark a mentoring relationship? Can a mentoring relationship “just happen”? Can you have more than one mentor? Or mentors who shape various parts of your professional life? What about your personal life? Can a mentor be someone who you’ve never directly worked with, but have admired, looked up to from afar? Thanks to @DSchmidtRogers, I really got to thinking more about my perspective on who my mentors might be.
Then just the other day, I saw that someone posted that they were asked to be on someone’s “board of directors.” I remember reading a blog last year about a “board of directors” and remember it appealing to me back then. Then I realized that maybe I’ve put too much pressure on myself to find a mentor; after all, I’ve had people looking out for me all my career, both on a personal and professional level. Maybe I was looking at mentoring from the wrong angle! There have been lots of influential people who have impacted both my personal and professional life (sometimes those blend!) who may or may not realize they’ve done so, but who I continue to look to for answers, whether intentionally or unintentionally, consciously or subconsciously.
So, on this day of “Thank Your Mentor” day, it’s only appropriate that I reach out to those professionals who inspire me to do good work, be a better professional… to those who have me in mind when they’re at conferences or see opportunities cross their plate… to those who have my back on a personal level and push me, inspire me to be better… to those who aren’t afraid to be real with me. Because really, a mentoring relationship doesn’t have to be formal at all. In fact, if you have someone who’s in your corner and helps you to be the best person or professional, that’s just as great as having a mentor… at least, to me it is!
MichelleSujka 