Why you should consider having a mentor
What a mentor actually is and why it is valuable to have one (or more)
What is a mentor?
A mentor is someone with experience and knowledge.. someone who has done it before. They share their experiences, help, advice, and empower those who are less experienced or those younger than them.
You can see mentor relationships all around you; parents mentoring their kids, successful entrepreneurs mentoring small businesses, professionals mentoring fresh graduates or new joiners, professors mentoring their students, etc. It is all around you and i’m pretty sure you have seen it and have experienced it yourself, it may be that you never gave it much thought or related it to its “official” term used in the workplace today.
Here are some famous examples you may have heard of:
Steve Jobs mentoring Mark Zuckerberg: Mark Zuckerbeg have appreciated Steve Job’s insights and advice when he was developing Facebook. They often took walks together.
Warren Buffett mentoring Bill Gates: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates reluctantly started talking to each other after being invited to the same dinners. Over the years, Bill Gates have formed a relationship with Buffet and sought advice regularly especially in regards to IBM & Microsoft. Buffet pushed Gates to think and see things from different angles.
Mahatma Gandhi mentoring Nelson Mandela: although they never met, Gandi left his experiences and teachings in his biographies and books, that was embraced by Mandela and influenced his thinking and leadership.
Why is it important that YOU have a mentor?
I will strongly encourage you to look for someone you look up to in different areas of your life. Do you know someone who you think has a great relationship? how about someone who excelled in his/her career? or someone who you think is physically and mentally fit? start looking around you and start assessing.. do you have someone you look up to in your circle? if not, re-consider if you are in the right circle.
Do you have a figure you feel resembles you and you want to grow up to be like? start reading their biographies and researching what did they do, how did they think, and what did they talk about.
Spend some time to deeply think about it, i will later share more articles about what to look for in a mentor, how to find the right mentor, and the best way to approach them.
Meanwhile, here are few reasons why having a mentor in your life is truly valuable and why you should seriously start thinking about it:
Faster learning curve:
Your learning curve becomes steeper and shorter. The time it takes for someone to get the hang of things without guidance from someone who “has done it before” is twice as long as someone with a mentor.
Think about it, mentors tell you common pitfalls they have seen or have experienced before, they tell you about their mistakes and what they learned from it, they advise you on what the best action to take based on their own experience and the experience of those around them (collective knowledge), they make you consider hidden variables in a situation that you did not notice, they teach you their way of doing things and summarize to you concepts after they ingested few books to come up with this knowledge, and the list goes on.
Whether you follow their steps or not is up to you. But no one can deny the fact that finding the right mentor can greatly affect your learning rate.
Character development:
Life is so much more than acquiring knowledge and technical skills. Life is about developing your soft skills and character. Humility, honesty, courage, softness, empathy, forgiveness, mindset, grace are all important for one’s development. And what qualities you choose to inhibit will consequently determine the quality of your life and its different areas, whether in your career, relationships, wealth, health, etc.
As John C. Maxwell puts it, “The better you are at surrounding yourself with people of high potential, the greater your chance for success.” Therefore, mentors can greatly help you reach success at different areas in your life. If your mentor possess great soft skills and character, you can witness first hand its effect and start cultivating the same habits your mentor has.
Invaluable network
Mentors allow you to tap into their network, friends, and colleagues. You will have access to more people of high caliber and success similar to your mentor. Your mentor can also use his/her network to open doors for you to new opportunities. They can allow you to tap into their resources that they have spent years and decades building.
For now, think about the different areas in your life, and think about who you want as a mentor for each of the 8 areas. Write it down in a list.
Coming articles will give you more insight of different qualities to look for in a mentor, the types of mentors, how to approach them, and how can you be a mentor yourself.