Chapter 2

Mentoring in All Its Shapes and Sizes

by Amy Gallo

When you think of mentoring, do you envision a sage executive counseling a junior upstart for years and years? It doesn’t usually work that way anymore. Over the past few decades, mentoring has evolved into guidance and support from all kinds of sources—yet our collective thinking about it hasn’t changed with the times. Here’s a roundup of four dated but persistent myths you’ll need to push past to grow and advance in your career.

Myth #1: You have to find one perfect mentor

It’s actually rare to get through your career with only one mentor; most people today have several. So it makes sense that Boston University management professor Kathy Kram prefers the term developmental network: “It’s that handful of people you can go to for advice and can trust to have your best interests in mind,” she says. Your developmental network can be as large or small as you want and may include people you know on a personal level, such as friends and family members. Some of the key benefits of having more than one mentor within close reach: You can get a variety of perspectives on a challenge you’re facing, you’ll have ready access to people with different areas of expertise, and you’re less likely to wear people out if you have more than one mentor to answer questions and respond to ideas.

Consider how Soki Choi, a mobile app developer whose start-up was acquired, sought career mentoring from several people in her developmental network when she was considering next steps: Should she take a job with another telecom company, start a new business, or switch fields and pursue a degree in medical research, as she’d always wanted to do? For guidance, she turned to Ewa Ställdal, the CEO of a major medical research foundation, who connected Choi with others in the field so she could do her homework; former Ericsson CEO Björn Svedberg, who urged her to pursue her dreams as he wished he had done; and Choi’s friend Martin Lorentzon, who’d made a similarly dramatic career change of his own. All those perspectives shaped her decision to get a medical PhD at the Karolinska Institute rather than accept one of the many telecom job offers that came her way.

Myth #2: Mentoring is always a formal long-term relationship

Because we change jobs and careers more often than we used to, a long-term advising relationship may not be realistic or necessary. Think of mentoring as something you tap when you need it. “Mentoring can be a one-hour session. We don’t have to escalate it to a six-month or yearlong event,” says Karie Willyerd, cofounder of the executive development firm Future Workplace. “You don’t need to wait until you have some big thing in your career,” adds Jeanne Meister, Willyerd’s fellow Future Workplace cofounder. These days, Meister says, mentoring is often “more like Twitter and less like a psychotherapy session.”

Of course, the guidance may be richer and more relevant if it comes from someone who knows you well and understands your goals. You still need to build other relationships, though, so you’ll have connections in place when you require advice that people closer to you can’t provide. Occasionally, you may want to turn to someone who doesn’t know you at all to get one-off counsel from an outsider’s point of view.

Myth #3: Mentoring is only for junior people

“We used to think it was people at early stages of their career who needed mentoring, those just out of MBA programs,” says Kram. “Now we understand that people at every stage benefit from this kind of assistance.” Sometimes, as Meister and Willyerd point out in The 2020 Workplace, it even makes sense to flip the traditional roles and have a junior colleague advising a senior one on things like new technology. No matter where the teaching comes from, if it’s smart and useful, we need to be receptive to it.

That may not come naturally if you think you’re already at the top of your game, as Stephen Wachter did after two decades in the recruiting business. When he founded the firm Osprey One, he landed some of the largest clients in Silicon Valley, including Google, Yahoo, and Facebook. Two years ago, his view of himself changed when he sat next to Susan Robertson, a leadership development consultant, on a plane headed to the East Coast. When they started talking about what they did, Wachter proudly shared his successes—and Robertson asked him, “So, what’s your next step?” The question blew him away. He thought he simply had to keep doing what he was doing. In talking to Robertson, though, Wachter realized he had room to grow in how he interacted with his clients. He also saw that if he stopped developing, the industry would grow without him and pass him by.

Wachter and Robertson have stayed in touch and continue to have a mentoring relationship. They have regularly scheduled conversations in which Robertson helps him think through challenges he’s facing and forces him to reflect on who he is and how he is with others. Because she holds him accountable for his own development, he doesn’t get complacent: “The danger,” he now understands, “is when you think you’ve got it all figured out.”

Myth #4: Mentoring is something more experienced people do out of the goodness of their hearts

Though mentors can get a lot of satisfaction from helping people develop and learn, the relationship should be useful to both parties. Before you reach out to a mentor, think about what you have to offer as a mentee: Can you provide a unique perspective on the organization? Do you bring valuable information that might help your mentor succeed in his job? Whatever it is, be clear with your prospective adviser about what’s in it for him. This does not have to be a direct barter. Even the promise of future help, if and when it’s needed, may persuade a mentor to share his time and energy with you.

Now that you have a better understanding of what mentoring can be, do you need it? “The place to start is with self-assessment, to find out what are the challenges in front of you . . . and why,” says Kram. “Then ask yourself, do you have the relational resources to handle those challenges?” If the answer is no, it may be time to seek out one mentor or several, junior or senior. The key, as you’ll see throughout this guide, is to find the right kind of advice from the right person at the right time.

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Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review. Follow her on Twitter at @amyegallo.

Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on February 1, 2011