Building Mentor and Advocate Networks (The Mentor Play)
Mentors and Advocates
We made the point earlier in the book that none of us can do it all alone. All successful people rely on a network of trusted advisers. People who can help us to develop. People who can talk things through. People who themselves can introduce us to others may also have a valuable perspective.
We don’t need to get into the differences between mentors and advocates. Suffice to say, we are referring to those who can be generally helpful in our mission to develop our careers or professional presence.
Mentors buy into our personal project. They understand what we as the mentee (the individual being mentored) is seeking to achieve. They are on the lookout for opportunities to add to the mix.
And the best mentor relationships stand the test of time. They grow as we grow.
Building Relationships
In many ways, building a relationship with mentors is no different to building relationships with other people.
And we are referring to mentors in the plural. There’s no rule that says we should only have one person as a mentor. It’s a sensible strategy to have a range of expertise to call upon. Two heads (or more!) are better than one.
Dr. Heidi Grant’s excellent book “No One Understands You: and What to Do About It,” talks of three lenses through which we all might be perceived. The Trust Lens, The Power Lens, and The Ego Lens.
Of particular interest is The Power Lens because this is often the relationship that is perceived by the mentee or mentor, or both. The mentee might see the mentor as relatively more powerful (and the mentor may feel the same way).
Some might say this imbalance is implicit within the mentee/mentor “power relationship.”
The flip side is this relative power might distort how we, as prospective mentees, are seen. Dr. Grant makes the point that “Power causes perceivers to rely more heavily on stereotypes and prior expectations. This makes it more difficult for you to distinguish yourself as a unique individual in their eyes.”
If developing a relationship with a mentor now sounds like a tough task, help is at hand.
It comes in the form of “instrumentality.”
Instrumentality suggests that people behave or act in a certain way because they are motivated to select that behavior over other options. This is due to what they expect the result of that behavior to be.
High achievers, such as mentors, tend to display this instrumentality focus. They keep busy with their goals, possibly to the exclusion of others who they perceive as less powerful.
But if we can become someone who helps that powerful person to achieve their goals, to facilitate instrumentality, we can bring ourselves to their attention. The mentor can suddenly realize our potential.
In doing so, they will find the time and energy to perceive us as we really are. We can then take the opportunity to engage them in our personal project.
A natural by-product of this is the power relationship changes. And we can justifiably argue that it changes in a way to fuel the attainment of respective (and mutual) goals. Both mentee and mentor are spurred on to achieve more.
Asking for Help?
It can be a tricky thing: asking for help with our job search, client building challenge, or career development problem.
So, why do it? As in “Ask for help?”
We don’t always need to disclose vulnerabilities. Furthermore, no friend, contact, or mentor wants to feel pressured into “helping” when they really can’t, or don’t have the time.
A better approach is that proposed by informational discussion. Here we are not asking for help, but simply seeking advice, information, or guidance.
Research shows that advice seeking can be very powerful in terms of building relationships with prospective mentors or advocates.
This points to four main effects:
1. Learning. Information is useful. That throwaway comment about a contact or prospective employer can turn out to be a nugget of gold.
2. Perspective taking. Our contact can be brought into our worldview and, similarly, we can better understand theirs.
3. Flattery. Asking someone for advice elevates that person and grants them prestige. Who doesn’t warm to being seen in this way?
4. Commitment. Now we’re getting somewhere! If the method of asking is sufficiently skillful and the contact sufficiently amenable and well-connected, we can move the relationship to a position of advocacy. Very soon we have someone batting on our side, taking our corner and operating on our behalf.
But we should exercise care! All the previous points, and particularly number four, need to be done in a genuine, open, and honest manner.
Anything short of this might lead people to feel manipulated.
The Right Way
It can be difficult to judge the correct approach with mentors. We sometimes agonize over whether we’ve got it right.
But there’s a simple way for us to get into the heads of mentors to really understand them better.
And that’s to become a mentor ourselves.
It’s very easy these days to find opportunities to mentor others. The education sector, professional bodies, and social enterprise groups are just some examples.
Many organizations formalize the rules by which their mentors work and insist that a process of “contracting” is carried out. Both the mentor and the mentee therefore understand things such as time commitment, confidentiality, and at what point the mentoring will conclude.
This way it’s easy to give mentoring a shot, without entering a time-consuming or long-term obligation and mentors invariably find the experience rewarding and enriching.
But I Don’t Want to Brag …
Setting out our case in the presence of a prospective mentor often involves talking about our achievements.
However, for most of us, blowing our own trumpet is hard to do. Why? Well, from a very young age we may have been told: “Don’t boast, don’t show off, don’t stick your head above the parapet.” After all, nobody likes a Smart Alec.
However, we can all think of people who seem to have the uncanny knack of spelling out their successes at the right time, in the right place, in the right way, and to the people who matter. And they seem to be able to do this without an ounce of shame or self-criticism.
So, what’s going on? When does authentic self-projection spill over into bragging and hubris?
In all societies, there are rules or cultural norms that govern modesty. Similarly, there are situations where boastful behavior is tolerated without the individual being labeled a braggart.
So how we can successfully “Blag that brag?” In other words, how we can sing our own praises—even when we don’t really wish to?
One technique is to make our bragging relevant to the situation. For example, if we are asked to extol our virtues during a job interview, the path is clear for us to do just that. It’s acceptable within the context.
Likewise, if someone else should initiate the subject of the brag, we can join in with our own story. If anyone suffers the disdain of others, it will be the initiator and not us.
Context also plays a part in the conditions applying to the listener at the time. If they are attempting to multitask, their attention can be divided or under pressure.
Think of recruitment processes that involve group interaction among the job candidates. Recruiters who moderate the group discussion assignments are often multitasking. Here, the positive information underlying the boast can be absorbed without attributing poor manners to the person who made it.
It also seems to matter in the sense of making comparisons. Telling others that we are better than them (or another) will make us look like someone who has a sense of superiority and who enjoys putting people down.
Alternatively, talking about our own self-improvement and making a comparison of how we were then and how much better we are now, offers a much more balanced perspective.
There’s a bonus if we can tie this into the self-knowledge required to recognize our own development areas and the effort made to improve. So, we could say, “Since realizing x, I’ve worked hard to improve my ….”
Mixing a boast with flattery sometimes helps. In a job interview situation, it shows we’ve done our homework on the organization, while also suggesting a good fit between our values and theirs. For example, “I share the company’s award-winning interest in environmental protection; in my last role, I was responsible for reducing waste by x percent.”
If we have done our homework on the mentor’s achievements and we genuinely have a shared interest or achievement, the same approach would work in a mentor situation.
Social proof can come to the aid of bragging: people are persuaded by the actions of others. Another strategy can be to have someone else, a friend or ally, speak for us.
While a reciprocal agreement (“You brag for me, and I’ll brag for you”) might come across as false, this relatively risk-free way does confirm the importance of developing supportive relationships both in our workplace and more widely in our professions.
People who are prepared to speak up for us, either as advocates or mentors, can have a very powerful effect on how we are seen and perceived. This might just be the difference between our being offered that golden opportunity, or watching it pass by.
A recent phenomenon is the “humblebrag.” This is said to have originated from the sentence limiting idiosyncrasies of social media, such as Twitter.
It’s a kind of “get in, get out quick” strategy in which the brag is presented in the form of, or coupled with, a complaint. One facet is intended to be tempered by the other, for example, “Since my Harvard Business Review article went viral, I’ve been absolutely snowed-under with e-mails!”
As attractive as it might seem, recent research suggests the humble-brag doesn’t work. Furthermore, it has revealed that it would be better just to complain or, if bragging is a must, then deliver the boast as honestly as we feel we can.
The latter technique is more important than it first looks. There are social costs associated with being direct. For example, others may perceive us as insensitive.
Taking the alternative extreme, a Uriah Heep “ever so humble” approach to extolling our virtues can also have a social cost. False modesty is disapproved of as much as humblebragging; the teller might be perceived as both obnoxious and insincere.
Is bragging worth it? As with most things social, we need to think about the context.
We might also think about mixing a subtle social cocktail. In this way, the brag is blended with other ingredients, while avoiding the brash humblebrag.
In other words, a cocktail that’s more Mai Tai than Snakebite!
Raising Our Head Above the Parapet
At the start of the book, we mentioned how competitive the world of work and commerce can be.
Given that we can’t work against this situation, let’s see how we may be able to work with it to raise our profile with prospective mentors.
Networking events that feature speakers as a focus can be useful for building relationships with possible mentors. So, we may be thinking of a situation where there is a single speaker giving a presentation on a topic of interest to them, or maybe a panel of speakers moderated by a host who keeps the discussion on track.
Both types of event and others benefit from a feature that is particularly valuable to us as prospective mentees. This is the Question and Answer slot.
Event Questioning (The Q and A Play)
The Q and A is often used by event promoters to give attendees an opportunity to speak directly with the expert. It stands to reason that it can be a useful way to start a mentoring relationship if we happen to be one of the people asking a question.
The first tip is to make sure that we have researched beforehand so that our question demonstrates prior knowledge of the topic and some understanding of the perspective taken by the speaker. The question should also be short and to the point. As we will be speaking in a room full of people, it’s worth rehearsing the wording to make sure we present ourselves effectively.
The second is to position our question to take advantage of primacy and recency effects. That is, we want to be the first person to ask a question or the last.
Given the unknowns around timing for the Q and A and how it might be moderated, it’s far easier to opt for being the first questioner. We just need to make sure that, as the floor is opened, we are in the eye line of the moderator and quick off the mark in raising a hand.
If a microphone is being circulated, we need to wait calmly for this to arrive. If we blurt out our question immediately, there’s a risk it may not be heard by the panel or speaker (or indeed, appear on a recording of the event if there is one).
Microphone in hand, we can then pause momentarily. Not too long to imply that we have forgotten our question (!), but long enough to build some anticipation around what will be said. It’s also surprising how often a slight imposed pause within the room can have the effect of establishing authority on the part of the questioner.
Once the question has been asked, we should make a point of listening patiently to the answer and taking a mental note of any snippets that might be significant for subsequent relationship building.
It’s enough to leave the questioning at this point and not to ask a follow up (unless we are encouraged to do so by the speaker or moderator). We should let other people in the room have their say.
As a Q and A generally happens at the close of a speaker slot or panel discussion, it usually ends as some other part of the evening commences, for example, break out for drink and food.
It’s at this point, as the Q and A breaks up, that we should make our move.
Without appearing overeager, we can approach the speaker on a one-to-one basis and pick up on the questioning theme. We then have an opportunity to weave in our prepared messages around who we are, what we do, and our personal career project.
It’s a fact that event speakers tend to hold a focus for all those attending an event (this is one of the reasons why professional specialists develop speaking topics and speaking skills—they are used as a marketing tool).
This means that we may find ourselves in a queue to get in front of that person. But the groundwork will have been done through our carefully posed question. If this part has gone well, when we appear before them we will gain recognition from the speaker.
This has a curious but valuable effect based on that remembrance: First, it elevates our status relative to others in the room. Secondly, it smooths the path to valuable engagement with them as we move seamlessly into our networking dialogue and key messages.
The Benjamin Franklin Effect (The BF Play)
A second technique for raising our profile owes its name to one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was a renowned author, printer, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat.
Franklin was also a people person and master networker.
In his long and varied political life, he encountered many situations where he needed to build relationships with those who were more foe than friend.
In his autobiography, Franklin tells how he turned around the animosity of a rival politician into friendship:
Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book and requesting he would do me the favor of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return’d it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favor. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends ...
Now, we’re familiar with the concept of reciprocity: you do something for me and I’ll do something for you. And the “doing” here is something of obvious value at a time when books were scarce and therefore highly desirable possessions.
So, we might be thinking that Franklin offered his political foe a favor to build the relationship in expectation of gaining something in return?
But Franklin didn’t lend a book, he asked to borrow one …
The “Benjamin Franklin Effect” is considered an example of cognitive dissonance. This describes a situation where there is an obvious mismatch (or dissonance) between an individual’s thoughts and attitudes, and their behavior.
The rival politician should not have been willing to lend the book to Franklin, given his animosity toward Franklin’s political views. But he did.
Franklin cleverly focused on common ground—a shared love of books—to engage a psychological principle: if someone helps you, they’ll be ready to help you again.
And more so, than if you have helped them and you are just expecting a favor in return.
The eagle-eyed reader will notice that we’ve slipped into using the word “help.” But its use is appropriate here.
Our lesson is to make it easy for someone to help us out because this is a great relationship-building tool (but notice also that Franklin didn’t explicitly ask for help, he just asked to borrow a book!).
Asking a question within a Q and A context and engaging the Benjamin Franklin Effect are both powerful strategies to raise our profiles with prospective mentors.
Mentors—A Final Word (The “Just Move on” Play)
It can sometimes be a real kick in the teeth when we approach a prospective mentor. And then … we hear nothing further. Diddly squat.
As tough to take as this might seem, and tough because we’ve probably invested a lot of ourselves in making the approach in the first place, there’s a golden rule to follow.
This is: Pick yourself up, dust yourself down … and start all over again.
Mentors don’t have to respond. It’s up to them. In the same way that we are trying to pick winners among the people we approach, they are perfectly entitled to do the same. They are wrong to ignore us of course, but that’s their prerogative. Move on.
Never Give Up
Every wannabee first-time author has a story about how tough it was to get published. Famously, J. K. Rowling was turned down 12 times by publishers. Believe me, I have my own!
Part of the problem is that publishing has, in my opinion, become very much like other forms of media such as film or music. In these spheres and others, it’s now very difficult to break through without some form of top-level help and funding. And even Simon Cowell, the creator of the globally successful “X Factor” and “Got Talent” franchises, doesn’t have enough money to help everyone.
Back in my heyday, the 1970s, new music artistes were regularly given multimillion-dollar contracts for a first or subsequent album. The champagne, and other substances, flowed!
Publishing business models now run on very tight margins. The disruption caused by Internet giants such as Amazon has caused a tsunami of job losses and slashing of profits for those still in the game.
Some publishers tried to pivot to offer an Amazon-light model, others are still clinging on to old ways. Maybe the owners hope they can hang on and get a soft landing to their own retirement. Should they try to sell up, I doubt they’d realize much in value; the world has changed and the good old days of bumper profits and long, lingering client lunches are over.
Many criticize Amazon and their kin. I don’t.
Surely there’s a case for saying that the gravy train of the old ways rolled on for just a little bit too long. Did it really promote the brightest and the best? Look at how the music industry has morphed from a hits chart where the same old names would appear regularly, to one where we have a huge number of new and exciting acts and the chance to experience contemporary music from many, many genres.
This is good. It expands our horizons and makes us better people. My own experience is one of pivoting from playing the same old tracks to one where I now love to listen to many kinds of music, including the latest offerings from Jonas Blue, Kim Petras, and HAIM (ignore these names if you are reading this some years after publication of this book. You won’t know all of them!).
I’m not taking anything away from those established artistes who continually reinvent themselves. David Bowie was an absolute paragon in this respect.
But there are many others, including one of my favorites, Alice Cooper. Alice (real name Vince Furnier, of course) has been through many travails, including being close to death on more than one occasion—the result of battles with alcohol addiction.
But I think it might be hard to find many with as much talent and, most importantly, such humility and humanity, who go about their life giving generously to others. And without making a song and dance about it (little is known about his Arizona Teen Center charity, open to all teens 12–20 years old, and providing free access to musical instruments, music lessons, song writing, and coaching).
So, if this “New England” opens up wider opportunities for all, then I think it is a very good thing. As is anything that levels up the world and challenges society’s many baked-in privileges.
What does this mean for networking?
Well, number one is: Don’t be dissuaded by anything you feel sets you at a disadvantage. Having this in your head isn’t helpful to my cause or yours. Push through any negative thoughts and get on with it.
Number two is much less wordy: Never give up.
Paul Simon’s most successful studio album, released in 1986, is Graceland. But the story of the album, how it came to be made and what preceded it, is a fascinating one.
By the 1980s, Simon’s success of the 1970s (q.v. Bridge Over Troubled Water) had faded. His relationship with his musical partner, Art Garfunkel, always built on a degree of artistic struggle, had pretty much run its course. His marriage to Carrie Fisher, the actor, was over and Simon himself went through a period of poor mental health.
But Graceland proved to be a turning point that moved Simon on to even greater heights. The album is estimated to have sold over 16 million copies worldwide.
One of my favorite songs on the album is the lead single “You Can Call Me Al.” Funnily enough, it was also one of my dad’s favorites too. A humorous man, he enjoyed the playful lines and couplets of the lyrics.
The title is said to have come to Simon after he and his first wife, Peggy, were invited to a New York party hosted by the eminent conductor and composer, Pierre Boulez.
The famous man met them at the apartment door to welcome them in. But having no clue who they were, despite the invitation, he announced them to the other guests as “Al and Betty!”
Referring to this in a song makes me think that Simon is attempting to pop the balloon of pomposity. Perhaps he and his wife were invited to the occasion as token guests, with no real thought of who they were or what their interests might have been. This reminds me of social gatherings where the magpie host just wants an opportunity to brag about who attended what and when. Some networking events have the same inauthentic flavor.
But there’s another clever lyric that also speaks to me:
“I want a shot at redemption” (© Paul Simon 1986. All rights reserved).
This is an interesting line. What does it mean? Well, I had to turn to the dictionary to discover:
“To have the chance, the opportunity, to make things right so that others will see that your motivations, your intentions are in good faith and for everyone’s benefit.”
That’s good enough for me.
Contradictions: It’s funny how life can be full of contradictions.
• I’ve given a rather poor account of Pierre Boulez. By his own admission he was a man with several character flaws, including being described by many as a bully. But Boulez was also someone who could show momentous compassion for others. When a long-term mentor was paralyzed by a stroke and unable to work, he is reported to have sent scripts to national radio in that person’s name, thereby allowing them to collect much-needed royalty fees.
• Graceland sounds like an instant and gargantuan success, doesn’t it? It wasn’t. It struggled to reach the heights of the 1987 UK album charts and spent only one week in the Top 100, ranked at a lowly 98th position. In the United States, it fared slightly better, helped by spending over 97 weeks in the charts. The Grammy Awards of 1987 provided a boost that we might recognize as a broadcast (i.e., one to many), rather than any kind of viral, person-to-person spread. But there were signs of it garnering support informally via “social proof” (people are persuaded by the actions of others). On the face of it, the album is a typical example of an “overnight success” that was in fact a very slow burn.
Remember. Never give up.
Take Action
• Start building a mentor network today. And become a mentor yourself.
• Consider how you can engage when mentors display instrumentality.
• Use informational discussion. Seek information, advice, and guidance before using the word help.
• Beware of bragging anywhere other than the right place and time.
• Be strategic in building your mentor network. Use the opportunities presented by event Q and A sessions (The Q and A Play) and the Benjamin Franklin Effect (The BF Play).
• When prospective mentors don’t respond, it’s not that they won’t help you. It’s that they perhaps can’t. Move on.
• Never give up.