Who Should Mentor You?
Photo Credit: oboulko via Compfight
Are you waiting for your mentor to arrive?
Are you lamenting that lack of mentor in your life?
I’ve done that too. And I’ve got two answers for you. One of which I’ve borrowed aka shamelessly stolen from Pam Slim. And the other I’ve taken from Bill Jensen.
1. Pam’s idea
Create your own group of virtual mentors, or what Pam calls your High Council of Jedi Knights.
These are heroes, truth-tellers and adventurers who have the insights and scars and trophies you wish for. You may chose people who have a particular technical expertise, or people who have a personal attribute – courage, resilience, focus – that you value, or perhaps that person who simply won’t let you get away with the BS.
Be bold about who sits on your council. It’s an exclusive seat to hold. And know that these may be people you’ll never meet and never talk to.
And regardless, when you bring a challenge to them, you’ll know that they’ll have an answer for you that will serve you well.
2. Bill’s idea
In a Great Work interview with Bill from a few years ago, we talked about where to find a mentor. And his wonderful idea is this:
Get two mentors: one twice your age and one half your age.
What I love about this is two things. First, that blinding flash of the obvious that “young people” can teach you plenty. And second, the thought that builds from there is that ANYONE can teach you plenty. Simply showing up from a place of “how might I learn from you” may turn many people into powerful mentors for you.
3. What’s your idea?
What would you offer me as guidance for finding a mentor?
Michael~ You hit on yet another topic currently dear to my heart.
To me, a mentor is someone who exhibits excellence both not in what she does but in how she does it and not in what she does for a living but in how she lives. Mentors inspire us to live well and with virtue – and to pursue mastery in how we live and how we create/work.
I advocate finding both remote/dead mentors & live mentors. Remote/dead mentors are ones whom you may never meet, who are fictional, or who have died yet by their example can mentor you if you study what they have done well.
When I was in grad school, a philosophy prof suggested that one benefit of reading great books is we can have an “inner ethics counsel” of writers & thinkers. I started forming my inner counsel around the art of living – a group whom I could refer to in questions about living each day well and with integrity. It included Thoreau and the character Atticus Finch from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (the father archetype is quite handy, too, as I’m an “older” father to a 3 yr old now). Nicholson Baker – whom you also appreciate – serves on my counsel for observing quirks & delighting in minutiae. That 3 yr old also mentors me in the Now. For business, I have a brilliant coach – Charlie Gilkey, whom you know – who is younger yet wiser than I in many ways. Your example, by the way, of how you live with wit and integrity and build your business accordingly inspires & informs me from afar.
My Zen mentor, Daido Loori (brilliant photographer, too), died recently, but my other spiritual teacher, a humble & jocular man in India – TV Desikachar – mentors me from afar in “the art of living.”
When I was a young writer, I took it upon myself to study how certain writers wrote sentences. So, the likes of Annie Dillard and Loren Eiseley and E.B. White became my remote craft mentors (writers, who, not incidentally, also taught me how to live).
So, in sum:
1. Know what a mentor is for you. Define it for yourself.
2. Know if you need one for different reasons (living, craft, work).
3. Seek the dead/remote kind and the live kind.
And, finally, let your mentor be flawed. She’s human. A good mentor inspires or guides you. A great mentor will let you supersede her. That’s my take.
Cheers,
Jeffrey
Jeffrey. Thanks for such a thoughtful reply to this. I love your points – especially the last one about “let your mentor be flawed”
I have no mentors. I can’t get past that “none of their business what I’m up to” hump.
I have a bit of that as well, Rick. And yet… when I actually let people in, it seems to work. Well, some of the time.
The”find 2 mentors”–one older, one younger–is a good idea. For those of us who are middle aged, though, it is most unlikely that we will find a mentor twice our age!
We can probably go with some sort of fraction. Maybe x 1.5
I’ve received so much great advice over the decades, both solicited and unsolicited. I’ve found the key to choosing my “Jedi Council” is to look for people who share my deepest values, who do not compartmentalize their lives to the extent that they would behave differently in different arenas, and who avoid saying one thing and doing another.
E.g., I get the best business advice from a woman who is not a professional business coach. She does have her own coaching practice, but I’m not a client. She always tries to do what’s best for her clients, strives to deal with clients and colleagues ethically and with integrity, and she will reject a client who sees her as a commodity. I still listen to others who provide only financially-motivated business advice, but I am less likely to act on their counsel.
I’ve received unexpectedly deep lessons on ethics and morals from this wise business mentor, and I’ve received unexpectedly rich business-leadership advice from my Zen teacher (who, serendipitously, probably knew Daido Loori Roshi, mentioned in Jeffrey’s comment). I captured a sample of that inspiration in an unusually personal blog post: http://powersoftwo.agileinstitute.com/2011/08/lessons-from-pasture-leadership-and.html.
In summary, I suppose my maxim is to “trust your instincts.”