Today on "Ask A Career Coach", I answer a question - "How do I find a mentor?"
Hi, I'm Lana. I'm a Career Coach with Two Steps Forward Consulting; and today I want to talk a little bit about mentorship.
If finding a mentor was easy, everyone would have one. But you know that's not the case.
If you're looking for a single individual to mentor you, to guide you, to help you navigate you professional environment and your career, some great places to look are:
* Your current place of employment
* Past places of employment, and
* Professional organization where most people in your industry belong to
So how do you approach this person? Let's say you have someone in mind and you want to ask them if they would be your mentor. Do you just walk up to them and say: "Hey you! Would you be my mentor?" Actually, yes! There is a bit more subtlety in that, but the principle is the same - you do have to ask.
If you're lucky, the answer may be yes. But it's just as likely to be no. You're placing a lot of responsibility on this one individual. They have their own professional life and they also have their own personal life. They may just be busy, or they may not be ready to mentor someone.
So, realizing that you're asking a single person for a lot of time and energy may not be the greatest idea, what can you do instead? And I suggest building an entire team. So, in my opinion, having an entire career support team is actually more beneficial than having a single mentor... If you are able to find one, that is!
When you are dealing with a team, you're assembling it yourself, so you have many different options. You have many different people you can consider. You can craft this team, and you feel in control.
So what do you think? Are you interested in building your own career support team but not quite sure where to start? Send me a message and we'll go over it together.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of "Ask A Career Coach". Until next time. Bye!