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Mentors and Powerful People

mentorship is something that in the course of lecturing about my book, reinventing you. I have heard a ton of questions about, because we know that if we are wanting to take control of our personal brand and really, you know, reinvent ourselves to be recognized for the full talent that we have. We need mentors, we need to to learn from people and make sure that we're getting new ideas so that we don't have to make every single mistake on our own, but it can be surprisingly hard to find a really good mentor. Um I know this gentleman right here, his name is Tom DeLonge and he's a professor at Harvard Business School and when I interviewed him for my Forbes blog and I quote him in the book as well, he was telling me that he actually believes that there's a a sort of mentorship crisis these days because when he goes into a room, one of the exercises that he likes to do is he asks people, have you ever had a really great mentor that has supported you and helped you over the years? And he sa...

ys that invariably, almost everyone in the room If you're over 40, you probably raise your hand and if you're under 40 you probably keep it down. And part of the reason that he thinks that's the case is that in the past 20 years the economic pressures have gotten so severe that the way people do business is really different. It used to be that more senior professionals, you know, they would be able to sort of step back a little bit and take time and really help cultivate and nurture the younger generation, but these days people don't have that luxury, there's a lot of financial pressure that everybody is under. And so instead of taking time for things that don't immediately produce sorrow, I like helping a junior colleague really learn to excel. Instead they have to be out there, rainmaking, they have to be out there doing the work. And so it means that there's this fundamental gap. So the question is, what do we do about that? Because hopefully we're not just resigning ourselves and saying, oh well I guess I won't ever have a mentor and I'll have to figure out everything on my own that would be kind of sad, right? Hopefully there is a better way of doing it. Um I wanted to draw a distinction for a moment. There's a, there's a think tank in new york called the Center for Talent Innovation, It's run by a woman named Sylvia Ann Hewlett and they've done some interesting work and they had a book that actually came out from my publisher, Harvard Business Review Press last year called forget a mentor, find a sponsor and they're trying to make make the point about this and you know, they're sort of making it extreme point because mentors are always good, but it's true that sponsors even or a little bit better. So I just want to explain the difference as we think about it, a mentor is somebody in your life who gives good advice, somebody who cares about you, you can go to them, they can give you ideas and inspiration. A sponsor is somebody who expends political capital on your behalf, Somebody who is really not just willing to give you ideas and advice, but it's really willing to kind of stick their neck out to help you. And one of the most interesting things that I found in this book that Sylvia Ann Hewlett did, Pardon me, is the idea of what it really takes to cultivate a sponsor and this is, and this is true really in mentor relationships as well. She discovered that 70 in a mentor protege or sponsor protege relationship, 70% of the effort comes from the protege, I just want that to sink in for a minute, because oftentimes in the popular narrative around mentors and sponsors, we think, oh it's this successful person and they see promise in us and then they choose us and then they just like, do stuff for us and that is why there are not any mentors anymore, is that if people have this idea in their head, it's not going to work, it's not going to happen because who is really famous and successful and has time to be like, oh I choose you and now I'm going to do everything for you just because I mean it doesn't really work, so what needs to happen instead is that you, as the protege need to put in the time and effort to keep the relationship going because this person they may really like you, they may really want to help you, but it can't be their top priority, right? If they're, you know, if they're running a company or if they're traveling around the world and things like that, the top thing is not going to be advancing this person, they're mentoring or sponsoring. They want to help where they can, but you have to be the one that keeps it alive. So it means that two thirds of the effort has to be coming from you. And so part of why I want to have this discussion and I'm excited to have john Corcoran come in to talk about this is that many people get flummoxed here because they think, oh well you know, how do I keep the relationship going because I don't want to bother this person, I don't want to, you know, them to be thinking like oh geez, another message from so and so or um they think that they don't have anything to offer the other person that you know, why, why should they want to hear from me or what can I possibly do for them and it really is a trick here because you have to solve that problem. They can't even tell you, you can't ask them what can I do for you because they don't know they're, you know, it's it's not their job to think of it. Um If we really want to prove ourselves to our mentor or to our sponsor, we need to come up with ways that we can be helpful to them, take that off their plate so that they really see, wow, this person is making an effort. I mean sometimes it's literally just keeping in touch, like if they give you a piece of advice, you loop back and say, I tried your advice, it was really great, thank you so much, you know, here's what happened, they appreciate that, you know, But there's other things to, maybe it's as simple as if they have a blog comment on their blog, maybe it's retweeting their tweets, Maybe it is helping to provide college advice to their child, maybe it is getting involved in a charity that they're involved in, Maybe it is teaching them something about technology that they might not know or doing a favor. You know, if you're a graphic design designer for someone, you don't wanna be giving away your work for free to every tom dick and harry that, you know, but do you want to give away your work for free as a favor to somebody who is a powerful mentor that's helped you. Yeah, maybe you do if you if you think it would be beneficial to uh to have them um you know, like oh, you know, maybe they don't, they're complaining. Oh jeez, I ran out of business cards, I guess what you can help, and so there's a lot of ways to think about it, but there's something that I would love to have you guys do both here in the studio audience and at home is to really think about the question who is on your team of mentors. So, one thing that that I suggest to folks is, you know, I I actually um generally don't like the, you know, the question, will you be my mentor? And the reason is that whenever I hear it, at least I'd be curious, you know what other people's experiences, but when I hear that, I think, oh my gosh, this is like, this overwhelming question, basically to me, will you be my mentor is the equivalent of like, will you be my son's godparents, and, you know, it's like, you know, nurture this person and whatever, and like, I just, I just agreed to be somebody's godparents, and it's like, that's a big deal, like, now I'm like, oh my goodness, like, how do I how do I do this well, and, you know, I'm like, I'm thinking about my strategy, you know, and like, okay for the rest of my life, I have to be very diligent and, you know, I know some people blow things off, but I'm gonna blow off being somebody's mentor if I agree to be their mentor, I'm not gonna blow off being their godparents, and so similarly, um so it's like, it's like almost a too big thing, like maybe if I was so tight with this person already, but mostly what you get is like you give a talk and somebody comes up to you after your talk, oh you're so cool, will you be my mentor? And it's like, whoa, that's that's like, you know, the sort of proverbial, like will you marry me on the first date? You know, you don't want to go there? So what I suggest is actually two different possibilities about this. So the first one is, it's what I call stealth mentorship and so basically it's like you kind of try to start cultivating the person as a mentor, treating them like a mentor but not calling them as a mentor because you know, you don't wanna freak him out, so basically what you wanna do, sort of a technique you here in sales is to get small, incremental yeses. And so the first ask is not, will you be my mentor, right? It's not will you marry me? It's will you go on a date with me? And so the first ask is is a good one is like, wow, you know, I really respect what you said in your speech, I feel like, you know, I, I really agree with what you said, I share your values, I would be so honored to learn more about how you do it, would you be willing to answer a few questions for me for just 15 minutes? Um could I do something there was just convenient for you, Could I come to your office, could I buy you a cup of coffee? Could I do a phone call with you for 10 minutes? You know, whatever would be convenient. Would you be willing to do that? And if you, if you really make it very limited and small oftentimes the person will say yes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, most people they mess up because they either uh you know, like a huge like will you be my mentor or they say something like, oh, can I buy you lunch? And it's like, oh, so like an hour and a half and then we'll kind of lol around and you know, that's for a busy person. That's really hard. So you want to come up with a very discreet, ask another possibility which you know, for someone who's really, really busy, don't even ask him that, send them, you know, go up to them, shake their hands, say how much you like them say, would it be possible if I emailed you a follow up question? Oh, that's like super easy, right? You can answer that in like two minutes. And so probably no one's going to say no to that. So like, oh yeah, you can email me that, you email them one question and then guess what? You started a dialogue. So anyway, so the stealth mentor strategy. that's number one and then point number two that I just want to make another possibility is if you do find yourself in the situation where you ask someone to be their, their uh for you to be their mentor, for them to be your mentor. Um that's totally okay thing to do as long as you put boundaries around it. And so for instance in my book reinventing you, um I quote a executive coach named Michael Melcher and he told me a great story about a guy who became his mentor and he said, you know, I had the conversation with him and I said Dick, I would like you to be my mentor and that means that every six months you would have breakfast with me and give me your opinion about questions that I have, would you be willing to do that? And Dick said sure, no problem. That's a pretty easy ask because you don't want to be somebody's mentor where they're calling you every five minutes and saying I'm having a problem, what do I do? And then they start crying and you know, it's, it's just too much. But if you if you have something where you explain very specifically what you mean by it, then you have the opportunity for the person to really in an honest way. So you're on the same page say yes or no to that request, you know, really briefly and I actually I made a video for Creative live about this topic for ways to make yourself more interesting to high level people. So you can see that on Youtube. And on the Creative live page as well, if it's if it's of interest to have a super assistant, two minute version of this, but basically when a sandwich won't cut it, you know, when, when, when it won't work for you to say, oh Angelina Jolie, please have lunch with me. You've got to dig deeper. Come up with better ways of doing this. So four ways you can make yourself interesting to high level people. Number one interview them. Someone may not want to just have lunch with you. But if you say, even if it's just for your own blog, you can I can I interview you. They know, yes, they're spending time with you. But it will be seen by other people and they'll be out there on the internet forever benefiting others. So you expand the impact of that person that makes them more likely to want to hang out with you to write about them. You don't even necessarily initially have to meet them. You can just write about them. I've met some great people. David Allen who wrote getting things done remit City who has a blog in a book called, I will teach you to be rich. You know, they're really prominent people with big followings and both of them actually reached out to me because I had quoted them in articles that I wrote inside of them. So sometimes you know, we talked yesterday about the concept of having kind of a beacon so that other people can find you, if you write about the people you like and admire, sometimes they come to you third do them a favor of some kind. I mean this can be hard to figure out exactly what, but if you know them, I mean, you know, we cited the example earlier about maybe someone's complaining that they've run out of business cards or you know, whatever and you know, maybe you say, you know what, I'll design new business cards for you or maybe you are doing them a favor. You know, like Barbara was saying maybe some of her older friends, maybe one of them gets sick and she brings them soup. You know, people really appreciate that. Maybe online you're following somebody who you really respect and they're tweeting around and they say, hey, just landed in san Francisco anyplace good to eat around here and you send them links to good suggestions. That's a way of doing somebody a favor. There's a lot of ways if you try to put on your cap of thinking, how do you be helpful and then number four, do something unique and by which I also mean be something unique every, you know, everybody's average, everybody blah blah, they do all the same things. But if somebody meets you and you really stand out, if you capture their imagination in some way, if you can offer them some real value um you know it is it is genuinely interesting sometimes to to talk to people um and you know try to try to cultivate hobbies to become an expert in something interesting. I mean it's actually really interesting if you have somebody who likes animals and tomorrow says well you know I'm a horse photographer, whoa that you know that makes her stand out. You want to know about that. I want to know how to make a horse smile. I mean do you tickle them? What you know is it carrots is just bribery? I don't know how you make a horse smile, but tomorrow knows and I know that if I'm talking to her that I will find out.