Blog 12: Voice of Mentorship
The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches but to reveal to him [her] own. Benjamin Disraeli
January is National Mentor Month and I wanted to share a few thoughts about mentoring both from my own perspective and that of the women leaders in our study. The quote above is a great thought about mentorship. Not long ago I was speaking to a group of Women Leaders and during the Q&A, one of the women raised her hand and asked how do you find a mentor. She said that she had been unsuccessful in locating a mentor and went on to share that she didn’t think women wanted to be mentors to younger women. A lot of women in the audience were shaking their heads agreeing with her. This question really saddened me as I have had wonderful mentors during my college years and during my professional life.
Let’s look at this question - how do you find a mentor? First, take an inventory of your strengths and opportunities for growth. Once, you have this inventory completed, look around you and identity individuals (yes, both men and women) who could support your growth both within your organization and outside the organization. Approach them and ask if you could shadow them for a particular activity or project as you admire the way in which they lead. It is not a question of asking them to be a mentor, but rather learning more from them. Individuals are flattered that you feel they are great leaders and usually respond quite positively to this type of request. Once this activity/project is complete, let them know what you learned from the experience and then see if there might be another project. In this way, you are starting an informal mentorship that might lead to a mentor relationship.
One of the female physicians on a panel that I moderated shared the following about mentorship. She said that she always had at least three mentors - a physician or administrator within the organization where she worked, a physician outside of the organization that she could trust and ask what she called "‘the stupid questions’ and then a professional that could mentor her on family - career balance issues.
The early research on mentoring by Levinson, et. al focused on career development of adult men. He suggested that mentoring was linear, exclusive and self-perpetuating. Recent research suggests there are two primary functions of mentoring: Career related and psychosocial. The first is in support of mentees’ progress through their career (career advancement, coaching, and sponsorship). The second function supports the interpersonal aspects of relationships and includes one’s sense of competence, identity and effectiveness in their role. I would suggest that there is a third function: Family-career integration. The physician discussed above was utilizing all three of these mentor relationships. Think of mentorship in the plural - there are many roles that mentors can play in support of you professionally and personally.
Today, there is a distinction being made between mentor (those that advise others) and sponsor (those that use their influence to advocate). Oprah Winfrey says it well - “A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself.” The majority of women in our study shared that if they had a mentor, it was focused on the psychosocial - support for their navigation within the organization. Sponsorship fits that second area of mentorship and much of the research suggests that males experience this type of mentorship more than females (of course, a larger percentage of CEO’s are males, so advocating for those like you may explain this imbalance in leadership roles).
I want to leave you with this image that mentorship is a two-way relationship. The next blog will pursue this idea of reciprocal relationship in mentoring. In the meantime, ask yourself, who are your mentors and are you serving as a mentor to others?
