An important aspect of professional success involves participating in mentoring programs. And now more than ever, employees need mentors to guide and advise them as they navigate flattened corporate structures. In the absence of, and as a complement to traditional mentors, professionals can mentor themselves, utilizing Invisible Mentors, in the form of books by and about successful people as well as interviews with successful people. An invisible mentor is a unique leader (role model) you can learn things from by observing them from a distance.
Shift Your Mindset Then The Impossible Becomes Possible
To get invisible mentoring from a book, it has to have many of the elements below:
- Provokes thought
- Provides a deeper level of understanding and heightened awareness
- Ignites passion
- Awakens deep-seated emotions
- Provides practical wisdom
- Chronicles events for strategic guidance
- Provides formulas and intellectual frameworks to use
- Be about a change maker
- Solves everyday problems
- Shifts the reader’s mindset
Invisible Mentor interviews work best when interviewees are:
- Willing to share wisdom, knowledge and experiences
- Old enough to have learned important life lessons
- Accomplished
- Enlightened and understand that the world is bigger than them
- Inspiring
- Willing to help others succeed
- Engaging
- Well-read
- Articulate
- Problem solvers
- Change makers
- Passionate
- Easy to understand
The easiest way to choose Invisible Mentors or a Personal Board of Invisible Mentors is to ask colleagues, family and friends for suggestions and recommendations for books to read and interviews to listen to. Ensure that the list is diverse, containing books that are off the beaten track and interviewees who are unusual suspects. Seek divergent views to stand apart from the crowd. You can find suggestions on The Mentors‘ and Library pages.
Make a list of 10 Invisible Mentors
Photo Credits: Avil Beckford
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- Create Your Board of Mentors – January is National Mentoring Month (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program, Episode Two (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Interview With Invisible Mentor Jeanne-Marie Robillard, Senior Account Executive, National Speakers Bureau, Part Two (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Interview With Invisible Mentor Jeanne-Marie Robillard, Senior Account Executive, National Speakers Bureau (theinvisiblementor.com)
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