The Invisible Mentor

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While I was in my degree program at Haskayne School of Business, the University of Calgary, we had to watch a film, Meetings, Bloody Meetings, starring John Cleese, and that stuck with me. I was reminded of that film as I read, Read This Before Our Next Meetingby Al Pittampalli.

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However, meetings are vital to ensure that critical decisions get made in organizations, and teams are working effectively on complex projects. Therefore, the word meeting should be reserved for decision-making.  There should be no meetings to dispense information; instead, the organization should create a culture where its people read memos. There should be no working meetings, however, teams that need to work together, should do exactly that. A meeting is not for conversations. And when you have a meeting, only those who really need to be there should attend.Read This Before Our Next Meeting is one of the books in Seth Godin’s Domino Project, that I received for free, and finally got around to reading it – sure glad I did. It can be read in an hour, and it’s a little book packed with a lot of punch because it gives you a lot to think about. And if you take it to heart, you will literally not look at meetings the same way again. The author suggests that we should redefine our definition of a meeting because there are too many meetings, and most of them are bad.

Although brainstorming is important to create many options for decision-making, you do not call a meeting for it. Instead, you have a brainstorming session where people free themselves to let their minds roam, leading to breakthrough thinking.

Pittampalli offers ten ground rules for brainstorming. I particularly like ground rule number seven – “Let’s have a clear focus. Make sure the brainstorm is free, but not a free-for-all. The ideas should be targeted in the direction of the problem at hand. Create a problem statement and make sure people are on task.” And I would add that to create a clear problem statement you have to know the difference between cause and effect to get to the root of the problem.

The thinking behind the book is that with fewer meetings, people have more uninterrupted blocks of time to do important work that will make a difference to the organization, causing a much bigger impact. More serious work is what propels an organization forward. For the modern meeting to work effectively, the author offers seven principles.

Seven Principles of the Modern Meeting

1. Supports a decision that has already been made
2. Moves fast and ends on schedule
3. Limits the number of attendees
4. Rejects the unprepared
5. Produces committed action plans
6. Refuses to be informational. Reading memos is mandatory
7. Works only alongside a culture of brainstorming

What the seven principles translate to, is that the decision-maker who calls the meeting has to actually make a decision before the meeting, but be ready to discuss it. If she needs input before the meeting, she calls the appropriate people and gets the information she needs. If she needs buy-in because her decision is controversial, she does that before the meeting takes place by way of one-to-one conversations. At the meeting, she is prepared for a discussion and ready to make changes if necessary, and for a final resolution.

Before the meeting she spends a considerable amount of time thinking about the agenda before creating it. And the agenda created includes what will be covered. Attendees must know before hand what is expected from them, and each meeting should conclude with committed action plans, where each attendee knows what the next steps are – what actions they need to take and when. If the agenda is well thought out, the meeting will move quickly and end on time. This will occur only if the people who really need to be there are present. And all attendees must prepare before the meeting, reading all the memos and related documents.

For those who are not prepared they are not allowed to participate, and could be asked to leave. Meetings start on time, even if all attendees are not present. The modern style of meeting forces people to take action and be accountable. People will have to find the balance between gathering information and making decisions. When people face deadlines, they make decisions faster, even the most difficult ones.

To make sure that the right people attend each meeting, each member should ask themselves four questions:

1. Will I be able to function if I read about it after it’s over?
2. If I’m given the decision we’re discussing in advance, can I give you my opinion in advance?
3. Will I add value without participating?
4. Am I attending symbolically, or as a way to demonstrate my power?

I really appreciated Read This Before Our Next Meeting by Al Pittampalli, and I recommend it because if more people practiced the modern way of meetings, it would revolutionize the way we approach our work and more would get done in less time.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

For National Mentoring Month, consider creating your Personal Board of Mentors. Having one mentor is seldom ever enough these days, because no one person can assist you with all your mentoring needs. It is your responsibility to ensure that all your needs are taken care of. Your Personal Board of Mentors is similar to an organization’s Board of Directors, except in this instance, you are the organization. You don’t have to meet with all the members on your Board of Mentors like an organization’s board would, but you do have to be in contact with them.

Before you choose the members of your personal board, you have to first assess your needs based on where you’d like to end up in life. Whatever you do should be a part of your life plan and subsequently take you closer to achieving your big goals.

Mentoring Needs Assessment

1. What are your vision, mission and purpose in life?
2. In the next three years, where would you like to be in your personal and professional life? Are you committed to achieving your personal and professional goals listed above?
3. Think about your professional goals, what gaps exist between where you are now, to where you would like to be in the next three years?
4. What actions do you have to take to fill those gaps?
5. Who are the experts that you can learn from, and what are their areas of expertise?
6. Of the experts that you identified, which ones do you respect and are respected by others?
7. Why do you need a mentor? What can a mentor help you with?
8. If trusted friends could introduce you to five people who would be ideal mentors for you, who would you choose?
9. Would your ideal mentors be similar to the experts you identified above?
10. Could your ideal mentors assist you with achieving your identified goals, and close the gap you identified above.

After you have answered the questions above, you are in a better position to find the appropriate persons to assist you in filling those gaps. There are also specific types of people who you should have on your Personal Board of Mentors.

• Connector: A well-respected person in the community who has influence, authority and access to an extensive network of people.
• Industry Expert: Someone who has already traveled the path that you are now on, and is willing to share her experiences, both good and bad with you.
• The Listener: Someone who you can call when you are having a down day, who will allow you to rant for a while, to get things off your “chest,” so that you can focus on your next steps.
• Tough Lover: An objective person who is willing to tell you like it is, holding you accountable to keep your promises and remain on track to achieve your goals.
• Sponsor: A senior level person in your organization who will open doors for you. But the catch is that you have to make yourself memorable so that he will choose you. Typically you choose your mentors, but sponsors choose you. An example of how to make yourself memorable is to take on difficult projects that others do not want, then do them successfully.
• And one other person who will also help you to achieve your goals based on the needs you identified above.

All the people on your Board should care about your success, and be willing to accept a quick call from you. Be very honest and clear with the members of your Board, let them know exactly what you require from them, and make it very easy for them to help you. Mentoring is about give and take, so find ways to give back to your mentors, and always let them know how much you appreciate what they are doing for you.

When you have decided who you would like to be on your Board, ask them if they would be willing to mentor you, and explain what’s required. It goes without saying that you should take some time to get to know them first before asking for a favour. And it is even better if there is someone who could provide an introduction. With social media, this is a lot easier to do today than it was five short years ago.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Related Posts

• Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program
• Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program, Episode Two
• Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program, Episode Three
• Five People You Need On Your Personal Board of Directors
• Forget Mentors: Employ a Personal Board of Directors
• Looking Out for Number One
• Create a Personal Board of Directors
• A Personal Board of Directors

This is a series of posts on how to create your own personalized mentoring program. In the first instalment, we looked at how to determine your mentoring needs, and in the second we looked at a variety of mentoring models and asked you to make note of the ones that would work in your situation. To create your personalized mentoring program, you have to understand your needs and know what your options are before you can move forward.

In this the final instalment we will help you to pull things together. This may sound surprising to you, but two major reasons why mentoring programs fail are improper fit between mentors and protégés and the upfront work was not done initially.

So what does that really mean?

Refer back to Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program, Episode One, where we had a needs assessment to understand what your mentoring needs are. Look at the ideal mentors that you chose, do their values align with yours? If you entered into a mentoring relationship with any of them, would it get you closer to fulfilling your life mission and goals? Every action you take should lead you to where you want to end up in life. Think about that for a few seconds.

In Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program, Episode Two, if you decided that any of the mentoring programs which involved groups such as peer-mentoring and mentoring circle would work for your situation, it’s important that the leader of the group has excellent facilitation skills. Every effective group when first started, went through developmental stages before the group members ultimately gel. Sufficient time has to be allotted for group members to get to know each other. Years ago before I have the experience I now have, when I led/chaired a meeting, I was very aware of time and quickly got down to business without giving the group members enough time for check in. Today, I would never operate that way, because when people get to know each other, it builds trust and the likelihood for cliques forming is reduced.

Now that we have gotten over those two major hurdles, the other big issue is how to contact people. Before you contact anyone, asking them if they would mentor you, or be a part of a mentoring circle or even a peer-to-peer group, spend some time getting to know them first before you start a conversation. Read their status updates on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. On their LinkedIn profile, try to find a point of interest that you have in common with them. Did you attend the same university, share a past employer, are both members of the same LinkedIn Group, support the same non-profit? If we take the time to conduct a little upfront research you’ll be amazed by how much you have in common with others. Comment on their updates, and start the conversation to build a relationship.

After you have gathered your intelligence, and started to build a relationship, raise the topic of mentoring. Because they know you, they are more likely to respond to you in a positive manner. Always be honest with your requests and let people know exactly what you are asking of them. Give them an out, so they can graciously turn you down if they do not believe the right fit is there. The more time you take in selecting potential ideal mentors, the more likely you would have made a good choice. Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program, Episode One is a critical stage.

For senior level executives, when contacting them, I have had a lot of luck using email, or sending a letter by snail mail or courier. To be really successful in creating your personalized mentoring program, it’s essential that you build and nurture your networks. When you have a wide and deep network, you have more options from which to get people for your mentoring groups. When you interact with people in your networks, you will discover whose values align with yours.

When I started the series, I mentioned that I was thinking of writing a DIY Mentoring Program for the Amazon Kindle. I have written Episode One and Episode Two and have uploaded them. I have added more information, and the Mentoring Needs Assessment is more in-depth. Writing the blog posts have helped me to clarify what I wanted to say, and set the tone for the content. I will be writing the last instalment for the Kindle in the next few days.

You have the capacity to create your own customized mentoring program, but you have to know what your needs are, the options that are open to you, and start building relationships with the people who can get you where you want to go before you consider contacting them.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Reference Material

Adventures: DIY Mentoring Program, Episode One

Adventures: DIY Mentoring Program, Episode Two

Get the Mentoring Equation Right, Whitney Johnson

Lessons from Successful Networkers, Bill Barnett

This is a series of posts on how to create your own mentoring program. In the first installment, we looked at how to determine your mentoring needs, and in this episode we will take a look at a variety of mentoring models. To create your personalized mentoring program, you have to understand your needs and you also need to know what your options are. While you are learning about the various mentoring models, make note of the ones that would work in your situation.

Mentoring Models

Traditional Mentoring:  The traditional mentoring model focuses on a “one-to-one relationship between an experienced person (a mentor) and a less experienced person (a protégé) that provides a variety of developmental functions” Mullen (1998). In this type of mentoring relationship, the relationship is a hierarchical one, and there is usually an imbalance of power, where the mentor possesses the skills and resources, sets the agenda, time and place to meet, and the frequency of the meetings. Despite these drawbacks, many studies have reported on the positive impact of having traditional mentors.

Co-Mentoring: Co-mentoring relationships were created to address the weaknesses and limitations of traditional mentoring relationships. While embarking on graduate studies, Gail M. McGuire and Jo Reger documented their co-mentoring relationship. At the time, both students had traditional mentors but found gaps in their mentoring relationships with their traditional mentors that they needed to fill. In their paper, “Feminist Co-Mentoring: A Model for Academic Professional Development,” they “address the limitations of traditional mentoring, in particular, its hierarchical structure and limitations and its availability” McGuire and Reger (2003). Co-mentoring relationships are reciprocal and mutual in nature because each co-mentor plays dual roles as both teacher and learner. This type of mentoring relationship is less formal than traditional mentoring relationships. Most times this involves two participants, usually at the same level.

Mentoring Circles: In 1993, The Mentoring Company™ developed Mentoring Circles, a group learning model in response to what they believed was the limited success of one-to-one traditional mentoring. The organization tested mentoring circles using both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies and found them quite effective. There are two main types of mentoring circles with variations of each:

1. Single Leader – Mentoring Circle: A single leader provides mentoring to a group of people. This is a one –to-many mentoring relationship and a variation of a traditional mentoring relationship, except that in this instance, you have one senior level professional mentoring many mentees who are at a lower level in their career.

2. Mixed Level – Mentoring Circle: Mixed group of mentors and mentees who take turn leading the group. In this mentoring circle model you have co-mentors mentoring mentees and they take turns leading the group. You also have the variation where mentees also get the opportunity to lead circle meetings.

Peer-Mentoring: Members of the group provide knowledge, guidance, support and mentoring to each other. The members of the peer-mentoring group are often equals and the relationship is reciprocal in nature. Members of the group monitor and help each other achieve personal and professional success. An example of peer-mentoring is a mastermind group. A peer-mentoring group can be formed around an industry, job function, an issue, whatever, the possibilities are endless.

Personal Board of Mentors (Directors): Many people refer to this type of mentoring as a Personal Board of Directors. The same way that organizations have their Board of Directors is the same way that each of us should have our personal board, and in this case, we are the organization and we get to decide who is on our Personal Board of Mentors. There are five to seven people that you can quickly call on for advice when you have question. Members of your Board of Personal Mentors should have varied backgrounds.

Speed Mentoring: Speed mentoring is a very new concept which evolved from speed dating. Speed mentoring is short-term business mentoring, which focuses on quick-hit information gathering and time-efficient networking. Mentors and mentees are at one venue, and it is a structured way for mentees (participants) to get specific mentoring in a short time.  For seven to 10 minutes, each participant gets to talk to a high profile person. Participants keep moving from one high profile person to the next.

Invisible Mentoring: But mentors can be invisible. That means that the mentor does not know that they are mentoring us. These invisible mentors are our role models. We choose them because we want to study their behaviours. We want to learn from them so we can possibly mimic their actions. Often they have done something that we would like to do, or are trying to do but with some difficulty. Confucius emulated the good qualities that he observed in others, and checked himself for their bad qualities. In some of The Invisible Mentor interviews I have conducted, you have read time and time again interviewees say that they have been mentored by the books they read. People, interviews, books and so on can also be invisible mentors.

In the next episode we will pull it together. How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Related articles

Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program, Episode Three (theinvisiblementor.com)

Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program (theinvisiblementor.com)

Five People You Need On Your Personal Board of Directors

In the recent mentoring survey by the social network LinkedIn, a large percent of women reported that the reason they didn’t have a mentor was because no one had asked them. This is the first in a series that will assist you in taking control of your career by creating your own personal mentoring program. Instead of waiting to be asked if you would like to be mentored, you will learn how to take the initiative in finding appropriate mentors for yourself.

It may seem weird to you that there is such a thing as a do-it-yourself mentoring program. We have been conditioned to think of mentoring in a certain way, in a traditional way, where someone, usually at a senior level, advises and guides another person at a more junior level. Before you create a mentoring program for yourself, first you have to understand what mentoring is, as well as determine what your true needs are, so that you seek appropriate mentors and tap into relevant networks.

The Story behind Mentoring

In Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, when Odysseus, the Greek King of Ithaca left to fight in the 10-year Trojan War, he left his old friend Mentor in charge of his household and young son Telemachus. The real Mentor is not mentioned that much in the story; however, the immortal Goddess Athena, disguises herself as Mentor and encourages Telemachus to stand up to the men who were courting his mother Penelope.

Athena also encourages Telemachus to go abroad to seek word about what has happened to his father, who had now been away for almost 20 years. Additionally, Athena acts as a mentor to Odysseus as he goes through the many trials during his return journey to his palace in Ithaca after the war.

In more recent times, Freddie Laker mentored Sir Richard Branson, Roger Corman mentored Martin Scorcese and Ron Howard, Michelle Robinson mentored Barack Obama and former Xerox CEO Anne M. Mulcahy mentored Ursula Burns to take over the reins. (For some interesting mentor-protégé pairings click here for an extensive list on Peer Resources).

Definition of Mentoring

The modern usage of mentor – trusted friend, counsellor or teacher – first appeared in François Fénelon’s Les Aventures de Telemaque in 1699, Wikipedia (2009).  Dictionary.com has a similar definition for a mentor, “Wise and trusted counsellor or teacher, an influential senior sponsor or supporter.”  And Wikipedia notes that “Mentors provide their expertise to less-experienced individuals to help them advance their careers, enhance their education.”

However, the concept of mentoring has been evolving over the past few years, and it’s no longer a traditional one-to-one or relationship. Mentoring is conversations, interactions, support and other networks and our relationships with others. Mentoring can occur in moments (profound conversation you have with others, or the interviews I conduct with others), over a period of time (mentoring for a specific period of time) or even over a lifetime (parents are often great mentors). Once you embrace the broader meaning of mentoring and mentors, it’s much easier for you to create a mentoring program that’s just right for you.

In addition to the above, there is also a new kind of mentoring – invisible mentoring. An invisible mentor is a “unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from a distance.” You may call these people role models, but they are also your invisible mentors. The invisible mentor concept may be unfamiliar to you, but in Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which was first published in 1937, the author writes about what he calls “invisible counsellors”.  According to Hill, “I followed the habit of reshaping my own character by trying to imitate the nine men whose lives and life works had been most impressive to me… Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Paine, Thomas Edison, Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, Luther Burbank, Napoleon Bonaparte, Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie… I studied the records of their lives with painstaking care.”

Step One in Creating your Mentoring Program

Before you get down to the nitty-gritty of creating your mentoring program, you first have to understand yourself and your needs, the why behind wanting a mentor. Here is your first action to take.

Mini Mentoring Needs Analysis

1. What are your vision, mission and purpose in life?
2. In the next three years, where would you like to be in your personal and professional life? Please frame your responses in the form of personal and professional goals for each of the five life areas – Economic/Financial, Social, Health/Fitness, Business/Career and Personal. Have no more than 10 goals and assign timelines to them for what you want to accomplish in the first, second and third year.
3. Think about your professional goals, what gaps exist between where you are now, to where you would like to be in the next three years?
4. What actions do you have to take to fill those gaps?
5. What knowledge do you have to acquire to fill those gaps?
6. Who are the experts that you can learn from, and what are their areas of expertise?
7. Of the experts that you identified, which ones do you respect and are respected by others?
8. If trusted friends could introduce you to five people who would be ideal mentors for you, would you choose? Would your ideal mentors be similar to the experts you identified above?
9. The five ideal mentors that you choose in the above question, what qualities and traits do they possess, which accounted for you choosing them?
10. Who are some people within your organizations, and other networks who have the same goals as you do? (These people could be potential members for mentoring groups that you create).
11. At the end of a mentoring relationship, what would success for you look like?

In the next episode of the DIY Mentoring Program, we’ll delve further into the process.

I am thinking of creating a digital product that fleshes out the DIY Mentoring Program. What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Related articles

• Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program, Episode Three (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program, Episode Two (theinvisiblementor.com)