Evolution of The Invisible Mentor
For those who do not know the story, in the fall of 2007, while going for a morning walk in High Park, I was wondering how to market my book, Tales of People Who Get It. Suddenly, your book is your board of invisible mentors popped into my consciousness. This was an epiphany for me because my book is based on interviews of highly successful people, and whenever I faced a problem, I often remembered parts of interviews that I had conducted. I was so excited that I told a friend about the experience, and she replied that it was brilliant, but I should get rid of the word “invisible.” She felt that the idea was ahead of its time. This didn’t work for me, because I thought the word “invisible” was a key component of the phrase. I stopped dead in my track and didn’t pursue the idea for 18 months.
Have you ever been in a situation where you didn’t explore your ideas because of what others said? If you answered ‘yes,’ you can relate to how I felt at the time.
I conducted research on invisible mentors and discovered Invisible Mentor: Communication Theory and Lilian Katz by Karen L. Peterson. Someone also recommended that I read Marsha Sinetar’s The Mentor’s Spirit. After reading the books and devouring Peterson’s paper, I defined invisible mentors as unique leaders you can learn from by observing them from a distance. And The invisible Mentor blog was BORN. Over the years, as I have played with the idea of an invisible mentor, and refined it to become more relevant to others. My website of the same name, is a self-development tool for professionals to mentor themselves, using the content I provide – interviews with highly accomplished people, book reviews, mini biographies, and tips and resources.
Sometimes I feel like I am whistling in the dark, and want to throw in the towel, because I feel that I am not making a difference, or providing a useful service, when someone sends me an email to thank me for the work that I am doing. Recently, while I was in New York, shortly after my brother died, my niece and I were having a very candid conversation, when she told me that she enjoys the invisible mentor interviews that I conduct. Camile has been transcribing the interviews for me. She told me that in one of the interviews, the interviewee was talking about managing her career, when she realized that 10 years into her career, she hasn’t managed it. If she feels this way, there are countless others who feel the same way. In fact, recently in a meeting with a senior financial executive, she indicated that many women have said the same thing, but at the same time, if you work for a company where you have the opportunity to move around, not intentionally managing your career doesn’t have to be a negative. Sheryl Sandberg describes her career as a jungle gym scramble.
With this information, what can I do to become more relevant to serve those who are feeling rudderless in their careers? My immediate response is to transform the invisible mentor into more of a system. It occurred to me to write a blog post on the evolution of the invisible mentor, but I realize that it has to be a series. Five years after creating my blog, I conduct research once again on invisible mentors and there are a lot more search results today.
“An invisible mentor is a role model [who] exhibits positive behaviors, attitudes and values. The invisible mentor may personify a potential future to the protégé or provide an example of how to achieve various career milestones. This type of mentor may not even be aware that she/he is mentoring.” Gonzaga University
“What is invisible mentoring?
- Focused attention on students identified as at-risk of failure or alienation.
- A feasible plan for reaching out to those who are “quiet, unpopular, or most likely to fail.””
Invisible Mentoring: Keeping All Students Connected by Christina Whirty, Sally Starker, Cyndi Bengston, and Mike Dye
As you may notice, the idea of the invisible mentor is being used in education, and also to help students who are likely to fail. I am using it in the business realm. The other thing I noticed with the invisible mentor search results, which is new to me, is that I can choose someone to invisible mentor, without letting him or her know. Before, I thought that people choose their invisible mentors to emulate. But, it works both ways. However, on the invisible mentor blog, I offer the information to you, and it is up to you, whether you decide to accept it, using it to mentor yourself. My tagline is that you're never alone, so I think that there is a need for what I am doing, but to be more effective, and have more impact, I need to focus what I am offering. This will not be an easy endeavor, but I am in for the long haul.
I intentionally conducted an experiment on invisible mentoring while I was creating the invisible mentor model, and I identified several gaps, which I have to bridge, to make the model work more smoothly. In doing that, I will have a better product to offer. In the next instalment of the evolution of the invisible mentor, I will talk more about my experience of invisible mentoring, and how it can assist others.
Get Started Here – I want to help you get started on your learning journey. Read The Invisible Mentor 2015 Reading Challenge, then Join the Facebook Group for the Reading Challenge today, connecting the ideas from the books you read!
In the meantime, THANK YOU for your time… Thank you for sharing this post, and thank you for connecting with me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest! What was your biggest takeaway from today?
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