Over centuries, mentors have been playing a significant role in the lives of successful people. Mentor first appeared in Homer’s Odyssey where he was left in charge of Telemachus, the young son of King Odysseus who went to fight in the Trojan War. The Goddess Athena disguised as Mentor advised Telemachus when he grew older, to go and search for his father who had now been gone for 20 years.
In more recent times, Freddie Laker mentored Sir Richard Branson, Roger Corman mentored Martin Scorcese and Ron Howard, and former Xerox CEO Anne M. Mulcahy mentored Ursula Burns to take over the reins.
Since Mentor first appeared, the mentoring role has evolved into what it is today. According to Dictionary.com, a mentor is a “Wise and trusted counselor or teacher, an influential senior sponsor or supporter.”
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.
Mentors who are invisible to their mentees have been around for a while.
The concept of the invisible mentor is not new. Napoleon Hill talks about them in his timeless classic Think and Grow which was first published in 1937, but he calls them “invisible counselors”.
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.”
He not only studied the lives of his nine invisible mentors, but he blended the information he learned with his knowledge, and he acted on the information by imaging their good qualities. This investment in time spent getting to know these nine men benefitted him tremendously because he knew them so well that he could anticipate how they would respond in various situations – and he responded that way.
More recently, in 2000, Washington State University professor Karen L. Peterson in her paper “Invisible Mentor: Communication Theory and Lilian Katz” wrote about invisible mentors and described the mentee as an absorbent learner. “Invisible mentors are not “super-human” persuaders or orators, nor are they icons with intractable wisdom. An invisible mentor has the capacity and capability (albeit a gift) to see just above the “tree top” and the ability and commitment to come “back down” and tell many below what can be seen… The invisible mentor has the instinctive capability to sort out the valuable from the superfluous,” said Peterson.
Invisible mentors are still relevant today.
After researching the idea of “invisible mentors,” I concluded that they are unique leaders you can learn things from, by observing them from a distance. It is not enough to have one traditional mentor, because no one person can fill all the roles we need them to. But invisible mentors can complement our traditional mentor. Napoleon Hill had his personal Board of Invisible Counselors. And we can have the same.
It is easier for us than it was for Napoleon Hill because of the unprecedented access we have to information. Today, most of us have access to the Internet, which opens us up to online databases, videos, podcasts, e-books, free courses, you name it. At the click of a mouse, we can learn about almost anyone, we can find and study our own invisible mentors.
And with social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, it easier to contact people who once appeared untouchable and unreachable to us. In addition, Skype allows us to talk to people in other countries without long distance charges that can be prohibitive.
Invisible mentors are relevant today because if we choose our invisible mentors carefully, they can help to accelerate our success trajectory, but we have to be willing to invest the time like Napoleon Hill did to research those who have travelled the path we are embarking on. Or who have done, or are doing what we most want to do. And most importantly, we have to blend that newfound knowledge with what we already know.
So, what’s next?
- What are you are trying to accomplish in life?
- Who are five people who have done what you are trying to do?
- Have they written books or developed videos and other material that explains what they did and how they did it?
- If the five people who you chose are still alive, would they be willing to speak to you for 15 minutes?
- What skills do you lack that are critical to your success?
- Who possess those skills set that you can study them?
These questions are not exhaustive, they are meant to get you thinking. Do you see the relevance of invisible mentors? You could research Napoleon Hill’s nine “invisible counselors”, or you could look at some of the interviews on this blog to get ideas. Many of the people who interviewees choose who they would most like to meet would make incredible invisible mentors as well.
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.
Related articles
- Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program (theinvisiblementor.com)
- 2011 Interviews for Mentoring (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program, Episode Three (theinvisiblementor.com)
- Create Your Board of Mentors – January is National Mentoring Month (theinvisiblementor.com)
