Success in academic and professional life is credited to one’s hard work, dedication, and the ability to set challenging goals among other things. However, a key ingredient to success is choosing the right mentor or role model. So how do we go about finding the right one? First, finding the ideal mentor begins with self-reflection, self-awareness and evaluation of one’s values, vision, and goals. Then one can more effectively determine the attributes in an ideal mentor that would make her/him compatible.
This process begins with self-reflection and self-awareness to ensure that the mentor aligns with the protégé’s values and general vision for her/his personal or professional life. This enables the protégé to find a mentor whose values are important to them. It also ensures that recommendations provided by the mentor are not in conflict with the protegee’s non-negotiable values. This doesn’t mean that the mentor and protege have to be exactly alike; in fact, that might be counterproductive. What is important is finding value-based compatibility in a mentor. Additionally, this increases the probability that the mentor-protégé relationship is built on trust, confidence, and safety.
When choosing a mentor, we must consider whether they possess significant knowledge, experience, and proven success record in the areas where the protégé seeks to embark on given his/her vision and goals. This gives the protégé confidence that the prospective mentor has navigated the journey and will base their advice on relevant and applicable experience in the desired or required areas. But there is more than experience required in a good mentor.
“Establishing a mentorship program requires that one possesses contextual knowledge, insight about the situation, the profession and the organizational character, as well as being able to adapt to individual needs” (Bjursell & Sädbom, 2018). This doesn’t mean that one could not benefit from a mentor outside of the organization. However, if a new employ is looking for a mentor to help him/her navigate a new industry, role, or organization, it would be advantageous to find someone familiar with similar situations, profession, and unique organizational construct and dynamics. However, all this falls short without considering some of the softer skills that make a mentor ideal.
Mentors should exhibit the following important characteristics has shown to benefit mentor-protégé relationships: Commitment to the organization, mentorship program and to the protégé; communication skills, effective listener, emotional intelligence, strategic outlook, motivation, confidence, political savviness, influence, desire and proactiveness, networking skills, and coaching ability (What makes a good mentor?, 2019).
Furthermore, a mentor is helpful, resourceful, and optimistic. Good mentors can help see what is possible, give a sense of clarity, challenge, empower, support, and offer perspectives and alternative courses of action. A good mentor has a growth mindset, who has passion for learning and developing others. They provide frequent and constructive feedback. Moreover, they do it by modeling what right looks like or by example.
The above criteria in an ideal mentor doesn’t mean that they must be perfect, no one is. All mentors have areas they can improve. But there are a few red flags to look out for. Steer away from unproductive and toxic mentors; do not hesitate to break a mentorship commitment if you begin to discover too many negative traits. Stay away from uncommitted mentors, who may miss or come late to mentoring sessions. Beware of mentors who are self-centered, ambivalent, or pessimistic. Look out for mentors who give misinformation, are uninformed, lie, or don’t admit their flaws or errors.
I owe my success to many of the mentors that I have had along the way. I have found in them what I needed to learn and emulate to get to the next level. As a life-long learner, I’ll continue to seek great mentors in my academic and professional career, even as I dedicate a significant amount of time mentoring others.