The most influential mentor in my career died a few months ago. Irwin had planned to retire at 80 and passed away just short of the big birthday. By then our relationship had come full circle. He hired me just a few months out of law school, more than 20 years ago, and we worked together for 7 years before I left to spread my wings at another law firm. Two years ago, no doubt looking for a successor, he recruited me back to the firm where I am now a partner.
Along the way he was everything a mentor should be. In the most practical sense, a mentor can be an insider who knows the ropes and the unwritten rules and can help you chart a path to success. Mentors can provide introductions to help you build a professional network; be a sounding board; and offer a safe place to test-drive ideas before you pitch them to the boss. More profoundly, a mentor can be someone to whom you reveal your hopes, your dreams and your fears, who can help you get where you want to go.
Irwin wasn’t shy about reminding me that there was life beyond the four walls of my office, though, and he could be very politically incorrect about how he said so. On many nights when I was working late he asked, “When are you going to go home and get pregnant already?” This was his way of saying that there was more to life than being a lawyer, and he wanted to make sure that I didn’t forget it. He was serious about his concern that I have a family — he enjoyed his own with relish, including his wife of many years, adult children and a passel of grandchildren. His advice would never fly in today’s work environment, but this important life lesson has stayed with me.
My relationship with Irwin morphed over the years into a friendship — one that I miss every day. I would not be where I am today, not have the skills, the ambition or the confidence I possess, had I not had that relationship. Now I find his passing has kick-started my own assessment of where I want my professional journey to take me. It also made me realize how being mentored and being a mentor have been critical to my professional success.
Here’s what I have learned about how professionals on both sides of this relationship can work most successfully together.
Set expectations. To get the most out of a mentoring relationship, identify your needs early on and keep assessing whether it continues to meet them. Some mentoring relationships develop organically, but this is rarely the case.
My earliest mentor was my boss at a nonprofit. I was her secretary. We both recognized that I had no future as an administrative assistant; I routinely dropped calls and coffee, and never mastered using the Telex (important in those days). She helped me identify the skills I did have, and careers where I could put them to good use. This was a short-lived but critically important relationship along my career path.
Give and take. Having a mentor is not a one-way street. The best relationships are reciprocal. Irwin saw in me a person and a lawyer whom he could trust. He was a mentor to many young attorneys, and had confidence in us even when we doubted ourselves. As a result, we did our utmost to help him and make him look good. Even my brief mentoring relationship with my first boss was mutually beneficial: She launched me into a new career path and as a result, she was able to hire a new and much better secretary.
You may be at a different place in your career from your mentor, but still have a lot to offer someone ahead of you. You know the lower level folks that your mentor needs to be familiar with when looking to hire. You know how to use technology and social networking tools in ways that may baffle and intimidate your mentor. You can likely teach him or her a few valuable lessons in using LinkedIn or PowerPoint, for example.
Reevaluate your relationship. Having a mentor is not a guarantee of success — just a tool for career development. Mentoring relationships and career paths are dynamic. Both of you need to review your objectives periodically to make sure that they are being met. You may need to adjust your aspirations or maybe your goals have already taken a new course (a great topic of discussion with your mentor). You may reach a point when you need a new mentor to help you achieve the next career goal, or cope with a fork in the road.
Break up when you must. When you are no longer getting anything out of the relationship, or have outgrown it, consider moving on. Some mentor relationships, like those where you are assigned a mentor at work, have a built-in time limit, allowing them to end gracefully.
When there isn’t a timeline and things aren’t working, make an effort to part on good terms. End the relationship deliberately and politely — don’t just let it fizzle out. Let your mentor know what you have gained; how his or her guidance has influenced you; and why it is time to make a change. Your mentor has likely been there for you in difficult times, and you owe him or her this courtesy. Besides, parting gracefully is terrific practice for other sticky interpersonal relationships you are likely to face in the business world.
For the first 10 years of my law career, I had a second mentor whose advice I rarely took. In fact, I reached the point where I instinctively did the opposite of what he recommended, and more often than not ended up happy with my choice. I respected him professionally but we both realized that his advice wasn’t what I needed. We continue to have coffee periodically, but more as peers, and long ago stopped discussing career choices and life’s bigger questions.
Sometimes these relationships don’t just sputter — they can be toxic. As disappointed or frustrated as you might be, do not burn bridges. Be pragmatic. You may want to come back to this person in the future for more guidance.
Don’t expect mentor monogamy. We need different types of mentors for different stages — and different aspects — of our careers. Mentors can each offer different perspectives and bring with them different skill sets. As a working mom, I have found it enormously helpful to have a mentor to guide me in my specific practice area, and another one to navigate the work-motherhood balance. We all have multiple facets to our lives and it is the rare mentor who can help us with all of them at once.
It’s a good idea to have a backup, too. That way, if one relationship ends, you are not left without a mentor. Work, family, getting to the gym and fitting in sleep can be brutally demanding at times. So, cultivating multiple mentor relationships may not be in the cards. But at certain points in one’s career — especially in the beginning, when you are contemplating a major change, and when you are thinking of leaving the workforce all together — multiple mentors can bring together different yet valuable perspectives, cautionary tales and encouragement.
Having a mentor within your organization can be tricky. Irwin had very high standards and expectations, but he was a patient teacher and knew that mistakes happened. He expected creativity in all things, including mistakes. He demanded never to see the same error twice — only new ones. Not all colleagues would be so patient. If yours are less forgiving, then by all means, seek a mentor outside your organization, or perhaps even outside your industry.
As much as I learned from Irwin, there came a time when I needed a mentor more like me – a woman, a wife, and a new mother – someone who understood the challenges I faced. For his part, he needed someone less independent, who understood his world, dominated by baseball (his greatest passion after his wife and family). With that, our mentoring relationship changed to a friendship. My career would not have been nearly as interesting without that office where I knew I could rant, rave and openly swap stories of success and failure, all in complete safety.
