It seems that everyone wants a mentor, but only a few know how to find or sustain a mentor-mentee relationship. So we spoke to 3 mentorship experts—Adrian Hopkins, Amber Guild, and Carla Harris—to get their tips on building mutually beneficial mentor-mentee relationships, approaching a potential mentor, and forming a personal board of directors.
A mentor is not a fairy godmother or a genie granting wishes. A mentor is someone who guides, influences, and nurtures the personal and professional growth of an individual. Adrian Hopkins, Director of Internal Communications at General Assembly, says that you should look for these qualities in a mentor:
A mentor should be a collaborator and resource for the mentee focused on their overall transformation and growth, not just tangible results like a job promotion. Knowing that they are a collaborator will remove the pressure of having to see the success of the mentee in terms of a promotion or a definite completion of something. The focus is the transformation and growth of the mentee.
While mentorship is crucial, there is another form of guidance that is equally important and serves a primarily practical role: sponsorship.
“The sponsor is the person that will carry your paper into the room,” says Carla Harris, Vice Chairman of Global Wealth Management and Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley.. “What I mean by that is, behind closed doors, where you are not present, there is a room where all the critical decisions about your career are made such as your compensation, your promotions, and the assignments that you get. All that happens when you are not in the room, so someone has to be there spending their currency on your behalf so that you will get the great promotion, the great bonus, or the next great assignment. That is a sponsor.”
“Unlike a mentor,” she adds, “a sponsor needs to be within your organization, and they need to have a seat at the table. They need to have some juice or some power.”
Adrian Hopkins
Adrian Hopkins, the Director of Internal Communications at General Assembly, says that he has excelled throughout his career due to the help of mentors who were willing to find opportunities for him. In his previous role as a Senior Manager of Talent Development at the New York Times, he created the structure for the news organization’s mentorship program. Under his leadership, Hopkins says that participants had higher rates of promotion and retention than the general employee population, and people of color were promoted at a 14 percent higher rate than the general employee population.
Hopkins knows that career advancement is aided through strong relationships—especially for people of color. “When it comes to communities of color, I think mentorship is even more critical for us because so many institutions were not built with us—and the experiences that people like us have in mind,” he explains. “So being able to have additional assets, resources, and insights along your career process is just super valuable.”
Just as a mentor is not a genie, a mentee is not Aladdin asking for wishes. Like most relationships, a mentor-mentee relationship should be mutually beneficial. “The best mentor-mentee relationships go both ways,” says Amber Guild, CEO of advertising agency Grey New York. “A mentor can learn a lot from their mentee and help with their own growth as a leader.”
To that end, here are questions every potential mentee should be able to answer before embarking on a mentee-mentor relationship:
Amber Guild
For Amber Guild, CEO of Grey New York, mentorship is a practice in vulnerability. “My deepest connections to mentors and mentees have come from the mutual sharing of stories where we met some of our hardest challenges and didn't navigate them as well as we wish we had,” she explains. “The times when both parties can think about and share what they have learned.”
Guild emphasizes the need for both mentor and mentee to be reflective and open to developmental feedback. “Self reflection and self awareness are so critical to growth and development, and being able to openly discuss what you learn can accelerate both,” she says.
Before embarking on a mentorship relationship, Guild recommends that both parties spend time thinking about what they aim to accomplish. “Are there 3-5 areas that you're looking to develop? Are you looking for guidance on how to navigate in your industry? Go into [the mentorship] with an idea of what you want out of it and talk about the goals with your mentor,” she advises.
For best results, she has this suggestion: “Set up a regular meeting cadence and prep before each of your meetings to ensure they each have focus.”
We are often told to find mentors through structured channels like corporate mentorship programs, professional organizations, and industry events. But Harris believes that sometimes the best mentors are people we already know.
“Often, we sleep on mentors who are right there in our environment, so I tell people to think about folks in your life who you already know and trust,” Harris says. It might be somebody you met as you started your career, it may be somebody in college, it may be somebody in your church. Oftentimes we already have people in our networks and our lives who know us very well; are willing to give us the good, the bad, and the ugly; and who also understand the world that we are competing in.”
Harris also emphasizes the power of peer mentorship. “I have some really good friends that I consider mentors because I know that they have my best interest at heart, I know that they understand the world that I am living in every day, and I know that they will give it to me straight, no chaser,” she says. That really is the profile of a mentor.”
Here are questions Harris recommends asking yourself to determine if a peer can serve as a mentor:
☐ Do they know you well?
☐ Do you trust them?
☐ Do they have your best interests at heart?
☐ Will they give it to you straight, no chaser?
Sometimes the hardest part of building a mentor-mentee relationship is getting started. “In a perfect world, mentorship happens organically,” says Harris. “But we are not living in a perfect world, so sometimes you might have to exercise your power and ask for a mentor.”
We asked Harris for advice on approaching a potential mentor, and here’s an email/message template to help get the conversation started.
Hi [insert name],
I have admired your work for a long time, especially [insert specifics about why you admire them]. Your experience with [insert topic/area of work] is inspiring, and I would love to be able to build a mentoring relationship with you as I continue on my journey.
I trust that you will give me the good, the bad, and the ugly about [insert topic], and I am willing to absorb your guidance and be transparent with you about the things that are going on in my career and life. I’d also like this to be a mutually beneficial relationship, and am eager to share my experiences in any way that can assist you.
If interested, I was wondering if we could meet up for coffee or hop on a call sometime to discuss this further?
Thanks,
[insert your name]
As Vice Chairman of Global Wealth Management and Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley, Carla Harris knows the importance of mentorship for communities of color. “There are so many unspoken rules in any environment, and often we don’t grow up in settings or cultures where we are getting some of those unspoken rules,” Harris says. “The beauty of mentorship is that somebody can say to you, ‘Here are some of the things you need to do, here are some of the relationships you need to build, here are some of the relationships you need to target.’ They give you the other part of the success equation besides raw intelligence and hard work.”
As the author of Expect to Win: 10 Proven Strategies for Thriving in the Workplace, Harris also underscores the value that different types of mentors have had in her life and career. “Some of my best mentors have been people who are outside of the industry, but because they have been service providers to this business, they understand the game,” she explains. “One is a woman of color who has kind of traveled this terrain and has been a mentor I have had for 30 years.”
She adds that, “Some mentors have been internal—this person might have been a mentor for that role, this person might have been a mentor as I navigated this level versus that level—but I certainly have had people along the way that have pulled my coattails to say, ‘Hey, check yourself on this; you might want to think about that; or you might want to go for this.’”
You’ve heard of advisory boards for corporations and nonprofit organizations, but did you realize that you can also develop a board of directors for your personal and career life? In fact, a personal board of directors is one of the best ways to accelerate your personal and professional development.
A personal board of directors consists of mentor-like figures who will advise you in multiple areas of your life––not just career. Here are some ideas on the areas of your life for which you can seek out board members:
From mental health to physical health, having someone on your board to make you strong is essential. People who fall into this category include therapists, coaches, personal trainers, and health care providers.
Everyone needs a money mentor. People in this category include financial advisors, accountants, personal bankers, and wealth managers.
If you’ve made it this far, you already know how important it is to have a mentor or sponsor. But another important person to have in your career corner is someone who can help you strategize and plan your professional trajectory. This could certainly be achieved in a mentorship relationship, but you can also go a step further and hire a career coach or executive trainer.
Whether you need advice on pregnancy, child-rearing, or dealing with family disputes, it can be good to have someone like an older, more experienced parent to help guide you through the process.
A board member to help advise you on your romantic relationships can be beneficial, too. This is preferably not your bff or single friend, but an older couple, marriage counselor, or relationship therapist.
Regardless of your relationship to religion or spirituality, it can be helpful to have someone on your personal board of directors who can help guide you along your spiritual journey. This could be a pastor, a medium, or a spiritual guide; it could also come in the form of books or other content from spiritual teachers or philosophers.
From mental health to physical health, having someone on your board to make you strong is essential. People who fall into this category include therapists, coaches, personal trainers, and health care providers.
Everyone needs a money mentor. People in this category include financial advisors, accountants, personal bankers, and wealth managers.
If you’ve made it this far, you already know how important it is to have a mentor or sponsor. But another important person to have in your career corner is someone who can help you strategize and plan your professional trajectory. This could certainly be achieved in a mentorship relationship, but you can also go a step further and hire a career coach or executive trainer.
Whether you need advice on pregnancy, child-rearing, or dealing with family disputes, it can be good to have someone like an older, more experienced parent to help guide you through the process.
A board member to help advise you on your romantic relationships can be beneficial, too. This is preferably not your bff or single friend, but an older couple, marriage counselor, or relationship therapist.
Regardless of your relationship to religion or spirituality, it can be helpful to have someone on your personal board of directors who can help guide you along your spiritual journey. This could be a pastor, a medium, or a spiritual guide; it could also come in the form of books or other content from spiritual teachers or philosophers.