Harvard Business Review - HBR guide to getting the mentoring you need: [attract sponsors, learn and move up, repay the favor]

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HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

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Copyright 2014 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

HBR guide to getting the mentoring you need.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-4221-9600-7 (alk. paper)

1. Mentoring in business. 2. Career development. I. Harvard business review.

HF5385.H34 2014

650.14dc23

2013032976

ISBN: 9781422196007

eISBN: 9781422197493

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.481992.

Stuck in a career rut? Maybe youre itching to broaden your skills and take on new challenges. Or perhaps youre eyeing a management role a level or two up.

So how do you grow and advance professionally? Not by waiting for senior managers to notice you and bring you along. Youll be sorely disappointed by how long that takes, if it ever happens.

The key is effective mentoringand its up to you to go get it. Done right, mentoring is one of the most powerful, efficient tools for learning and moving up. But to reap those rewards, you need to pursue them with rigor and commitment. This guide will show you how.

Youll get better at:

• Deciding which skills to sharpen
• Finding new ways to shine in your organization
• Setting clear, realistic development goals
• Attracting influential sponsors
• Forging strong bonds with your mentors
• Giving back to them
• Accepting and using feedback
• Gauging your progress
• Building a diverse developmental network
• Learning from executives, peers, and protgs

BY TAMARA ERICKSON

Understanding your role as a protg.

BY SYLVIA ANN HEWLETT, MELINDA MARSHALL, AND LAURA SHERBIN

Mentoring comes from lots of sourcesnot just sage executives with 20 years on you.

BY AMY GALLO

Know yourselfand find fulfillment.

BY ROBERT S. KAPLAN

Shore up what you already do best.

BY JOHN H. ZENGER, JOSEPH R. FOLKMAN, AND SCOTT K. EDINGER

Get the feedback you need to advance.

BY JOHN BEESON

Here are three common typesand when each works best.

BY DIANE COUTU

Some questions to guide your thinking.

It takes structure and rigor to build strong relationships and keep them fruitful.

BY LEW MCCREARY

Provide valueand receive more in return.

BY JODI GLICKMAN

Hitching your career to one mentor wont take you far.

BY PRISCILLA CLAMAN

Connect with carefully chosen people to get more out of your relationships.

BY ROB CROSS AND ROBERT THOMAS

Put your mentoring on a fast track to compete for bigger roles.

BY JEANNE C. MEISTER AND KARIE WILLYERD

Earlier in your career, it made sense to dabble. Now its time to play to your strengths.

BY TAMARA ERICKSON

Stay humble, and stay sharp.

BY HOLLIS HEIMBOUCH

Think of the most valuable insights youve gained about work and life. Chances are, those gems came to you through some form of mentoring, not from textbooks or classroom lectures. People with the experience, knowledge, skills, or perspective you seek have shared their wisdom with you, maybe even helped you put it to use.

Mentoring is indispensable to learning throughout our careers, not just while were wet behind the ears. Its how we identify and fill critical gaps wed struggle to address on our own. A good mentor is part diagnostician, assessing whats going on with you now, and part guide, connecting you with the advice, ideas, people, and resources you need to grow and move ahead.

That kind of support is essential these days, since career paths are anything but simple and straightforward. You now have more options than you know what to do with. And even if you do have a clear sense of direction, you probably face organizational and personal hurdles. These factors complicate matters further:

• Shifting roles. Your developmental needs change as you move from mastering content (producing the goods or services your company sells) to shaping context (setting the stage for other contributors to thrive). Generally, roles shift from content to context as you move up in an organizationbut even that is changing as traditional, hierarchical structures break down. Many senior roles involve equal parts strategy and execution, and many junior folks get involved in high-level discussions about company values and goals. So it can be hard to sort out exactly which skills you need to build at what time. Mentors bring a fresh perspective, combined with a vested interest in your successthey work with you to identify the keys to your progress and modify your behavior appropriately.
• Calibrating career potential. Sooner or later, most of us weigh our career expectations against our fundamental capabilities and passions, the time and energy we want to invest in our work, and the demands imposed by our lives outside work. Thats hard to do in isolation. Again, mentors can help you assess where you are and figure out next steps. Mentoring does not always have to be about climbingit can involve finding peace with the life youre leading, making the most of your choices, or carving out a new niche.

As critical as they are, good mentors almost never come your way unbidden. Waiting for others to reach out to you, or for your employer to play matchmaker, rarely pans outcertainly not with the frequency and commitment that you need and your career deserves. Although many companies recognize that mentoring leads to bench strength for them, not just opportunities for you, those that actually provide it tend to do so in old-school ways, through top-down, highly managed, overly scheduled arranged marriages between organizational veterans and newbies. Programs that assign senior individuals to junior counterpartsof course, in a good-faith effort to match interests and personalitiesare minimally effective because theyre not tailored enough. They also force relationships instead of allowing them to develop organically, over time, through mutual trust and respect. And the follow-up is often spotty. Some company-assigned mentors take their mentees out to lunch once and then check that responsibility off their to do list.