Over the course of the past year I’ve had the opportunity to mentor and coach a number of students, engineers, and startup founders on a variety of topics mostly centered around entrepreneurship, engineering, and product development.
As I’ve gone through the process, it’s been brought to my attention that people don’t always value mentorship. Some people are just looking to me for all the answers to their personal predicaments. I’m not equipped to handle such needs because I’m not trained therapist.
While others reach out to me once, and I never hear from them again. It leaves me feeling like they just wanted to “pick my brain”. I cannot blame them, because there maybe more to their situation than I know.
However, this is not my style, I prefer to offer some level of guidance once I’ve gotten to know someone for awhile, and then leave the exploration process and decision making up to the individual. This requires an investment in time both on my part and the mentees.
After being through a number of situations, I’ve had some time to reflect. What I’ve noticed is that I tend to have better, meaning, more professional relationships, with people who were at some point in time a student of mine, and had participated in a course or we had a formal agreement consulting agreement in place. Teaching or working with them for awhile lets me get to know them, and then provide better guidance. Teaching in particular also gives the students more structure and context. They can bring up specific needs based on what they’ve learned or maybe missing from the curriculum, and I can address those needs through 1-1 mentoring.
Therefore, going forward I have formalized my mentoring process. Those who participate in one of my courses will receive mentoring as part of the course, and for those who aren’t enrolled they’ll need to apply to my mentoring program in order to receive mentorship from me. If you’re interested, please see this document for all the details and feel free to contact me here.
So, this is a predicament I’ve encountered time and time again as I move from being antisocial to becoming a networker. People I network with encourage me to keep in touch and keep the conversation going, but frankly I have no idea how to build a 15-20 minute conversation into a professional relationship where the conversation is maintained outside of asking questions. Typing it out seems silly and basic, but this is a real hurdle for me and for many people I know. If you have any thoughts on that in the form of an old blog post or a future topic, I would love to read it.
In fact, i feel bad even posting this comment because it could be construed as picking your brain, but it’s just something I want to point out as I think many people want to move beyond this stage and don’t intend to just get what they need out of people and move on.
Thanks for reaching out Christine! And no this won’t be considered “picking my brain”. You do bring up a real concern, and I will be happy to address it in a blog post.
PS. Don’t feel bad! I wish more asked me to write posts because they do benefit everyone 🙂
I just remembered that I wrote this post a while back: Simple Steps to Build a Support System. Please let me know if that helps. I will also do another post soon!
I second Christine’s frustration. While it’s much easier to strike up conversation in person and get contact information, it’s awkward to reach out otherwise without feeling you are overextending yourself or your welcome even if you keep the conversation relevant to the recipient.
On another note, another possible topic may be on how to get around the mental barrier from reaching out to mentors. I suspect many people, myself included, are hesitant to reach out for fear of inconveniencing another even if the other party has clearly stated he/she would be happy to help. Maybe it’s not that they are not valuing the mentorship, but that they are afraid of being a burden.
You’re absolutely right about it being easy to strike up a conversation Bonnie, which is why my first suggestion in this post is to do exactly that!
Have you read the first chapter of The Soft Skills Needed to Ship Software Successfully? (It’s FREE, and I know Christine read it and found it helpful!) In that chapter I go into depth about overcoming the “fear of reaching out” and feeling like a burden. Please read it, and if you’re still not satisfied after I can go into greater depth on the topic.