How to Be a Good Mentee

In order to attract and retain strong mentors, it is important to learn how to be a good mentee and to understand how to bring value to your working relationships. Building on my post last week outlining 50 Traits of High Quality Mentors, it is important to acknowledge what it is that incentivizes these high quality mentors to invest countless hours of their precious time in your career development. As much as we may like to think that people want to help us out of the kindness of their hearts, your propensity to keep people invested in you as a human being will significantly increase if you bring a clear set of skills to the table and generate value as a mentee.

Here are ten proactive steps that you can take to become a strong mentee and attract high quality mentors:

1.  Always come prepared. When you have a meeting scheduled with your mentor, prepare an agenda in advance and know what you want to discuss in which order. Be clear on your meeting objective and print out hard copies of all work that you were supposed to prepare.

2. Do high quality work independently before committing to working with a specific mentor. This will help you to position yourself as someone who people actually want to work with. Take responsibility for investing in your own career development and show that you really want whatever it is that you are working towards and are willing to put in the time and effort to make it happen.

3. Take care of yourself.  Have pride in your appearance and stay true to who you are as a human being. Don't morph into someone just because you think it's the person that your mentor expects you to become. Be exactly who you are and don't apologize for it. People will respect you for it.

4. Turn work around quickly when collaborating. When jointly working on a project with your mentor and additional collaborators, don't have people waiting on you. When a paper or project gets thrown your way, do high quality work and get it back in your collaborators' hands as quickly as possible. You don't want to be the person that people are always waiting on.

5. Articulate how you can add value. If a mentor is going to invest countless hours in your career development, they are going to make sure they are getting something in return. Take the time to understand what you can bring to the table. Introduce your mentor to people in your network, stimulate their idea development, and learn how you can help them to simultaneously further their own career through investing in yours. Show your mentor that you are equally invested in him or her as a human being and that you want to help them to be the best person that they can be.

6. Be respectful. Your mentor likely has more experience in your respective field, and you need to acknowledge that. Be humble when collaborating and don't be that person who always insists on being right. 

7. Be open to new experiences and ideas. While you will likely aim to find a mentor with similar interests to your own, it is important to be open to learning as much as you can. Be willing to go outside of your comfort zone and explore methods, ideas, and experiences that force you to stretch yourself. Don't run away from challenges that your mentor throws your way. Attack them with vigor. 

8. Under promise, over perform. Winning the mentor/mentee game is largely about properly setting and exceeding expectations. Always do your best to do a better job than your mentor expects of you in a shorter time frame than you agree to. If you know that you have a lot on your plate in a given week, give yourself some extra buffer time when agreeing when you will get something back to your mentor. Then get the given work back to your mentor earlier than promised, and use the additional few days to go above and beyond their expectations.

9. Always be on time. Showing up to meetings and work events late just makes it look as if you think your time is more valuable than your mentor's. Don't have your mentor waiting on you to begin calls, meetings, or presentations. Show up five to ten minutes in advance and get your mind warmed up ahead of time. Be appreciative of the time that your mentor gives you and make the most of it.

10. Be passionate about what it is that you want to bring to this world. Passion and skill is a toxic combination. People want to work with people who are passionate about whatever it is that they are working towards because it helps them to light their own intellectual fire. Be open to exploring new ways to practically implement your ideas, but don't let anyone keep you from dreaming big and following your passions. Passion and drive is contagious and is one of the most important things that you can bring to the table as a mentee.

Getting What You Want Out of Work

People take jobs for a variety of different reasons. Yet all too often, corporate managers and team leaders fail to acknowledge the differences in motivations amongst their team members. This results in frustrated employees who feel misunderstood and who are constantly working in opposition to a system of incentives that is misaligned with their individualized motivations for taking the job in the first place. In order to maximize productivity in the workplace, it is essential for managers to understand what it is that their employees are personally working towards when they come into the office each morning. On the flip side, it is equally important for employees to position themselves accordingly in order to get what they want out of their employment experiences.

No matter how hard employees and managers try to stay in sync with one another to align their motivations and create an incentive plan that is mutually beneficial, it is essential for employees to understand their own motivations and to position themselves in the workplace accordingly. With all of the distractions that are inherently associated with the modern office environment, it is easy to lose sight of why it is that you are there in the first place. In order to get what you want out of the work that you are doing on a daily basis, you need to be crystal clear on your internal motivations when you walk into the office each morning so that you can shape your daily workflow accordingly.

Here are a few motivations underlying why people decide to accept certain jobs and how they need to position themselves in the corporate atmosphere accordingly:

Some people are looking for a strict 9 to 5 job because they want to focus on developing their family, building their skills in an unrelated hobby, or traveling the world. For these individuals, career development and quickly moving up the employment ladder is often not their primary objective at the moment. If you take a 9-5 job for the purposes of maintaining financial and personal stability while focusing your energy elsewhere, it is essential to stand your ground and ensure that you are not losing sight of your primary motivations for taking this job when 5PM rolls around. If you are not aiming to become the CEO of the company and are content with earning a paycheck, developing a specific set of skills, and satisfying your managers, you need to complete your work for the day to a sufficient and respectable level and then get up and leave. While maintaining a 9-5 job while pursuing outside interests can be physically draining at times, you need to train your mind and body to maintain multiple different modes that you can switch on and off. When you walk out of the office at 5:02, take a half hour or so to get some fresh air and entirely clear your mind of the tasks that you were working on throughout the first half of your day. Then mentally reset and spend the rest of your day and the next morning focusing on your other goals and interests before you channel your energy back into your 9-5 job.

Some people take a specific job in attempt to develop a particular set of skills that will serve as the fundamental building blocks to the pursuit of a career in a particular industry. This is often the case when individuals make a lateral career move from one industry to another, and they need to spend some time redeveloping skills in a different area. If you take a job to master certain industry fundamentals or build a new skill set, you should read as much as you possibly can and ask as many questions as possible. You are there to learn, and you should think of yourself as a sponge, getting paid to absorb knowledge on the job. Be upfront with your manager when you settle into your new position to let him or her know that part of the reason that you decided to take this position over others is that you felt it would be a suitable environment to further develop a particular skill set. When the time comes, ask your manager if you can work on particular projects where you can develop these skills and collaborate with other individuals who are masters in this area. If you want to develop skills that are not directly applicable to the day-to-day work that your manager asks you to complete, come into the office early or stay late to shadow another team member and to utilize the resources at your disposal.

Some people take a job with a clear intent to climb the corporate ladder of that particular company. If your inherent motivation is to get promoted within your current company, it is not enough to simply do your job. Corporations are largely different from more agile early-stage companies in that new hires are given a list of ‘tasks’ that are aligned with their job description. While successfully completing these responsibilities may be enough for your manager to view you as competent, simply doing what you are told is not enough for you to get noticed to the extent that your manager will see you as someone who has the capacity to assume a role beyond your current position. If your intent is to get promoted within an organization, you need to demonstrate leadership skills and pour the majority of your focus into relationship-building. Go beyond your job description, and suggest ways to improve the division or the company at large. Go out of your way to really get to know your managers and colleagues as individuals so that they see all of your attributes, beyond those that are required to sufficiently complete the task list that was attached to your original job description. Meet as many people as possible and express an interest in collaborating with other teams in the company so that you can simultaneously develop new skills and meet people across the organization.

As entrepreneurs, some people take a job to learn more about a specific industry that they hope to enter with the launch of their own venture. If you are starting a company or plan to start a company in the near future, it is not a bad idea to take a job that will allow you to experience the industry from the inside so that you have some fundamental knowledge in the space before trying to learn the rest on the go. If you take a job for this reason, keep a low profile and do not be too overt with your intentions when communicating with your manager. Make sure that you perform well enough on all of your tasks to maintain your current position, but control your internal urge to want to change every aspect of the organization to make it more efficient. Carefully choose the organizational issues that you decide to address, and spend the majority of your time getting paid to learn as much as possible. Don’t give away too much information about yourself, your background, or your motivation for taking the job, and use your extra time to utilize the resources at your fingertips and learn as much as you can. If you position yourself correctly, taking a job while starting a company can often be a great way to get paid for having someone teach you what you need to know to be successful in a given industry.

The next time that you take a job or walk into the office in the morning, think hard about why it is that you are spending so many precious waking hours in a specific office environment. If you come to realize that there is no way to position yourself within your current company so that your motivations are aligned with what you are getting out of the company, get up and leave. Today. There are so many opportunities at your fingertips, that the opportunity cost to staying at a job that is simply not aligned with what you ultimately want to achieve is simply too high. Once you know what it is that you are hoping to get out of a job, you can learn to shape your corporate image accordingly to maximize your personal utility within a given position.