Most businesspeople are familiar with the concept of mentors and mentoring, but have you ever utilized it/them to improve your skills and business? Whether formal or informal, I have found it to be a powerful way to have a positive impact on my career.
I have had the privilege of being mentored by two different people thus far in my career and I consider the lessons learned there to be better than any training or seminar I could have attended.
The first one happened almost by accident. I had been selling cars for almost two years and had developed a few skills to make my way up the sales leaderboard in the store. The managing partner of the store and are both early risers, so we used to have early-morning meetups with a fresh cup of Starbucks. One day the conversation went like this:
Him: “So, Danny, what do you want to do with your career?” (He’s one of the people that can get away with calling me Danny – a rather short list.)
Me: “Honestly? I want your job.”
Him: “Well, you can’t have my job because I don’t plan on going anywhere for a while. But if you’re willing to listen, learn and do exactly what I tell you, I’ll show you how to become a General Manager.”
That sounded good to me, so I began an odyssey that took me to all the departments in the store and lasted years. I had to prove myself at every stop (Used Car Manager, Service Manager, Finance Manager, New Car Manager), but he was right by my side as I learned from the ground up.
There weren’t formal rules to the relationship, it was merely the two of us and coffee as we worked through the operations of that department on that day, week and month. He helped me as I learned all the ins and outs of a new department and how to successfully run it.
There were plenty of times when I made mistakes, missed forecasts and/or just plain got it wrong. In retrospect, I see one of the things he let me do was fail. He figured I had to learn some lessons the good old fashioned way (by experiencing them myself instead of him lecturing me about them). Having to go through those moments but still having him there as someone to lean on was important.
I don’t want to put too much emphasis on the failures because there were plenty of successes too, and he was there to celebrate them with me. Not only that but he was also there to push me and help me expand my thinking. It’s easy to sort of get lulled into a sense of complacency when you think you’ve got things figured out in your little corner of the world, but he was there to challenge me to expand my boundaries and explore areas where we could improve even further.
Overall, I would say he was very hands on and worked closely with me every day because his office was right there a few steps away from me.
My second mentor didn’t come along until I had moved to a new job in a different part of the country a few years later. I was running a much larger operation and he had six GMs to manage. Needless to say, he had a lot on his plate (don’t we all?) and I couldn’t turn to him for every little thing that needed addressing.
He was very analytical but yet trusted his years of experience and instincts. He had seemingly been through every scenario that kept popping up in our business. Every time I had a thought about changing a process, policy or pay plan, he was there with sage-like advice on what he had been through. He was great at analyzing a situation from all angles before making a decision.
I looked at him almost as a “trial run” type of guy, one that could help me work through some of the (crazy) ideas that go through my mind. For example, I would propose a change to the salesperson pay plan and he would immediately be able to work through it in his mind and see the strengths and weaknesses of it. He was great at finding the “law of unintended consequences” when it came to that type of stuff.
He mentored me from more distance because of our work setup (we were in the same city but not the same building). He gave me enough leeway to try things but always was there to give me more perspective on what we were doing or where we were headed.
Both of these mentors helped mold me into the General Manager that I have become. And I still am in regular contact with them today. It’s nice to be able to reach out to them for advice on an informal basis, as they make great sounding boards.
Not all mentors have to be direct reports, however. You can find them almost anywhere, in any capacity. And now that we are only a Google search away from finding anything we want, it’s easier than ever before.
And here’s the kicker: I feel it’s my responsibility to mentor others as well. If I don’t pass along what I’ve learned, then the knowledge dies with me. This blog is a part of passing it along. If what I do and what I write can help someone else, even if it’s only a tiny bit, then I feel like I’m holding up my end of the bargain in this whole cosmic work-karma thing.
So what say you? Do you have a mentor? Do you mentor someone else? I’d love to hear your feedback.
Make it a great day!
