Mentoring can be a crucially important part of your personal and professional lives. The challenge is finding the right people and creating successful mentoring relationships. That’s what I discussed with Gary Anzalone in this episode.

When you have a mentor, you can have a very fulfilled life because you have someone to talk to about your hopes and dreams. You have someone in your corner to give you objective feedback that you won’t get from a close friend or family member. You need someone that’s not attached to a specific outcome for you. That’s a mentor.

In successful mentoring relationships you should feel challenged and supported. You don’t grow as an individual by staying in your comfort zone. While compliments are nice to hear, they don’t help you grow. Real growth happens when you’re challenged. When a mentor challenges you and you respond, you’re going to make yourself better at whatever it is they’re challenging you to do differently. When you make yourself better at something you’re growing.

How do you create a safe zone to be uncomfortable?

By asking the right questions, which could include the direct question “What about that makes you uncomfortable?”

Early on in mentoring relationships both people realize that the purpose of the relationship is to get help and give help. It’s built on the presumption of trust. That doesn’t happen instantly, you must let it grow organically. With any relationship, time is a big factor, you must build history into it. The sharing of problems and solutions happens over time, and it just builds. It depends on the personalities, and it depends on the people.

How much time does it take to formulate a good mentoring relationship beyond just a one-time call? It depends on the people. Many younger people don’t know what to expect from a mentoring relationship. In some relationships the success of the mentoring relationship depends on the mentor asking the right questions and drawing solutions out of the mentee. In more advanced relationships the mentee has an agenda.

Approaching Potential Mentors

How to ask someone to be your mentor. Gary believes that one of the best compliments you can give someone is to ask them to be your mentor. That means that they think enough of you and view you in a favorable light. I want to understand your way of doing things because you carry yourself professionally and you’re happy.

You can’t be truly happy unless you practice gratitude. If you don’t practice gratitude you will probably be negative frequently. You must take ownership of your life and realize the decisions you make are something you must live with. You can make a decision to change the course of your life at any age. You can decide to change your life in many ways.

If you want to make a change it’s time to find a mentor or multiple mentors. You are the sum of the five people that you spend the most time with, if a mentor is one of them that’s a positive.

If you don’t ask you will not get. People are not going to knock on your door. Even if they don’t have the time, they will be flattered that you asked.

Creating an Agenda for Mentoring Meetings

After you ask, what should that first meeting look like? From a mentee point of view it should be “these are the things that I really would like to understand; these are the things that I struggle with” it could be “I need more work/life balance” or “I need more time with my family” A self-assessment is in order so you can start communicating and opening up to that mentor. The mentee needs to act and can’t sit back and wait for the mentor to tell them what to do.

That’s why it’s important for the mentors to ask the right questions to bring out the answers that the mentee needs to hear.

Your best self can be realized by having a mentor, now it’s time to go find one!

You can get my book “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea” here!