Episode 67!

Mentorship is one of my favorite topics for this show. My guest Hassan Akmal and I recently discussed how to create successful mentoring relationships. Hassan is an American career and life mastery consultant, author, professor, thought leader, philanthropist, and former professional tennis player and athlete ambassador to the United States.

The purpose of mentoring is to change your life. This means that mentoring is a holistic transformation over time. Mentors help create that transformation – some in small ways, some in significant ways.

The Need for Clarity

Hassan believes that everyone has a career and life vision whether they realize it or not. There needs to be clarity, not just for yourself but for the mentors also. Mentoring experiences start with an intention to grow and the foresight about what you want and why. When you go into a mentorship session you need to be clear about what you want to get out of it and the mentor should have an idea of what wisdom they want to impart and why. When you sharpen your focus, it helps you to achieve meaningful mentoring experiences.

Successful Mentoring Relationships

One mentoring misconception that people often have is that because they’re learning from someone more experienced than them, they can’t help them. A great way to help your mentors is to make networking introductions for them. You can connect your mentors to each other.

For an ongoing experience you have to focus on building a relationship. That requires a commitment on the part of both people to create successful mentoring experiences. This is where clarity comes in again. When you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it you have a structure to work within.  With regards to length of your mentoring relationships someone once said, “A great mentoring relationship is as long as it should be and no longer.”

In this episode we also discuss:

The concept of a personal advisory board and how to build one.
How to pick the right mentors for the stage of life that you’re currently in.
How to leave a mentoring relationship gracefully.
The different types of mentoring experiences and how to create them.
…and more golden nuggets of advice!

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

About the Guest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hassan Akmal is an American career and life mastery consultant, author, professor, thought leader, philanthropist, and former professional tennis player and athlete ambassador to the United States. He is best known for his Amazon best-selling book—How to be a Career Mastermind™: Discover 7 “YOU Matter” Lenses for a Life of Purpose, Impact, and Meaningful Work and humanitarian work dedicated to Forced Migration and Health.

After over a decade as a senior leader in career services, he became the inaugural executive director of industry relations and career strategies at Columbia University in 2017 and founded the Career Design Lab. In 2018, he served on the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) “Future of We” — Advisory Think Tank Committee and served as a senior advisor to Graduway, a prominent and top 10 global EdTech startup. In April 2019, he delivered the keynote address on the “Future of Career Services” at the Global Leaders Summit hosted by Graduway at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He also serves on several other prominent boards internationally.

In December of 2019, he was selected as a speaker for Columbia University’s TEDx RE-VISION, RE-FOCUS-themed event that took place on March 27, 2021. His TEDx Talk was released in May 2021 and has already received over a million views.

Prior to his current role, Akmal served as the executive director of the UCLA Career Center. There he led an ambitious re-imagination of career services. In September 2021, he became the Executive Director of Career and Professional Development at UC S...