How Finding a Mentor can Help You with Your Goals

No mat­ter how much knowl­edge you pos­sess about your busi­ness or how much work you put into real­iz­ing your goals; some­times you do need to get advice from out­sider. This advice can come from any num­ber of avenues, it is usu­ally most advan­ta­geous to seek the guid­ance of a mentor.

A men­tor can be any per­son that have knowl­edge of your field of busi­ness. How­ever, when search­ing out a men­tor, it is best to seek some­one who has the great­est under­stand­ing of the sit­u­a­tion you are fac­ing and who has the most expe­ri­ence with a busi­ness sim­i­lar to your own. To find a men­tor and get the most out of your time together, fol­low the sim­ple steps below.

1. Choose a spe­cific sit­u­a­tion to seek advice for.

You may wish to seek as much help as pos­si­ble from your men­tor, but it is eas­ier and will be more ben­e­fi­cial to nar­row your quest down to a spe­cific area or sit­u­a­tion. Later, after that sit­u­a­tion has been resolved, you can still go back to your men­tor for addi­tional help.

To choose a sit­u­a­tion to pur­sue, you need to review your pos­i­tive think­ing goals and deter­mine which one is the most impor­tant to you or your busi­ness. Once you have that goal in mind, you will be able to nar­row down your choice of men­tors by eval­u­at­ing their level of exper­tise in your topic.

For exam­ple, if you choose to seek a men­tor to help you increase your inter­net sales, then you will want to choose some­one who has achieved great suc­cesses in this area. You do not want to choose some­one who hasn’t been in busi­ness very long, or some­one who has vast expe­ri­ence and suc­cess in retail sales but not in inter­net sales.

Choos­ing a spe­cific sit­u­a­tion will also help you later when you go to pre­pare your list of ques­tions to ask your men­tor. So before you go to have that first meet­ing with your men­tor, you need to pri­or­i­tize a spe­cific prob­lem and a set of spe­cific ques­tions from your list first, you need to give your­self extra time to review the ques­tions and weed out the unnec­es­sary information.

2. Con­tact your poten­tial men­tor.

This step seems obvi­ous, the way in which you con­tact the per­son can be a lit­tle tricky, it is depend­ing on the level of your famil­iar­ity with that per­son, your first con­tact could con­sist of some­thing as sim­ple as a quick phone call or some­thing as for­mal as a writ­ten request for an inter­view. In order to adhere to pro­fes­sional eti­quette require­ments, your first con­tact with some­one you are not very famil­iar with should always start with a writ­ten request or phone call to his or her sec­re­tary. Never call the per­sonal phone num­ber of a per­son you are not on a com­fort­able level with.

Also, the per­son you choose as your poten­tial men­tor may going to have a busy sched­ule, because of this, the best thing usu­ally to do would be begun by set­ting up an appoint­ment to state your case, and never try to state your case or explain your posi­tion dur­ing the first contact.

Once you have made an appoint­ment, you need to pick the type of meet­ing you will have. It also depends on the cir­cum­stances and the time that your men­tor has for you, this first meet­ing can be a short phone call or even a meet­ing over lunch. If pos­si­ble, allow your men­tor to choose the time and place of the first meeting.

3. Pre­pare thor­oughly for the meet­ing.

Proper prepa­ra­tion will save both you and your men­tor a vast amount of time. With proper prepa­ra­tion you will be able to state your request in a sim­ple, knowl­edge­able man­ner. So before you go, make sure that you are pre­pared to share your spe­cific goals, chal­lenges with your men­tor and are able to explain to him or her exactly what it is you expect to gain from them.

4. Ask spe­cific ques­tions.

Once some­one has agreed to be your men­tor, you need to pre­pare a list of spe­cific ques­tion for him or her. If your ques­tions are too broad they will be hard for your men­tor to answer. Plus, gen­eral ques­tions usu­ally require mul­ti­ple answers, which can lead to wasted time on both sides. Spe­cific ques­tions will enable you to pre­pare bet­ter ques­tions and ulti­mately receive bet­ter, more goal-oriented advice.

5. Put your mentor’s advice into action.

It is not enough to sim­ply seek the advice of a men­tor. You also have to be will­ing to lis­ten to his/her ideas, research his/her ideas and even­tu­ally put them into action. A great idea is just a great idea until it is turned into a goal. Use what you have learned from your men­tor to expand upon your goals and increase your chances of success.

6. Use your men­tor for more than just advice.

A men­tor can be a great source of inspi­ra­tion and pos­i­tive think­ing. Lis­ten to his or her sto­ries, get caught up in his or her excite­ment, use his or her pos­i­tive think­ing to bol­ster your own. If you find your atti­tude tak­ing a neg­a­tive turn, or dis­cover thoughts of defeat sneak­ing into your men­tal self-talk, call your men­tor for a pos­i­tive pep talk.

7. Thank your men­tor.

No mat­ter how the expe­ri­ence ends, whether you ulti­mately use his/her advice or not, always send a card or a small gift of appre­ci­a­tion > to your men­tor. While this lit­tle step may not seem impor­tant, it is the biggest and best way to ensure that your pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ship con­tin­ues. The fact of the mat­ter is that your men­tor prob­a­bly agreed to help you solely because your suc­cess is impor­tant to him or her.

Let he/she knows that you appre­ci­ate his/her time, effort and keep him/her abreast of your suc­cess. In doing so you will leave an avenue open for fur­ther men­tor­ing and new opportunities.