Let Mentors Give Your Career an Assist
The inside story on what mentors are, how to get one -- and how to make the relationship work.

By Lily Whiteman
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, September 7, 2006 10:00 AM

Once, early in her career as an alcoholism counselor, Janet Ruck fainted at the lectern while giving a talk about alcoholism to medical experts. She avoided public speaking for decades hence.

But her desire to share her knowledge with an audience eventually compelled her to join Toastmasters International, a nonprofit organization that helps professionals improve their communication skills.

Toastmasters did more than keep Ruck off the floor. By introducing her to other professionals who had successfully escaped their comfort zones, and by providing her with group and one-on-one mentoring, Toastmasters heloped her pursue a new profession as a Washington-area federal career coach.

Ruck's evolution illustrates how professionally valuable personal development can be. Mentors are trusted, experienced advisors who share technical knowledge, administrative expertise and people skills with others.

How to Find Them

Mentoring can take many forms, from casual conversations to formal relationships with regularly scheduled meetings. But no matter what form the advice takes, experts say, you'll know it when you see it: It is practical, personalized and situational help intended to help the mentee overcome hurdles and achieve goals.

How can you find mentors? There are a number of ways:

Use people you know. New York elementary school teacher Laura Conway often spends free periods sitting in on the classes of colleagues she admires to pick up pointers on how to explain material and interact with students. Conway also invites other teachers to visit her classes and give feedback. "I don't want to stagnate in this job," she says. "I want to keep improving."

Ask around. Several years ago Alan Inouye, then a student in California, prepared for a job-hunting trip to Washington by asking friends, relatives, colleagues and neighbors to share connections, eventually winning a referral to a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) staffer.

"My college roommate had a roommate whose girlfriend knew someone who knew someone," Inouye recalls. His connection's counsel helped him land an NAS position

Keep school ties. Your alumni connections can be valuable no matter when you graduated. Steven Blum remembered this when he contacted a Wesleyan University counselor five years after graduation. "I hated being a lawyer but I didn't know what else to do," he says.

The counselor recommended a graduate program to Blum led him to his current calling: providing financial advice at his Philadelphia firm Steven G. Blum and Associates and teaching at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

Work the network. Joining networking organizations can widen your pool of potential mentors -- important especially if you tend to get advice from a relatively closed group.

Elizabeth Dance, who recently founded Charlottesville, Va.-based environmentally friendly cleaning service Eco Clean, turned to the Service Corps of Retired Executives, which offers entrepreneurs free advice, and met Michael Ludgate. The founder of a Charlottesville radio station, Ludgate has provided Dance with business expertise, a sounding board and objective advice free from the biases of familiars.Organizations can also help if you're confronting gender, age, racial or other barriers. Why? Because professional organizations can introduce you to kindred spirits who've already handled such challenges, says Farrell Chiles, national board chairperson of Blacks in Government.

Reach out. If you don't know a person or organization that can give you needed advice, contact strangers with relevant expertise. This worked for Washington attorney Marla Brin when, two decades ago, her casework led her to the discovery of a baby with Down Syndrome who was languishing in an orphanage without needed help.

Determined to help but unsure with how to do so, she reached out to columnist George F. Will who, she remembered, had a child with Down Syndrome. Her boldness paid off: Will referred her to an organization that arranges adoptions for such children.

If you can't get, or don't want, person-to-person mentoring, you still have options -- including internet communities and discussion boards, online classes, online discussions with distinguished individuals (such as those sponsored by the International Mentoring Network Organization) and web searches for articles and columns on various career and work-related issues.

How to Ask

Once you've identified someone you'd like to use as a professional confidant, how do you go about raising your question? Here are some suggestions:

Engage leaders. When reaching out to conference presenters, book authors, columnists and other prominent individuals, suggests Farrell Chiles, National Board Chairperson of Blacks in Government, call them to share an idea, clarify a point, or discuss an upcoming event. "Try to bring something to the table before you ask them for advice," says Chiles.

Offer assistance. Volunteering to help role models is a good way to get next to them, says Martha Watson, a federal program manager in Washington. Doing so helped Watson become a protégé of Boston community organizer Retha Hill, a woman she had admired from afar. In return for working shoulder-to-shoulder with Hill in soup kitchens and shelters, Watson gained Hill's political insights, which she used to design a winning campaign platform for a city councilor.

Act locally. Scope out potential mentors at work by occasionally engaging targets in conversations about their careers, your interests and any common ground you share, says Beverly Arrington, a federal intern manager in Washington. If it seems like you can connect in a meaningful way, follow up, asking "Would you mind if I occasionally consulted you for advice?"

Meanwhile, you can connect more successfully by providing potential mentors with some background information and an indication that you will be contacting them. Preface a cold call with a short e-mail that identifies common acquaintances that mentions why you admire her and asks if and when you may follow up with a call.