Your Mentor and Captain Marvel

What the hell is a mentor anyway?  I hear the word, and I always think of Captain Marvel’s alter ego, Billy Batson, and his nameless Mentor.  As best I can tell, Mentor’s job was to drive a Winnebago around the United States with no particular destination in mind, and to give clichéd advice to Billy, all while giving any casual observers the creepy feeling they might be witnesses some form of pedophilia in progress.

The Management Gurus will tell you that when mentoring works well, it is a relationship of high trust, where the Mentor knows and understands the technical, political and social ramifications of a particular organization, but does not have organizational power or control over a person.  Some organizations even assign two people to each other for a mentor-mentee arrangement.

I don’t think this type of relationship is really possible in most organizations, and here’s why:

  • We fired most of the middle-managers that could have served in such a role several years ago.  Now, outside of the occasional peer, there is no one to act in this capacity.
  • Mentoring relationships take time – years in some cases.  Most people don’t stay in one job, or at one location that long anymore.
  • Workplaces are generally lower trust environments than they were a decade or two ago.  Employees don’t trust the employer to act in their individual best interests, and employers see their people as disloyal.

Many organizations start these well-intentioned, but misguided attempts at mentorship programs.  Mentoring relationships, by definition, must occur organically, so drawing up a schedule to pair one person with another is a waste of paper.  Not to mention the awkward situation this puts the participants in:

“I’d like to introduce you to your new mentor!  Now run along and share your deepest fears and aspirations with this person.”

So here’s my alternative:  a personal Board of Directors.  Don’t be put-off by how badly publically traded companies have bastardized this good idea.  It is their implementation that is suspect, not the idea.  There are a variety of aspects of your professional life (and maybe your personal life, too) that could benefit from the external feedback of a Board of Directors.

If you’ve found a great mentor, then that person, may provide adequate direction for all axes of your professional life.  If you don’t have a mentoring relationship in place, you may want to consider a different person for each of the following areas:

  • Technical – how can you better execute the core skills of your job?
  • Political – how do you negotiate the politics?
  • Organizational/Social  — who are the true leaders of the organization, and who defers to whom?
  • Networking – Who do you need to know?  Who knows them?
  • Community involvement — What causes or initiatives should you be involved in.
  • Self-promotion – How do you raise your profile, without coming across as a bootlicker?

There are undoubtedly other categories unique to your situation too.  Perhaps you have people who can serve in more than one role, or maybe you have someone for each different aspect.

Just make sure you use their real name, and don’t address them as “Political Director”, otherwise you may leave people with that creepy impression like Billy Batson and Mentor did.