Table of Contents

The Mystery of the Mentor

Having a mentor can accelerate a person's professional growth... but how does one go about finding the right mentor?

In my first formal training position, I had the good fortune of working for a boss who had a strong presence, knew how to navigate organizational politics, and could teach me a thing or two about learning and development.

I was only in that position for six or seven months, then both my boss and I left the company – he left for grad school in Australia and I left to move across country. We still keep in touch, and I’m glad we have. I still value his insights.

I feel lucky that I stumbled into such a situation. What about people who have never had an opportunity to engage with someone who could turn into a mentor? My colleague, Tim Waxenfelter, recently had some thoughts about the importance of finding a mentor and is sharing them in today’s Train Like A Champion post:

I’ve always wanted a mentor. I’ve never had one. I’ve always been jealous of friends and colleagues who could point to one or more mentors. I could never quite explain how they were able to end up with mentors while I didn’t.

I recently stumbled on the answer. I have looked at the guitar that sits on the other side of my office and wondered when I’m going to start practicing again. I’ve owned the guitar for over two decades. I can play a bunch of chords and some other random things like scales and arpeggios. Yet I can’t accompany my 9 year old when he plays a song on the violin.

Even in recent years I’ve been able to teach myself new skills such as computer coding. For some reason, however, when I wanted to learn guitar I was telling myself that I couldn’t see a path forward. I couldn’t discern a strategy for learning guitar.

I called a friend who is a self-taught professional musician hoping that he could recommend a good teacher. I figured that if I had to go to a class, I would try to avoid embarrassment and practice. It didn’t really work for a one-credit guitar class in college, but I could try, right?

After an hour on the phone with my friend I had a new plan. I would work on one song per month and send my friend a recording of me playing that song. He promised to give me feedback and to offer ideas for how to move forward. In a one-hour phone call he had helped me find direction. He had also become a mentor.

So that’s how it works! The key for me was that I needed to be motivated to learn and do and I needed to be in desperate need of help at the same time. In my professional life I’ll have to find a way to ask for help from a potential mentor without the desperation… or at least without sounding desperate. Now that I’ve found a mentor once, why not again?

Do you have a mentor that helps bring your L&D efforts to the next level? What tips would you offer to someone else in search of mentorship?

Articles Similar to The Mystery of the Mentor

L&D Team Book Club: “Map It” by Cathy Moore

L&D professionals may be responsible for always helping others to learn, but we don’t have tons of time for our own development. Over the past month, my entire team made time to read and discuss Cathy Moore’s “Map It”. These were our takeaways.

How to create a training plan in under 10 minutes

Using a lesson plan template (which is the most downloaded resource from this blog) can help give you structure. Using Soapbox can save you all sorts of time (and still give your presentation some structure)!

Hybrid Learning: When to use it

Recently I had an opportunity to talk with the folks at Mimeo about hybrid learning and when to use it. In today’s post, I share a link to that podcast, which is one in a series of podcasts they did with industry leaders on hybrid learning strategies.

Does training actually change behavior?

Does training actually change behavior? It’s a question we should be able to answer honestly. (And the answer is: No, not 100%… and yes, but seriously, not 100%)

Subscribe to Get Updates from Endurance Learning

Brian Washburn, Author

Brian Washburn
CEO & Chief Ideas Guy

Enter your information below and we’ll send you the latest updates from our blog. Thanks for following!

activities cookbook

Download the Training Activity Cookbook

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the PDF of the Endurance Learning Activity Cookbook.

Let's Talk Training!

Brian Washburn

Brian Washburn
CEO & Chief Ideas Guy

Enter your information below and we’ll get back to you soon.

Download the Feedback Lesson Plan

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the lesson plan as a PDF.

feedback lesson plan
MS Word Job Aid Template

Download the Microsoft Word Job Aid Template

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the Word version of this template.

Download the Free Lesson Plan Template!

Enter your email below and we’ll send you a Word document that you can start using today!

training materials checklist

Download the Training Materials Checklist

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the PDF of the Training Materials Checklist.

Subscribe to Endurance Learning for updates

Get regular updates from the Endurance Learning team.