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It is often said that behind every successful career woman (or man, if it is grammatically correct) is a mentor. There is more truth in that statement than what meets the eye. Mentoring is serious business – without a mentor, chances are that you may be not climbing the career ladder as you should. A mentor will be your coach, your guide, when you are navigating choppy waters of a professional career.

True mentors

Especially in fields where women are underrepresented such as science, technology, engineering, venture capital, etc., it is believed that having a mentor is crucial to success. Some believe that as opposed to one mentor, it could be a group of mentors who at some point in your career, have spurred you on.
Mentoring doesn’t come naturally to everyone; even though an individual may have the right achievement, the right level of success and even the correct dose of inspiration. Mentoring is hard work, sometimes compared to raising children, adult children in this case.

Becoming or cultivating a mentor usually involves a trusting relationship that can form the basis of the whole process of mentoring. Most of us have had such gurus who have shown us the way, encouraged and empowered us in ways that even years later, reap results that would make our mentors proud.
True mentors don’t only encourage their protégés; they challenge and stimulate the thinking process. Sometimes they let you swim and learn the tricks. Challenging the limited thinking patterns often results in new and innovative ideas. Once fired, the ideas can flow sometimes for years. Mentors who are able to touch and transform those conditioning patterns are the best and are able to bring out the best in their protégés as well.

Good mentors would encourage you to take the right steps; they would be instrumental in helping you transform raw talent and energy into capabilities that offer tremendous potential for professional development. They would be able to recognize and test talents and encourage while fostering such talents, often the next best thing for an eager, young employee.

Men - better mentors

Most women entrepreneurs have had mentors who have encouraged and shaped their success stories. The success stories of the protégés also are likely to bring a sense of deep satisfaction to the mentors. Mentoring, after all, is a relationship in which you groom, encourage, empower and enable an individual to develop wings and fly away. For the mentor, there’s nothing involved except the deep mental satisfaction of watching the protégé soar high.

Mentors have been compared with coaches of sports teams. Always encouraging, always motivating, always there to fall back on – that may not be the case in mentoring all the time. Mentors may let you off at the deep end just so you learn the art of swimming there; they may challenge every part of you in enabling you to get impossible things done. They may be driving and hard at times but often, the end goal is a sweet sight, when the rough diamond turns on its sparkle and shine.
One may have several mentors who may be entrusted with specific areas. One woman speaks of a mentor who helps her grow on a daily basis and is in a supervisory position over her; he helps her overcome obstacles he sometimes deliberately places in her way. She then has a venture capitalist mentor who advises her on the investment world and guides her in all investment matters. She also has an angel investor mentor who helps her develop that side and fine tune it.

Some women believe that men make better mentors because they do not tell you how wonderful you are – rather, they may praise the good efforts but be critical about the bad ones, while giving credit when it is due but also they are the first to point out the flaws.

So if you do not have a mentor yet, please do find one. But make sure that is not a mentor with a hidden agenda, a mentor whose final goal is far from a genuine one. A true mentor never lets his or her protégé down and will always engage the protégé in ways that may seem challenging but will eventually strengthen and empower.
(Nayomini Weerasooriya, a senior journalist, writer and a PR professional, can be contacted at [email protected])