How to Seek Professional Mentorship

Video Highlights:

If you are in a professional position and you’re wanting to seek mentorship – somebody to help influence your decisions around your career path but you’re not really sure where to start, then this video is for you! 

One thing to keep in mind when you’re looking for a mentor is that you’re seeking counsel, not opinions. So for a lot of you out there that are getting a lot of opinions from people, they might not necessarily be in your space. They might not be doing the things that you need to do. So we’ve got to go seek counsel, we’ve got to seek mentorship. 

How do we seek that mentorship? How do we provide mentorship?

One of the tips I want to share with you today actually came from Melanie Griffin. If you ever feel like you want to reach out to someone but you really don’t know how to approach them, Melanie suggests starting with your warm network – people that you already know, like, and trust or they already know, like, and trust you so you’re not complete strangers with them.

One of the things that you can do to elicit some sort of feedback from them. Send them an email that is short, to the point and include two specific paragraphs. The first paragraph is always going to be leading from a place of you being of service. So provide some sort of antidote, a tip or some sort of resource to that mentor. Then, in the second paragraph, circle back with whatever you might specifically need guidance from with that mentor. This way you’re not just leading with I need this, I want this, you need to hook me up with this, etc. It’s really coming from a place of wanting to add value to your relationship. 

If you can always come from a place of service first, you’ll eventually get what you want.