The Magic of Mentoring

Having a mentor is one of the best ways to grow and develop in your career. Monica Shen Knotts, MS&E BS, knows this well, having benefited from being a mentee, and having mentored many young professionals over her 30 year career. 

These notes are formatted as a series of Q&A.

How important is having a mentor, or relationships with people anyway?

• Very!
• Early career – you’re hired for potential. Later career – you’re hired for experience and network.
• When a company posts a role for a senior position, they often already have people in mind. 
• Monica got her first PM role because of Stanford dance. A community member in the dance troupe watched Monica managing the troupe, turned out she was head of product at Cisco. She was impressed with how Monica managed everything, and offered her a role.

Where should I start, what is the best approach to build a relationship? 

• When attending talks on campus, when the speakers say “get in touch” – actually do it! If they are offering, it’s because they genuinely mean it.
  • Reach out via LinkedIn, explaining how/where you met, so that when you connect, they’ve got the history of why.
  • Ask for a meeting. Almost anyone will give you 30 minutes. Be aware that it might take a while to get on their calendar. Give them some specific day/time ideas and add “or I’m flexible if a different time of day works better for you”.
  • Before attending the meeting, do your homework on the person to get a better sense of their background and interests.
  • Know what you’d like them to do for you. The person you’re having the conversation with will want to know how they can help you, because it can be disappointing to walk away thinking you might not have helped.
  • During the meeting, pay attention to get a sense of how it’s going, whether you’re connecting or not. If you are, ask if you can follow up with them once per quarter.
• Within a day or two after the initial meeting:
  • Follow up with a quick email to let them know your plan of action. 
    • Suggested template: thank you again for your time, it was really helpful/interesting/whatever to learn/hear more about [specific thing or couple of things], I’m going to do [the thing we talked about (eg, reach out to a specific person, read a particular book, look into joining a professional organization)], and I’ll reach out in a month or two to update/set up another meeting.
• Continue to develop the relationship:
  • Do ‘the thing’ (eg, reach out to the specific person, read the book, research the professional organization), and then update them with information/thoughts about it. If appropriate, requesting any next steps advice, (eg, the book you recommended was fascinating, particularly this one particular topic, so I’m looking at learning more by attending class x or class y, do you have any thoughts on which would be most useful/enjoyable/informative?).

What makes a good mentee?

• Someone who is interesting. 
• Someone who understands the limits of the relationship: your mentor is not your therapist or lawyer (but can help you figure out if you need either or both!).
• Someone who is willing to be honest and potentially vulnerable - a mentor can be a sanity check if you’re not sure if something happening at work is ok or not, but only if they have the full information about the situation. 
• Someone who will give updates and keep in touch. 

What should I do if my mentor has a strong opinion or has given me advice that I can’t or don’t take?

• First, don’t worry! You’re the person on the ground, and mentors understand you have more information than they do. You might have self-edited as you described the problem, for example. 
• Explain what you did and why. So long as it is well reasoned, such as the self-editing, or something else happened after your conversation, or you’d already framed it that the option they liked wasn’t something that felt right for you, etc, the mentor will understand.
• Remember that mentors often learn from their mentees too. If you’ve gone against their advice, and it’s gone well, that is likely an interesting data point for them!

What should I look for in a mentor? 

• Have people at all stages of their careers. People 5-10 years older you have more relevant recent experience that you can use for where you’re at and going soon. People way more senior though have a bigger picture and different insight - just know and accept that you might get bumped along their calendar a bunch of times.
• Have people with different styles and perspectives. Go-getters/type A’s will give you a different perspective than someone who is more laid back, and both of those perspectives are valuable.

How do I keep the relationship balanced, so that it’s not all take and no give? 

• Offer to help your mentor, and then do it when you can. Eg, in consumer product, your youth perspective can be invaluable and something they might not have such easy access to. Help them with social media, talk about whether you and your friends would buy something/use something etc.
• Pay attention to what they’re interested in and what they’ve got coming up. You can do things like share article/podcast links, info about upcoming conferences they might not be aware of, or give recommendations you might have for places to eat or visit if you know they’re traveling somewhere that you’ve previously visited.

There is someone I worked with quite a while ago, and I regret having let the connection lapse. What should I do?

• It’s never too late!
• Holidays are a great time to reconnect with people. 
• The milestones around the traditional school year can also work - start or end of school for example, because many people still sub-consciously mark those. 
• Ask about their families, give them updates. 

Maintaining all these relationships can feel like a full time job – what are the best strategies to counter this?

• Add things onto your calendar.
• Have a rotating list, and every Friday, write the top two people and then move their name to the bottom of the list.
• Prioritize the people you’ve really hit it off with.
• Practice practice practice!
• Pay attention to their social media.
• If you don’t already have a strong relationship, and they’re not a contact that you need to build one up with quickly, just comment on their social. (LinkedIn for your professional life). You can follow up more if necessary.  

I’ve got somewhat of a mentoring relationship with someone, and I have a time-sensitive issue that I’d like to talk to them about. What is the best way of approaching this situation?

• Ask for the time, with an idea of the timeframe “I’m working on my transition out of university this quarter, would you be a sounding board for me?” or “I’m looking to transition into a different type of role within the next 9 months, can you give me some stretch assignments?”
• If it is really urgent, eg, you’re in your senior year but are thinking about changing your major, or you have a couple of different job offers on the table, write/call with ”“I’m making this choice, by date, if you have any time in the next couple of days it’d be great to chat even just for a few minutes, totally understand it’s last minute though if you can’t”
  • You need to know each other decently well by then – at least 3-5 meetings.

What’s the etiquette or protocol around things like gifts, for example, at Christmas?

• Do what feels natural for you, it has to fit with who you are and what you do.
• Don’t go overboard, depending on how well you know them. A few meetings might mean a handwritten card. A longer term relationship might mean something small like a book or a box of chocolates. 
• Don’t get anything too personal unless you know each other very well.

I feel like mentors need to know what I’m up to, but I don’t want to feel “braggy” or obnoxious sharing a success. What are your tips on this?

• Do good work, and figure out how to let people know about it in a subtle way.
  • This is where keeping written notes is helpful – if I run into these people, this is what I want them to know. Have a sticky on your desk to keep it in mind. Not the details, but the basics of “this project is going well” or “we heard back from this person” or “we might have an issue coming up, I’ll let you know if it happens”.
• Sometimes you just have to push yourself to do it. For the big things, like awards, you should definitely do something, even if it’s just a LinkedIn post.
• If it feels more comfortable, frame it as praising others, such as your team, eg “I couldn’t have done this without [name/s]” or “Special thanks to [name/s], who was such a wonderful teacher/support/sounding board/mentor as I did xyz.

Miscellaneous thoughts and advice:

• Mentors can connect you with different resources or give you fresh ideas, eg education, career paths within the company.
• Mentors from outside your company/industry are valuable too.
• You should have multiple people across your career, to get different views and perspectives.
• Get their war stories!
• Annual reviews: keep your own copy of them. When you need to ask your current/former boss for a recommendation or reference, you can remind them of what they’ve said in the past. 
• Keep track of what projects you work on with who. If you ever need to ask a peer for a recommendation/reference, you can remind them of where/when you’ve worked together in the past.
• Monica is happy to be contacted by current Stanford students and alumni. Reach out to Lindsey for an introduction.

Notes prepared by Lindsey Akin.