Mentors are people with distinctive characteristics in their line of work or business. Having a mentor can be a smart move in fast-tracking your career since mentors use their experiences to outline your strengths and weaknesses. They also help individuals utilize their strengths and weaknesses effectively.
Asking someone to be your mentor may seem awkward, and weird. However, there are professional and polite ways of asking an individual to be your mentor.
What To Look Out For Before Asking Someone To Be Your Mentor?
Criteria Check
Before asking anyone for guidance and counseling in your career, you may want to check if the person fits the criteria of a mentor. For example, you wouldn’t want to choose someone who has a record of incurring debts in his business to guide you toward boosting your organization’s productivity.
You may also want to check if the person is knowledgeable in your area of expertise. After all, mentors use historical events to provide guidance and insights to their mentees
Willingness To Help
It is important to know whether your mentor is willing to help you achieve your career goals. You will have to consider if they have taken out time to ask about the progress of your ongoing project, or are willing to offer helpful tips. Selecting a mentor who is not willing to support you will only degrade your productivity level.
7 Step By Step Process Of Asking Someone To Your Mentor
Clarify Your Goals
A person looking for a mentor should be able to identify their goals, that is you should be able to know what you want to achieve in times to come. Are you trying to improve a skill, increase productivity in your business, induce strategic planning and management in your career, etc.? You have to outline what you want, in order to make it easier for your mentor to guide you.
Conduct A Research
You have to look out for certain qualities in individuals before asking them to be your mentor. In order to get the right guidance in your career, selecting the right/wrong person will have a notable impact on your career.
Ensure you only select people who are knowledgeable in your fields or people with the right characteristics that match your needs. However, apply discretion while carrying out research on your potential mentor in other not to appear as a stalker.
Multiple Choice Mentors
This means selecting at least two potential mentors in your career. You will then have to weigh both party’s characteristics, strengths, weaknesses, and achievements as well as their success and failure rates. A person who has consistently failed over time will have more experience than someone who got off to a rocky start in his career.
Reaching Out
The next step involves reaching out to these persons to let them know of your desire for them to mentor you to greatness. You can decide to reach out to them by sending them an email, message, or phone call, then introduce yourself to them before informing them of your desire to have a word with them.
You can also schedule a virtual or physical meeting with them, in order to avoid talking to them at a bad time. Your potential mentor may be unresponsive if you start pitching them your idea at the wrong time.
Pass Your Message
The next step involves asking them for a favor and letting them know what they stand to gain if they offer you guidance and counseling. Most mentors are not looking to benefit from you but, even if they are, you stand a chance at benefiting more from their experience, network channel, and many more than you can imagine.
Be Polite And Professional
It is no news that popping the “Will you be my mentor question?” will be awkward. Instead, start by describing your business goals and objectives as well as your challenges, and how far you have gone in reaching your set goals.
Explain the steps that you use in carrying out your activities towards the attainment of your goals. If necessary, show them statistical data of what you have achieved and what you hope to achieve in years to come. Then you can proceed to ask for their guidance in achieving those goals. Ask them to walk you through memory lane on how they attain greatness.
Quick Tip: Your potential mentor may provide all the tips you need in your meeting with them, but you can ask them for further guidance, or ask to schedule further meetings with them if you experience future challenges. The whole point of the meeting is to build up a healthy mentor-mentee relationship.
Be Grateful
Irrespective of the outcome of the meeting with your potential, ensure you thank them for their time, and for providing any tip no matter how small to the success of your career.
Conclusion
The mentor role is not a child’s play, asking someone to be your mentor may sound unprofessional, and may look weird. You’ll have to clarify your goals and what you hope to achieve with your mentor’s guidance before you prepare to approach them.
Building a connection, or friendship before asking someone to be your mentor is also very helpful. Try to be as polite and professional as possible while asking them to commit their time and resources towards leading you to greatness.
