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self-awareness

How to follow your purpose when things get tough

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Living according to your purpose, strengths, and values will dramatically improve your life for the better. But it will not be easy. A study from the University of Pennsylvania found that pursuing one’s purpose can trigger anxiety. I know this in my own life to be true – and of many change-makers too. It can be exhausting to follow a greater purpose. You wonder whether you’re making a difference, whether it’s worth it, and whether there is an easier way.

Following your purpose is a process, not a destination

Following one’s purpose makes many people feel like they are not good enough. That where they are in life isn’t good enough. And they feel they may never be good enough to live their purpose. If that is you, you need to understand that following your purpose is a process, not a goal. It is the sense of direction that guides what types of activities and accomplishments you pursue. And your success at those things does not define it!

Purpose requires sacrifice

Another big reason why people do not pursue their purpose, strengths, and values is that it requires sacrifices. In some ways, society makes it easier to just eat junk food, lie on the couch after work, and binge watch the latest tv show. Or to think that the latest gadget or expensive bag will bring you happiness.

Purpose takes sacrifice. To live the life of a revolutionary, you have to make decisions outside the norm. You have to take actions outside the norm and surround yourself with those moving on a similar path.

How to hang in there when following a purpose-driven life gets tough

1. Know the stress coping mechanisms that work best for you. Change is stressful! And stress on top of additional responsibilities can make transitioning to living a purpose-driven lifestyle difficult. What are the activities that get you in flow? Running, dancing, painting, playing with your kids or going for a walk in nature? Get in the flow.

2. Stick to a sleep schedule to prevent exhaustion but also be prepared for some sleep-deprived days. If you are working full-time while acquiring the knowledge and experiences that you need to transition into a position that more closely aligns with your purpose, strengths, and values, some tired days are inevitable. However, you are unlikely to achieve your goals if you are continuously exhausted. Arrange your schedule to ensure you have at least six to eight hours of sleep. Sleep is integral – don’t skip it!

3. Celebrate the small milestones. This is so important! We forget to celebrate along the way. When you make progress by finding your purpose, consistently do something that enhances your strengths, step out of your comfort zone to make a decision that aligns with your values, or achieve any other milestone, acknowledge it. Research shows that celebrating small wins makes you more motivated and happy. It’s the small things – don’t forget it!

Find a Partner

A powerful way to ensure that you stay on track is to find an accountability partner. Think of it as peer coaching.

The American Society of Training and Development found that people who have an accountability partner are 95% more likely to complete goals on time than individuals who try to achieve their goals on their own.

95%! That’s huge!

Your peer coaching partner could be a work colleague, supportive friend, or family member who will not let you make excuses. Or if you want to grow alongside other people who are pursuing big goals, join a mastermind.

Masterminds are groups of people who support one another in their goals. The benefit of being in one is that not only does the group hold you accountable for what you tell them you want to accomplish, seeing the other members of your group do great things can increase your motivation to do the same.

Final Words

Stick with it. As Ryan Holiday would say, the obstacles are the way! Take every challenge and reframe it as a way of learning, a way of improving, and a stepping stone to living the life you want. And remember, a little stress helps us challenge ourselves as we rise to the occasion!

 

Want to join the Greater Good Collective? Launching 1 May

On 1 May, I’m launching the Greater Good Collective, a 3 month personal leadership journey to live and lead courageously to create a better world.

Check it out here to join us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get this Free Guide: 6 POWERFUL SECRETS TO FIND YOUR HIGHEST PURPOSE IN LIFE

The world needs more purpose-driven people. But where do you start?

This inspiring guide will give you powerful insights to find and refine your own purpose in life.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Break out of your comfort zone to improve your confidence

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Have you ever done something that has surprised you? Perhaps you met with a mentor that you’d been hoping to talk to. Or presented a speech for the first time. Maybe you took on a project that’s a bit out of your job description? And you realized that you pushed the boundaries and moved out of your comfort zone?

Ahh comfort zones – they are warm and cushy. And as creatures of comfort, we love sitting in these pockets. But does it challenge us, help us grow, and improve our confidence? Short answer, no. One of the most effective ways to improve your self-confidence is to regularly push yourself out of your comfort zone.

In the book, The Tools, psychotherapists Phil Stutz and Barry Michels share research-backed strategies for people to overcome the internal barriers holding them back from success. These practical steps allow anyone to reach their full potential.

Tool #1 – Reversal of desire

The first tool in the book is the Reversal of Desire. It explains that your areas of growth lie just outside of your comfort zone. Yes that’s right, just outside of your comfort zone!

Your comfort zone feels great because it’s a state where your brain perceives very little risk. You’re in a familiar, safe situation. Changing habits, learning new skills, trying new things, and other self-improvement activities are all unfamiliar. You have to get out of your comfort zone to do them.

Stepping outside your comfort zone is stressful, but research shows that our brains need to feel slight to moderate anxiety to improve. Psychologists refer to this as “optimal anxiety” — the level of stress that compels you to take action.

Deadlines are helpful for understanding this. If you’re like most people and you’re given six weeks to do a project, initially you’re not worried at all. You feel like you have a ton of time and don’t push yourself to be optimally productive for the first couple of weeks. However, once you’re a week or two away, the stress of potentially not meeting the deadline becomes a weight on your shoulders that pushes you to excel despite tiredness and any other barriers you face.

Be strategic about your comfort zone!

The key is to be strategic about how and when you step outside your comfort zone, ensuring that your anxiety does not overwhelm you. For example, if you’re terrified of public speaking, don’t start by volunteering to speak at a big community event. Instead, start with small groups to build your confidence and work your way up.

It’s like a muscle. The more you push your boundaries, the easier the optimal anxiety will feel to you. It’s like you will broaden the boundaries of your own comfort zone.

This feeling of nervousness brings on our sense of flow. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a psychologist who wrote the book, Flow. He describes ‘flow’ as a mental state of complete absorption in the current experience. When we are fully engaged and challenged by a task.

“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Here’s a challenge (or two) for you

Write down 10 things that challenge you or make you feel fearful. Public speaking? Getting feedback? Introducing yourself to new people? Choose one of these areas to focus on. Brainstorm a range of activities to step out of your comfort zone and practice them in small but consistent ways. Remember your areas of growth lie just outside of your comfort zone! Try ten ways to practice this challenge – yes, not just once, but ten! Repetition is the only way you’re going to move outside your comfort zone to take on these challenging activities.

Moving out of your comfort zone doesn’t always have to be work related either – you could listen to unfamiliar music, read a magazine that you would never normally pick up, try a different hobby with a friend, go to a different restaurant. Get into the habit of pushing your areas of comfort. Reflect on what you learn about yourself in the process.

Final words

Don’t let the fears in your head stop you from trying new things and stepping up in your growth. Take the smallest steps forward and you might just surprise yourself!

 

Want to join the Greater Good Collective? Launching 1 May

On 1 May, I’m launching the Greater Good Collective, a 3 month personal leadership journey to live and lead courageously to create a better world.

Check it out here to join us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get this Free Guide: 6 POWERFUL SECRETS TO FIND YOUR HIGHEST PURPOSE IN LIFE

The world needs more purpose-driven people. But where do you start?

This inspiring guide will give you powerful insights to find and refine your own purpose in life.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

4 Steps to Unlocking Your Potential with Emotional Literacy

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Isn’t life an emotional rollercoaster at times? Do you feel that and wonder, how can I not get caught up in my emotions all the time? It’s true, gaining emotional literacy is the key to unlocking your inner awareness and untapped potential.

It’s about starting to think, feel and act more intentionally rather than just react to life.

We all experience emotions constantly, but it is rare that we understand exactly what they are and what they are telling us. We don’t realise it, but our emotions are a source of endless information about ourselves, the people around us and the environments we’re in! The trick is to observe them more!

So, what is emotional literacy?

Emotional literacy is not just having general knowledge about emotions but becoming fluent in your very own emotional language.

Developing emotional literacy allows you to:

  • Improve your problem-solving skills.
  • Make more informed, emotionally intelligent decisions.
  • Become a better leader and team player.
  • Learn vital information about your thinking and behaviour.
  • Strengthen your relationships with others.

Deciphering Emotions

In The Heart of Leadership, Joshua Freedman tells us that all emotions fall on an intersection of two continuums: pleasantness and intensity.

So your emotions range from pleasant to unpleasant on one continuum and from mild to intense on the other. The location of an emotion on these two continuums can dictate your decision-making, how you perceive and respond to others and your performance. This is why it is so important to have emotional literacy so you can be aware and place your emotions. Test the truthfulness of what you’re feeling or whether you need to shift emotions to see the issue differently.

The following steps are a starting guide to learning and interpreting your emotions.

1. Realise your emotions are assets

As a culture, we tend to deal with our emotions in a very unproductive way. We stifle them because we think they are weak or ugly, or we respond to them in a way that is unhelpful.
Wouldn’t you like to experience your emotions guilt-free and actually benefit from them? It sounds too good to be true, but it is possible.

Your emotions are letting you in on the very nuanced details of your life:
‘You didn’t get enough rest on the weekend’.
‘This person does not seem trustworthy’.
‘You should work on more projects like this’.

In Essentials of the Human Brain, John Nolte explains that the limbic system, or the emotional brain, is responsible for providing input from our surroundings and to indicate how our body is doing. It sends this data around the body and you feel emotions as physical sensations. How amazing is that?

It’s time to stop thinking about emotions as obstacles and realise they can move you in new and exciting directions.

2. Stop ignoring emotions

The next step is to stop ignoring your emotions. Have you ever had a feeling in your chest during tense or uncertain circumstances? Does that feeling ever go away without a change of some sort? Perhaps not.

If nothing changes, unpleasant emotions like stress, fear and anxiety can grow in intensity. Our brain just gets more desperate to have its message heard and acted on. If you feel apprehensive about a big meeting one week prior and don’t do anything to better prepare yourself, you will surely feel terrified one hour before.

On the other hand, pleasant emotions need to be followed up. If you feel happy about something, that is a great indicator that you should keep doing it!

3. Start to name your emotions

Now that you’ve started paying attention, you can start thinking about and speaking about your emotions more explicitly. It’s amazing how much of a difference it can make to pause and think or even speak about what you are feeling!

When you name an emotion, you’re acknowledging that it’s there, opening up a channel to begin considering that emotion. Sometimes, naming an emotion is powerful enough to change the direction of a situation. As you make this a habit, you’ll notice yourself becoming more present in each moment as your inner dialogue begins to change.

4. Understand the wisdom of your emotions

Once you have developed your emotional literacy, you can begin to better understand how your emotions are sharing wisdom that your mind hasn’t caught onto yet.

You can also start to observe emotional patterns, triggers, shifts and their strength. Don’t judge, just observe. Track particular emotions over a time period – consider emotions you want to have more and less of. Expand your emotional vocabulary by naming your emotions and see how you can express your emotions through conversation, art, writing or music.

It takes time to learn the language

So, the more you listen to your emotions consciously and learn to understand them, the more you can see personal and professional growth. Well-developed emotional literacy takes time and practice. Be gentle with yourself!

Continue to imagine what you might achieve when you know how to work WITH your emotions rather than AGAINST them!

 

Want to join the Greater Good Collective? Launching 1 May

On 1 May, I’m launching the Greater Good Collective, a 3 month personal leadership journey to live and lead courageously to create a better world.

Check it out here to join us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get this Free Guide: 6 POWERFUL SECRETS TO FIND YOUR HIGHEST PURPOSE IN LIFE

The world needs more purpose-driven people. But where do you start?

This inspiring guide will give you powerful insights to find and refine your own purpose in life.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

10 key questions to fuel your reflection in 2021

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The year 2020… How will you remember this year? What stories will you tell yourself and others about it? What will you emphasize in your memories and what will you skip over?

It’s been a strange and uncertain year for us all. It’s tested our resilience and made us grateful for the life we’ve been able to lead for so many years. Not only has the global pandemic tested our resolve, we are facing some challenging societal issues that we need to address; a racial reckoning as well as the importance of character in leadership and politics, and more broadly. Now that’s a lot to reflect on!


Connection and Reflection

It can be all too easy to skip over the experiences of the last 12 months like a bad dream to be left behind quickly. In fact, we can only truly learn from the experience if we take the time to reflect and understand what we’ve learnt and use these reflections to try something different as a result of the experience. Reflection can be a powerful learning tool to ignite your self-awareness, relationships and leadership. Better yet, it’s absolutely free to do, and your reflections get better with practice.

I’ve made it simple for you and created a list of questions you can send to your friends below. Or better yet, make up your own list of questions to explore! Let’s face it, our reflections to these questions might look very different this year than in previous years.

Here we go… 10 key questions to fuel your end of year reflection.

 

1. What did you miss the most this year?

Ok, let’s have a place to mourn. What did you truly miss that you didn’t get to do this year? It might have been as big as global travel plans or as small as dinner with friends and family. What parts of life did you miss the most with the challenges of this year?

 

2. What triggered negative thoughts and emotions in you the most this year?

First, think of the challenging feelings you had this year; grief, sadness, anger, jealously or loneliness, perhaps.  Researchers suggest identifying the emotions we experience is the first step to manage them better. So what were the feelings that came up for you this year?

Now think if there were any themes or patterns with what prompted those feelings? Loss of control, lack of certainty or close quarters with people?

Be real and honest with yourself. Often we think of the negative times in our lives but we don’t think about what triggered it!

 

3. What did you gain this year?

Even with all the changes and uncertainty, what did you gain? What were the silver linings?

Think about those negative triggers above, could you bring some reframing to it – how has it made you a better person, how did you grow and what did you learn? If it’s still tough to revisit, perhaps it’s time to gather a new meaning about the experience.

 

4. What new insights do you have about yourself?

What stretched and challenged you the most this year? What did you learn about yourself this year?

Instead of sailing into the new year without fully gaining the benefit of all your experiences this year, consider the three main things that you’ve learnt about yourself. What did you set out to learn and improve on during the year? Where can you see you improved from last year?

Where have you grown the most as a person, leader, family member or friend? Were these intended learning curves or a by-product of circumstance? Either way, we can take each experience to the next level by reflecting on what we learnt.

 

5. What is important in maintaining a strong sense of mental wellbeing?

When we were dealing with challenging situations this year, it also highlighted the importance of our mental wellbeing.

What did you rely on to help you through this year? Exercise, connection, reading, meditation, healthy food or music. We had to be creative. There was definitely some constraints – perhaps your gym closed down, you couldn’t leave your house or visit your friends! So what did you do?

Your mental health is important, not just in a pandemic. How many of these practices can you retain as part of your normal routine?

 

6. What did you realise is most important to you in your life?

What do you truly need to be happy and fulfilled in life?

It is so easy to get caught up in what everyone else wants you to do – your family, friends, work or even society, in general, can dictate what we focus on.

Think about when you get into work every day, do you reflect on your key priorities and set in for some deep, deliberative work or do you check your email and focus on what others want of you? Let’s get more intentional about how you want to spend your time.

Personally – did you get to focus on what was important to you this year or did you get pulled in different directions? What is fundamentally important to you and how do you ensure it stays the priority for you?

7. What are you grateful for?

Time to evoke a little gratitude. Make a list and check it twice!

Gratitude has immeasurable benefits to your physical and mental health. It improves your relationships, increases your resilience, helps you sleep better, improves your self-esteem and, not to mention, it makes you happier!

From the huge big things to the tiniest little things. What are you grateful for? If it involved people around you, this might be a nice way to reconnect with people during December and tell them what made you grateful too!

8. What has made you proud this year?

What behaviours or situations have made you proud? Perhaps where you have truly lived your values? Perhaps it was how you survived a tough experience, or maybe it’s how you supported others through the tough times this year?

Feelings of pride can include feeling satisfied, joyful, delighted or fulfilled. This year, it might be about the small moments that have made you proud or content. Think about your relationships, goals or simply your attitude.

9. How did you foster connection and relationships?

Family and friends, business colleagues and community – relationships can play a key part of your wellbeing and also your success.

It was definitely made a little harder this year, so how did you overcome this? Which relationships made you feel strong and empowered? How did you intentionally foster the relationships in your life? Are you hanging around the right people? Are they lifting you up to be your best? How has your presence positively impacted on the people around you too?

10. What change of routine happened in 2020 that you are going to keep long term?

Looking forward, what are you going to keep?! I love a good experiment! Whether it’s working from home or hiking on weekends!

2020 was the year of experimentation – what would life look like if we worked from home? What if we didn’t travel nationally or internationally for the next 1-2 years? What if we participated in events and conferences online?  What if we had to run our business or develop our careers in a different way?  What if…?

We can always try new habits and rituals to enhance life meaning and wellbeing.

—

Take some time this December…

Grab your favourite drink, put on some encouraging music and sit in your favourite chair or go outside into nature and answer these questions for yourself!? Then come together with friends and share your reflections from the year.

Get this Free Guide: 6 POWERFUL SECRETS TO FIND YOUR HIGHEST PURPOSE IN LIFE

The world needs more purpose-driven people. But where do you start?

This inspiring guide will give you powerful insights to find and refine your own purpose in life.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Don’t be triggered

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We have all experienced a moment when your anger, annoyance or frustration has taken over and you’ve said something at a meeting that, on reflection, you wish you hadn’t. Has this happened to you? It’s definitely happened to me!

The reason these outbursts can happen to the best of us is simple psychology.

We all have a part of our brain that is responsible for our emotions—the limbic system—and another that is responsible for problem-solving, planning and consequential thinking—the frontal lobe. The amygdala is the part of the limbic system that makes you react instinctively to your emotions which is something humans have developed to avoid harm. Unfortunately, when we get angry, it is very easy for the amygdala to overpower the frontal lobe, leading us to have an outburst.

Clearly this reaction is not the best course of action, but in a moment of anger, annoyance or frustration, there is no reasoning! So how can we get past that initial instinct to react? Read on for a simple, yet effective strategy to banish that embarrassed, regretful feeling forever.

Consequential thinking is the antidote to mindless, reactionary behaviour that prevents people from reaching their leadership potential. It’s described as ‘evaluating the costs and benefits of your choices’ developed by Six Seconds, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to improving the emotional intelligence of people.

How to practice consequential thinking

This model involves pausing for a few seconds, evaluating your situation and choosing to respond in a way that is best for you. In doing this, we are letting the instinct to react subside and allowing ourselves time to think.

Consequential thinking is about connecting your everyday behaviours to who you really want to be as a person and leader and to make choices every day that take you in the right direction.

Let’s break down those three steps.

1. Pause

Allow your emotion to occur without taking any action. For how long? Six seconds! Emotions are molecules and this is how long it takes for them to run their course in your brain and body before they are reabsorbed.

2. Evaluate

Question why you are feeling this way. What is the best possible result of your actions in this situation? How can you tailor your response to get to that result?

3. Choose your response

Respond now that you have thought through the consequences of your behaviour for yourself and others.

How can consequential thinking help you become a better leader?

1. Know your values

Consequential thinking forces you to clarify your values. What matters to you in life? Is it kindness, equality, connection or critical thinking? It can be daunting to acknowledge what you really value in your life and career, especially if it feels out of reach. However, this desire is something that will continuously motivate you and lead you to smarter decision-making.

Often when something annoys us, it is signalling something that is important to us. When we pause, we can think about what that important thing is that our emotion is pointing to. When you realise your values, it becomes much easier to see the consequences of your actions clearly. There is an obvious link between your behaviour and where it will lead you. Think about your actions over the past day, week or month. Do they align with your values?

2. Better relationships

Consequential thinking helps you enhance your relationships. Your behaviour as a professional
is what determines how others perceive you—whether they want to work with you or not.

Imagine someone in your team makes a mistake. As a leader you have two choices: react immediately or pause and calmly deliver constructive feedback. Think about which choice is more likely to prevent that mistake from happening again. Which choice is more likely to build a trusting, positive relationship?

Having positive professional relationships is beneficial for everyone: you won’t gain a reputation for having a bad temper and others will trust you more as a leader or a peer.

3. Dealing with challenging emotions

Consequential thinking helps you in those moments of explosive emotions. We all experience challenging emotions in difficult times from feelings of insecurity, to constant time pressures, to frustration and disappointment. No one gets to where they want to be without hard days and setbacks. What’s important is how you deal with the emotions that come along with these challenges.

Challenging emotions are inevitable. Once you reach the top of your field you are not suddenly immune to them. Luckily, they are a great guide if you know how to listen to them and act accordingly. You can apply consequential thinking–pausing for six seconds, remembering your values–to deal with challenging emotions. Holding your driving force in mind is a great way to better understand why you feel certain things.

When you pause to think about what is driving you, your values, you can better understand the anger and complete the task more efficiently. Having a better awareness of this emotion is going to allow you to deal with it properly, rather than letting it simmer and potentially blowing up at someone else.

In Summary

Consequential thinking is a key tool for your leadership toolbox. It challenges you to clarify what’s important to you, pause and act with consideration rather than being overtaken by challenging emotions and act with intention instead.

Warning – this strategy requires practice! Do you know where I find the better practice ground…with family. No one will know how to push your buttons better than your three-year-old son or your loving little sister! Yes, practicing this technique is not just limited to the workplace but can be used at home too.

How to find and make the most of a mentor

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It’s a special feeling to find a mentor. Someone who inspires you, drives you, and supports you with their time, knowledge and experience.

Finding a mentor and learning how to foster a productive relationship with them is one of the most influential actions you can take to boost your career and leadership. Here’s why:

1) Having a mentor enables you to have a more successful career.

If you are reading this article, you probably already knew that. But, did you know that this is not just standard advice? The research backs it too!

A meta-analysis study found that mentored professionals are able to advance faster thanks to knowledge and networking opportunities that mentors provide. Another study found that young people who have mentors have challenging and fulfilling job opportunities earlier than their non-mentored peers.

Wow  – that’s quite an edge!

2) Mentors have a firm understanding of organisational culture and the personalities of influential people.

This is extremely valuable! Because in many organisations, success depends not only on the quality of your work, but also how well you present yourself and your ideas to the organisation’s executives.

Many busy senior leaders will only respond favorably to work and communication formats that align with their preferences, regardless of what’s being presented to them. Millennials, in particular tend to make the mistake of thinking that if they work hard and offer great ideas, then their ideas will be implemented, and they will be praised.

And while that can be the case in startups, it is not the case in businesses that have hierarchical structures. Mentors can explain what types of ideas are embraced and how to present yourself in the most successful way.

So get strategic with how you present your ideas!

3) Your mentor can increase your job performance.

A Dutch study found that the primary way mentors help you in the workplace is by teaching you how to improve the quality of your work. As experienced professionals, mentors know how to deliver exemplary work efficiently. And the sooner you learn from them, the more you will stand out from the crowd.

Keep reading to learn how to find mentors and develop powerful relationship with them.

Why You’ve Already Met Your Perfect Mentor

When many people decide they want a mentor, they make the mistake of going out and looking for someone new to their networks. They do so by reaching out to people they admire on LinkedIn or attending events in hopes of meeting and asking for help from higher-level professionals they have just met. Too many people make the mistake of seeking out mentoring relationships that aren’t meant to be.

You may need a mentor because you are early in your career, looking to switch jobs, or feel like your growth is stagnating. Your prospective mentors are excelling in their careers and do not have time to invest in strangers. In her book, Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, recommends seeking mentorship from people whom you already have a relationship with.

You are much more likely to be successful for a few reasons:

  • You are adding a new element to your existing relationship – not forming a new one.
  • They have seen your work and know what you are capable of accomplishing.
  • If you work with them or have met them through a professional group, they are in an optimal position to help guide your career.

Earning a mentor

According to Diane Schumaker Krieg, the Global Head of Research and Strategy at Wells Fargo, one of the leading American banks, the best way to earn a mentor is to excel in your career.

This may sound counter-intuitive, since the point of getting a mentor is to become more successful. But before people invest time in you, they want to see that you are doing everything in your power to succeed on your own.  Showing initiative attracts the right mentors. Make sure you have the skills to be great at what you do and take advantage of every opportunity to demonstrate your value and potential growth. When potential mentors see this, they are happy to invest time and energy in you.

Initiating a mentoring relationship with someone you already know and who has seen your work is a simple as asking for their advice on a problem you are facing at work or how you can progress into an area that interests you. If the individual’s response is positive and they offer you essential advice, every so often ask them more questions to evaluate if they seem interested in helping you further. Once you feel the answer is yes, you can take the more significant step of officially asking them to be your mentor and you can formalise the relationship.

How to tell if someone is receptive to being your mentor

If you are struggling to determine if someone wants to be your mentor, global communications consultant, Glenn Leibowitz, says that you can tell by the amount of effort he or she puts into helping you. Someone who is just answering your questions to be polite will give you simple answers and not follow-up. Mentors feel personally invested in your success. So they’ll work with you to help you to solve your challenges and might check in to see how you are progressing. So it’s always nice for you keep to them in the loop.

If you work with multiple people you admire, don’t limit yourself to a single mentor. Reaching out to as many people as relevant and possible increases the benefits of mentoring. Not only because you get a higher quantity of feedback, but also because individual mentors may go through phases when they do not have time to help you. During those periods, having multiple mentors can ensure you are never without the support you need to thrive.

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Best Practices for Before, During and After Mentoring Sessions

Once you have landed a mentor (or multiple) you may be wondering how you make the most of your time together? Here are the top things you should do before, during and after your mentoring sessions to ensure you use your mentor’s time efficiently.

Before:

One of the most significant mistakes I see mentees make is expecting too much from their mentors. Mentors are busy people who typically don’t have time to answer all of your questions when you want them to answer. They are not there to do the work for you. Use the time wisely to get their thoughts and advice at a strategic level.

At the beginning of your mentoring relationship, ask your mentor how often they want to meet and how much time they have available for those meetings. Before sessions, prioritize what you want to talk about so you have time to address your most important issues in your meetings.

During:

To best utilize your mentor’s time, you need to come prepared to facilitate a meaningful conversation. Don’t expect them to offer you great advice unprompted. According to mentoring expert, Jo Miller, there are four types of questions you should ask your mentor:

  • “Stories:” Ask them to tell stories about their own life so that you can learn from their experiences.
  • “Situation:” If you are unsure how to deal with a situation, ask your mentor what they would do.
  • “Self-Awareness:” Often it can be hard to see ourselves. Ask your mentor for their opinions about your traits, performance, or other personal attributes. Your mentor’s views about you will help you become more self-aware.
  • “Skill-Building:” Chances are you need to develop new skills to advance your career. Ask your mentor what skills you should focus on and what are the best resources available for you to learn those skills.

After:

If you agree with their suggestions, apply them as quickly as possible and be sure to share the results at your next meeting.

Acting on your mentor’s advice shows them that you value the opinions they are giving you. However, you do not need to follow their advice 100% of the time. If your mentor suggests something you strongly disagree with, don’t do it. Explain to them why you decided their suggestion was not a good option for you.

How to Give Back to Your Mentor

Mentoring is a two-way relationship. While you may think you have nothing to offer, it is crucial that you find ways to create value for your mentor. Here are a few ideas:

1. Be Successful. The best way to give back is by being successful and showing that their time and guidance has made a difference!
2. Support their work or their charity involvements. Can you write them a testimonial on Linkedin? Can you share your experience of them in a public arena? Could you promote their charity work to your networks?
3. Share your perspective on topics where you have valuable knowledge to contribute. The prime example of this is with technology. If your mentor is several years older than you, they may have difficulty keeping up with the latest technology. You can step in to help them adapt. Offering your perspective on tasks they are working on can add value by assisting them to see their work in the eyes of someone who lacks their professional experience but may be knowledgeable in other areas.
4. Nominate them for an award. Put them forward to show you value their time and expertise.

Final Thoughts

Keep in mind that developing a mentoring relationship is an ongoing process that takes time. Before most people agree to mentor you, they need to see your personality and work style to know whether or not you would be a good fit as a mentee.

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