You Need More Than One Mentor
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Tip
“Find a mentor” is great career advice but be careful not to take it too literally. You don’t just need one. You’ll gain a more valuable outlook by triangulating advice from multiple mentors at the same time. But how do you find these mentors?
The first step is to envision what you want your career and life to look like five years down the road. How will it be different from the present day?
Next, create a list of the different types of support you’ll need to get from where you are now to where you want to be.
Then consider which of these roles are currently fulfilled by mentors and which aren’t. Who do you go to for emotional support now? Where are you getting your tactical advice? Who helps you understand the ins and outs of your company? For any roles that are “missing” a mentor, brainstorm who could fill that need.
Then you can develop new relationships or strengthen existing ones according to those needs. You’ll also find that potential mentors are much more inclined to say yes to providing support or advice on a particular topic than to the general question, “Will you be my mentor?”
Translations
🇨🇳 你需要不止一个导师
“找一位导师”是很好的职业建议，但要注意不要照字面意思去理解。你不只是需要一个。通过同时从多个导师那里收集建议，你会获得更有价值的观点。但是你如何找到这些导师呢?
第一步是设想你希望你的事业和生活在五年后会是什么样子。它与现在有什么不同呢？
下一步，列出你需要从现在到你想去的地方得到的不同类型的支持。
然后想一想，这些角色中哪一个是目前由导师扮演的，哪一个没有。你现在向谁寻求情感支持？你从哪里得到你的战术建议？谁帮助你了解公司的来龙去脉？对于任何“缺少”导师的角色，头脑风暴谁可以填补这一需要.
然后，你可以发展新的关系或加强现有的根据这些需要。你还会发现，潜在的导师更倾向于就某一特定主题提供支持或建议，而不是回答“你会成为我的导师吗？”
