BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Three Lessons For Greatness In Mentorship

Following
This article is more than 8 years old.

The readers of my weekly blog and I have enjoyed a fruitful relationship over the past few years, but if you’re brand new to my posts because of Forbes.com, then you might be asking yourself: Do we really need more sports analogies in business?  Don’t we have enough?

But before you close this page down, just hear me out:

I agree with you.

There are many overly used (and criticized) examples of sports lingo being dragged into the workplace. In the business world, we’ve all been told at some point to “hit a home run” on projects, or that our presentation was a “slam dunk.” Honestly, you’ll never find lasting lessons in these clichéd sports phrases; we know what they mean in theory, but simply stating the goal without a clear plan to follow is a recipe for failure. But if you study the greatest leaders of our time—whether they be from sports, academics, business, or the military—you’ll find that their wisdom, sometimes couched in the lexicon of their world, is far deeper than platitudes.

And you will find that they are always studying the great ones…from other disciplines. They have realized that no discussion on leadership can be held in a vacuum, and all available wisdom is universal and applicable.

For example, this week I had a great mentoring discussion with a senior accounting manager within the Enterprise family of companies. He desired to “rub elbows” with other accounting professionals in order to grow and was asking for advice. I told him that he was constricting himself by believing that the mentors he needed—or the elbows he should “rub”—were only within his own industry.

In our conversation, I shared with him my former mentoring relationship with John Wooden, legendary head coach of the UCLA Bruins men’s basketball team. Years ago, I was intimidated to even ask Wooden if I could learn from him, since our differences were so glaring. We were from different professions and on opposite coasts, and there was no reason in the world for him to make regular time for a guy like me.

Surprisingly, Coach Wooden agreed to mentor me, and over the next twelve years, I learned timeless lessons that transcended any profession from the greatest coach of all time.

My advice to the Enterprise accounting executive, and for anyone seeking mentorship, was:

1.  Identify people from different fields that you can learn from. It is very important not to be limited to your own professional industry. Take time to research each person for the characteristics and knowledge base that you’d like to adopt for yourself.

2.  Ask and you shall receive. Many people allow intimidation to prevent them from pursuing a goal. Even when making an effort to identify mentors, some never take the second step to “ask” for a relationship because they are just sure they will fail. There were a lot of reasons for my relationship with Coach Wooden not to work, but it did and I got better from it...all because I asked.

3.  Prepare well for your meetings. Coach Wooden’s time was very valuable, and I respected it by always arriving with pages of notes developed from hours of self-analysis and study. By taking time to prepare well, you too can search yourself for areas in need of growth. This will reflect when you meet with your mentor.

The beauty of mentorship is that we can be in the study of high performance people who are changing the world in their space, and try to use what they can teach to change the world in our space. There is not enough time to learn from all of the successes or mistakes in life, so the great ones learn from other people. Eventually, you can learn enough from their experiences—sports to business analogies included—to weave the fabric of true leadership for your own organization and life.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedInCheck out my website or some of my other work here