I wrote an essay about the three types of mentors exactly a year ago. Peer. Tactical. Strategic.
- Peer mentor – Someone who has a similar level of experience as you do in a given field.
- Tactical mentor – Someone who is 2-5 years ahead in experience, and someone who can check your blind side. Because they have gone through similar situations as you are currently going through not too long ago, they can provide context as to the variables (core and confounding) involved.
- Strategic mentor (which I formerly called veteran mentor) – Someone who has attained success in a particular field as you would define it. While they won’t be able to help you in the play-by-play, they can provide the bigger picture – the macroscopic view. Assessing and reassessing your long-term goals – your true north.
Rocks, pebbles, sand
Many of you might be no stranger to the rocks, pebbles, sand analogy. As the metaphor goes, if your life were a jar, you’d want to fill it with rocks first, then pebbles, then sand. If you start off filling your life with sand, you will have no more space for rocks and pebbles. Similarly, if you start filling it with pebbles, you will only have space left for sand, but not rocks. Analogized, rocks are your life and career’s most important projects and milestones. Pebbles are the smaller projects that lend itself to the whole, some of which you could do without. Sand represents the day-to-day, week-to-week ups and downs.
Rocks
Strategic mentors are most useful once a year (or at best 2-3 times/year) to see if you’re aligned with your goals. They help you set the large milestones you want to accomplish in your life.
- What matters?
- What doesn’t?
Pebbles
Tactical mentors, you seek after you come up with a few solutions/hypotheses that you would like to test. You don’t seek them as often, but they can help provide context to what you’re going through now, largely from their own experience having gone through it recently.
- What variables am I overlooking or underestimating their effects on the outcome? Or simply put, what could go wrong?
Sand
You seek peer mentors before you come up with your solution and in problem-solving mode. These are the mentors you’re going to be spending the most time with. And most likely, the most abundant category of your mentors.
- How would you attempt to resolve this dilemma? What would you do if you were in my shoes?
- What are new, innovative ways I can use to tackle this problem?
While they vary in their sizes, each rock, pebble and sand is necessary to live your most fulfilling life.
In closing
Over the years, I’ve had the great fortune of having some amazing mentors and mentor figures that have shone me the proverbial light when alone, I may have struggled to find. Yet equally so, I’ve met their antithesis. Luckily very few, but nevertheless. People who don the mantle of being a mentor, but cannot tolerate your success when you surpass them. The latter I met years ago when I indiscriminately and naively sought out mentors, for the pure sake of just having “mentors”. Arguably, as a foolhardy contest of ego and pride, specifically to compensate my feelings of ineptitude.
A mentor like a friend is someone who is happier and wishes for your success than sometimes you do for yourself. Often, independent of their own escape velocity. Simply put, they invest in your success. And of course with that pretext, they are a scarcity. Even of those are willing and free enough to be mentors, given the volume of their inbound, understandably, their response rate is exceedingly low.
While that fact shouldn’t deter you from seeking mentorship, it makes me cherish the time, effort, and advice I have been fortunate enough to receive.
In the words of Tom Landry, legendary head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, “A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.”
Photo by Anas Belmadani on Unsplash
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