Leverage Mentorship to Accelerate Your Career: New Rules for Mid Career
Leveraging mentorship to accelerate your career is one of my favorite important topics in the career advancement arena.
Why? Because we can only go so far on our own, we really need help after a certain career level. And sometimes it can be hard to understand what that looks like, right?
So really, we're here to address this question: “I'm struggling because I don't know what I'm doing wrong.”
It's such a common need; I hear about it all the time.
You want to move into more impactful work, you want your title, your compensation, your roles, your responsibilities to really match your potential, but it can be really hard to know what to do next.
If you know that you are in this space or if you find yourself maybe frustrated at review time... Or you're lacking direction in your career, you know you're capable of more, but you're not clear how you're gonna get there. You might have all these great ideas, and you think you're pitching them, but somehow they're not connecting with the right people. And they're not landing.
Ultimately, you know that getting some hands-on guidance would really help. But you're not sure where to turn.
You've read the articles like this one, maybe you've come to webinars on this topic, but you know–there must be some other resource that you can and you should unlock.
The Most Common Pain (of Career Growth)
It is so common to feel, in this space, like you're stalling or maybe treading water in your career, there can be a lot of frustration at losing out on months, or maybe even years at a higher compensation.
And you know that others are getting there with the same background or the same education, and that can be really just annoying!
It can also be really lonely, kind of heavy, the feeling that you have to do it all on your own. And it's hard to talk to anyone at the office about this, right? Because not only are we in remote work most of the time, it's also these are often people who don't have time for this conversation or perhaps peers who are equally out to find this.
Or maybe you're not frustrated yet, but you know that executives have coaches, they've got mentors. And you’re wondering, why not you?
And what about people who want to become executives? Or just the executives in their own career, of their own professional destiny.
I've guided over 500 Women at Google, Amazon, Nike, Deloitte. In all kinds of different industries: Finance, Tech, ESG, media and more. The thing that they all share is wanting to have that ownership over their career, wanting to be perceived as leaders, and needing some skills and guidance to get there.
I've seen this cycle play out a lot of times.
We want to be in charge of our own destinies, not just take what's handed to us.
Now more than ever, when you're in mid-career, this is actually really possible.
You have the tools, you have the resources, you know that it's time to take action.
With that hybrid work and geographic mobility that the COVID engendered, there's so much more that's possible… if you know where to go for career guidance.
Why guidance changes as your career grows
There is a reason that getting guidance changes as your career grows.
So let's talk about the “why now” of this conversation when answering these questions:
What am I doing wrong?
Where do I go to for answers?
In mid-career, something is different. And I'm going to start with a story...
I have a client, we're going to call her Eve, who works in a big fortune 100 company. It's huge;, it's a top household name brand and you probably own some of its products.
Eve loves her company, she really wants to grow with it. But at a certain point, she realized that she needed to invest in her career and her education and took it upon herself to go get an MBA while she worked and raised two small children. No small feat there!
Over the course of a few years, she went that extra mile, she worked at her role, woke up early to make time for coursework. After hours, she made time for homework. And after a couple of years, she got her MBA, and thought, okay, surely this is going to make the difference.
She kept at it at work, she kept getting great performance reviews.
But even with all that extra work, that new degree, no promotion was coming.
And that was very frustrating to her.
She kept asking herself “what's wrong?”.
I tick the boxes,
I did the right things,
So why hasn't all this extra effort come with any rewards?
There's a pattern at play that many of us experience…
When we were in our early career, maybe we didn't seek feedback, right? It arrived at review, or maybe a little ad hoc, and that's kind of it.
Or maybe if you're a bit more plucky, you'd go to the boss and ask for feedback. And depending on your manager, the quality and frequency of that feedback was varied.
So the feedback loop was possible, but maybe not that frequent as you would have liked.
Then as you move up into your mid-career, your responsibilities are going to start to grow.
Time gets shorter on your end, you've got all kinds of adulting happening on your end. The same is true for your managers – the person who you're asking for feedback.
So I’ve heard this from many organizations, and I actually organize teachings around self-directing your career.
This self-directing your career is now a skill that employers and organizations are actively looking for. And in some instances, actually helping to train their employees to learn this.
Like I said, I run workshops and programs for organizations to cultivate this skill so that people can get outside coaching to learn this skill to rise through leadership without as much feedback needed.
So when you hit a certain career level, managers and bosses aren't going to seek you out to tell you what you could be doing differently. We've experienced that it's the rare manager who really is after you to tell you how you're doing.
They're simply going to move on and cultivate talent that already gets it. It's not right. But it's easier.
So unless you're at an organization that has a great mentoring program, or a really good coaching budget for people who are at the exact level, this is what it is at this time and it might be the situation that you find yourself in.
It’s your job to seek mentorship
But here's the shift that we want…
We want to get you to a place where you recognize that it's your job to seek the mentorship and sponsorship that you deserve.
So as with many things, when you move into adulthood, more and more it's your job to seek that guidance – the mentors, the outside help like me, other coaches.
Getting back to Eve, at the big Fortune 100 company, that's what she learned when we started to work together, this ability to self-direct her career. That is what made the difference from her.
She had all these other hard skills that she'd gotten in business school. But she started to recognize that she was still in that old dynamic of seeking feedback from her bosses, asking them how she could help. This sounds really helpful but it does put a lot of burden on the person who you're asking, asking them where they saw her fitting into the organization and what she could do better, without talking about which skills she had or could improve upon.
These are great questions, but they're also really big and nebulous.
And if you're asking them because you don't know the answer yourself, that's going to be a rare person who's going to take that on for you.
Especially for Eve. She wanted to be seen as a leader, as someone who can have a vision, set a strategy.
The very first way to demonstrate that is to have a vision for your own career.
That is what Eve started to do.
So that way, when talking to bosses and decision makers – who could be potential career mentors and sponsors – she started giving them a really clear ask. Something super tangible that they can do for her.
How are these overworked, overburdened bosses supposed to take time out of their schedule to coach her toward making those decisions if she’s not clear?
So, when you recognize that it's on you to know where you want to go, which I think is fair because you're the only one who knows you, there's a few ways to find this.
Programs for high-potential employees
You can look for programs at work for high potential employees. Depending on the size of the organization, you might find that there are some six-month programs, something that you might be able to enroll in.
Mentorship and Sponsorship
There are mentorship programs. That's typically when an organization will pair you with somebody who's a little bit further.
And just to break down mentorship a little bit further…
Mentorship is when you're seeking the advice of somebody who's a little bit ahead of you, has been in your shoes. Presumably they know the future a little more, and have some perspective.
That's different from sponsorship, which is when the sponsor will also go the extra mile to actually advocate for you.
Mentors – they're great for advice, but they may not be in the right rooms. And even if they are, they maynot have the personality to take that extra step.
We need and want both sponsors and mentors.
What to look for in a mentor
When you are getting matched in a mentorship, or you're finding your own guidance…here's a couple of rules of thumb in terms of figuring out who to get mentored by.
When you're looking at internal mentors, we want to find ones who are interested and skilled at helping people with career growth.
That’s a specific skill set. I would try to find somebody who has a reputation for that. Also, this should be somebody who has the time, and will ask the right questions. You can test that out in your initial meetings with that person.
So we're looking for questions that center your experience.
Often mentors will be giving advice just based on their experience. And sometimes, that's great because both your experiences align or something hits you right.
But sometimes that advice isn't relevant to you. We've all been in those conversations where people just talk about themselves, and it doesn't necessarily help.We want to make sure also when you're looking for a mentor, that they're giving advice that is current. Sometimes mentors are a great deal older and they have a different set of experiences, there's a lot of wisdom there…but they might not be up against the same things.
We want to make sure that the person who you're getting mentored by has a stake in your growth. That is to say, they're not interested in keeping you in your old role, which might be more convenient for them. (If you're a really high potential person, you make your boss’s life easy, they may not want to lose you, right?)
So you want to make sure you're checking in with people who are interested and skilled at moving you forward in your career.
Leverage your career development budget.
There might be, through HR, a budget to invest in your own coaching, to find coaching that is specific to this – for a promotion specifically. For a job search, it's a little different.
No matter what, the very first step is changing the way that you relate to your own career. The sooner this shifts, the sooner you're going to start to direct your own future.
Waiting will often mean staying in that old dynamic that I was talking about again. That's another year of a role that we've outgrown.
It’ll result in more mounting frustration with an organization, something that you maybe could have headed off, if you've done a little bit of work on your own.
I've seen it a lot – people quitting before they need to.
And ultimately, I observed that folks can sometimes lose confidence in their own abilities because they're just not getting the feedback that they're hoping for. They feel really confused about what it is that they're doing in this role.
I just had a client express that they may be in an organization where they feel like they don't know what their skills are really amounting to. That can really have a compounding effect. Obviously, we're going to fix that.
I highly encourage you to take that first step. Especially if you feel like you've been looking for a solution for a really long time, whether it's leveraging something in house, or leveraging your own external mentorship.
How to be seen as a productive mentee
We've talked about the old dynamic and we've talked about shifting into the new dynamic, which is taking control of your career, being responsible and knowing the answers to:
Where are you going?
What skills do you want to develop?
So that when you go seek mentorship and finally get it, you can make the most out of that relationship and really turn maybe that mentor into a sponsor. Or build a lasting relationship that will help you throughout your career at different stages.
There is a method to do that. And I'm going to share that with you now…
Articulate your desires
The first thing is to learn how to articulate your desires so that you can be seen as an action taker.
I've covered how, when you hit mid career, there's this critical shift moving from asking for feedback or asking for where should I go, What should I do…
…to providing a vision for your career, and suggesting really clear next steps for your bosses and mentors.
If you want to be seen like a visionary leader who sets the strategy, then it is super helpful to have a vision or at least the first few steps for the bosses and mentors who might be able to promote you in the future. All those parts of your leadership, they need to be as clear as possible so that you can really leverage your network. Whether that's internal mentors or external assistance from your friends or LinkedIn connections, if you're going for exterior job search.
That means it is your responsibility to be clear on…
What org do you want to join?
Whether that's an external org or within your company, you need to be clear on the direction. As with Eve in this huge Fortune 100 company, there were a lot of different places she could go.
So getting clear on what org you wanted to join…
…what role you would be in that org, your vision for that organization, where you see it going.
What opportunities you perceive in that space?
What skills you already have, the value you bring.
And what skills you need and how you might begin to fill that skill gap.
There's a clear method to figuring that out. We have a number of modules dedicated to each of these steps in Career Strategy GPS so that within 60 days, you're going to know and articulate what you want, not just in the next job but in the next 5, 10, 20 years.
You’ll be clear on who you need to connect with, and what you need to say to them,
Important, you’ll know what that clear ask is.
And you’ll be on your way to making meaningful moves instead of doing, doing, doing, without really knowing how it's going to pay off.
Taking on more work may not actually be helping you because it may not be relevant work. Often I will see a lot of people going to talk to a million mentors or sponsors, reading a boatload of books, when really what's called for, at least at first, every successful promotion or job search really starts with getting clear on your own.
This method is not going to be taught in business school, as we saw with Eve. And it's rarely going to be provided by your job. Even if you find a mentor, you gotta be clear on what kind of mentor you're getting.
We want to make sure that the person that you're working with really specializes in helping you advance.
When you learn it, it's going to completely change the course of your career and future forever because this is a renewable resource. Every few to five years, you reach a new tipping point. And it is helpful to have the tools on how to handle that moment because it comes back.
This method in action
So that's what it did for Eve. When she knew where she wanted to go, she got clear on which organizations were important and which ones to target.
She got clear on which person in that organization to speak to. She got connected to them. And then was very, very specific about what her talking points were for each individual person and what the ask was.
Over time, she got that promotion, which is a very hard thing to do at her organization because it's so large. She's now a team leader for 2 teams.
And I got an email recently, thanking me, saying that if she hadn't been super clear and really explicit in her asks, it would be normal at her organization to still be waiting on that promotion. That's a totally valid fear for some of us.
Time to take action:
I am Alex Cooley, and I design and I run career and leadership programs for high potential women and leaders and the organizations who support them.
Ffter years of working with women, I took all my knowledge and designed a program called Career Strategy GPS. It's a six month hybrid online course and group coaching program. I guide women through that gauntlet of not just moving toward the next role, and their long term career trajectory, but also being able to design it themselves.
This is all with step by step guidance for me supporting you in a group setting. So you also get support from other folks and my guidance.
I’ve helped womxn navigate a promotion, when they thought there was no room for growth that's happened a bunch of times.
And ultimately, no matter what, design the role of their dreams, to go through those jobs search, that process, with real clarity and ease.
I have a more in depth teaching on how to make that transition. It's Invite only and only accessible to folks who want to take clear strategic action to get there. It's available to anybody who applies to the Career Strategy GPS program. There’s a short three-question application; I will personally review all of them.
If accepted, you get access to this training. And that's where I cover all kinds of scenarios. From changing industries, getting a promotion, or executing a sane, strategic and successful job search.