I can’t stop thinking about a piece I read about why young workers should feel free to quit their first jobs. The number one argument in favor of serving notice? Lacking an on-the-job mentor. It took a good ten minutes for my blood pressure to return to normal after reading that. Needless to say, I disagree strongly that not having someone in your workplace to take you under his/her wing is a good reason to jettison your job. While having an ally with the power and interest to help you get your foot in desirable doors and advance your career ambitions is helpful, it isn’t a necessary component of career success. Here's why you don't need a mentor to make it :
A poor mentor is worse than no mentor at all
You’ve likely heard it said of pizza or sex that even a lousy version of either is still pretty good. The same isn’t true of mentor relationships. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Marquette University found that having a mentor alone wasn’t enough to generate positive workplace attitude and behavior outcomes. The quality of perceived mentorships received played a big role. Employees who were dissatisfied with their mentorship didn’t fare any better than employees who lacked a mentor entirely and were at risk to end up trapped in a dysfunctional, career-limiting dynamic.
There’s no need to put all your eggs in one basket
The days of mentorship monogamy are over . Social media and a creative culture that encourages individual self-promotion means that the power distance between you and your heroes is smaller than ever before. People, even the powerful and/or famous, are surprisingly accessible to the rest of us. There’s no need to limit yourself to a single individual who works down the hall when it comes to providing career guidance. You have an almost limitless pool of experts, business leaders and creatives you can reach out to with your burning career questions and whose pontifications about their life and times are splashed all over the internet for your edification.
What worked for a mentor likely won’t work for you
If you do decide to hitch your wagon to a single star, you’re ignoring the fact that times and technologies and workplace cultures change. How a potential mentor achieved career success may be out of step with your own life and represent a path you can’t or aren’t interested in following. The skills you need to be in the C suite (or on the tenure track or on a Forbes list) in 20 years aren’t the same skills and experiences someone used to land there 20 years ago. Young employees are getting hip to this reality, with research finding that while Millennial workers admired the success of more august colleagues, they weren’t keen to follow the same path to the top.
You need to develop your own body of work
The time you spend trying to find, woo and impress a mentor is time you could be spending on improving your own skills and building competence. You don’t need a mentor to put in your 10 000 hours. Becoming good at your craft or outstanding in your field will actually draw help to you and gives you more leverage to ask for it. Mentorship can’t and shouldn’t substitute for working hard and being a decent human . Instead of looking for guidance, look for inspiration. Find someone doing the kind of thing you want to be doing and work on figuring out how they put those pieces together and how that could inform your own path to improvement.
