MODERN MENTORSHIP: So You Want a Rewarding Mentorship Relationship

When I was in college, studying to become a stage manager, I thought the goal was to find mentors that were infallible — folks that could give me answers to all of my questions. I found a couple of them that did seem to always have the right answer, but I also discovered that a lot of people I held in very high regard were, well, people. They had feelings and they made mistakes. As I moved through my stage management career and into the arts administration portion of my career, I began to seek out mentors that were generous in sharing their knowledge, but also open to hearing about my expertise and ideas.

Now that I hold a director-level position within Creative Generation and own a small business, I find myself serving as a mentor and mentee in equal turns. Ultimately, I find I learn the most from people who are, themselves, willing to learn through an on-going, mutual dialogue. Taking a meta look at this, I’ve narrowed my criteria for rewarding mentorships to three traits.

Rewarding Mentorships are Candid

One of the best ways to learn from someone is by asking them questions and getting open and honest answers. That includes asking questions about their choices, decisions, successes, and failures. An example:

I wrote my Master’s thesis about how to employ strategic planning in order to avoid mission creep. After speaking passionately about it for several minutes, my then-mentor said “oh, I can make anything mission-related.” I wanted to scream THAT’S NOT A GOOD THING, but I knew I couldn’t. While they were candid with me, it wasn’t a safe place for me to interrogate their actions or values and learn from the answers.

Rewarding Mentorships are Reciprocal

In that example, the relationship wasn’t candid, but it also wasn’t reciprocal. It was implied that my mentor had more experience than me and, thus, my research regarding nonprofit missions and strategic planning had less merit. With that one statement, this person closed the door to my expertise, to honest dialogue, and to the idea that I might have had something to teach them, too. 

On the other hand, I have has mentors that enthusiastically reach out to me to ask questions about terminology, marketing strategy, queer community, and even the news. These relationships are fruitful because we are both able to share our perspectives and often reach a consensus that neither of us would have considered without the other.

Rewarding Mentorships are Agile

Those mentors — both candid and reciprocal — have not always been successful, however, and it’s because they weren’t flexible. They were a great fit when I was in a specific academic or professional space, but fizzled out when my career shifted — not because they weren’t still valuable, but because they weren’t able to adapt to our changing roles and expertises.

Sometimes that’s okay! Some mentorships run their course because someone moves or retires or changes careers but, in my opinion, the most rewarding mentorships change and shift and grow as both members learn.

Rewarding Mentorships Require Trust

All of these traits have one thing in common: to share, listen, and adapt eagerly, you have to be willing to trust your mentor or mentee. I would argue that that’s actually the most important factor to consider, even more than how much someone can teach you. You will continue to learn throughout your career and there is a wealth of knowledge available to each of us — the most important thing you can do, in my opinion, is find a person or people with whom you can pool knowledge, parse information, and test conclusions, regardless of where you feel you fall on the mentee to mentor scale.