MODERN MENTORSHIP: Thinking about mentorship in a horizontal way

While this may not be the only way to consider what mentorship typically looks like, I feel safe to assume that we typically think of mentors as people who are above us. Mentorship is often based on a one-way stream of experience, or in other words knowledge that is not openly available, from the mentor to the mentee. 

Indeed, circumstances often lead to individuals with more experience possessing some sort of authority over the less experienced. A mentor’s experience can be regarded as an asset, one the mentee wants and needs to reach certain goals. With no immediate asset to exchange, mentees may rely on kindness, largess, or other emotional motivations the mentor has to share this asset with them, and they are bound by gratitude for whatever benefits they may reap from the advice their mentor shares. 

While it has no inherent fault, there is a power dynamic to this structure. Simply put, it’s pretty great when someone agrees to mentor you and generously shares what you could otherwise never learn. But what happens when you can’t find such kind individuals? What power do you have as a mentor-less professional in need of guidance to take the next steps in your life and career? 

I’ve had many amazing mentors who were older, more experienced, and the kindest of people. Without their help I would have never accomplished what I am most proud of in my career. I’ve also had people in my career path who were older, more experienced, and even though they had the experience I wanted to learn from, they were not open to providing mentorship to me. This may have caused negative feelings, but after overcoming them my goals remained intact, and it was up to me to seek an alternative way to access the knowledge and experience I needed. 

I shared these concerns with a close friend, an extremely gifted and successful artist, who was familiar with my work and colleagues and therefore was able to grasp my frustration on a very personal level. They then shared with me how in their own career path, progress was achieved by collaborating with peers, professionals on the same level, classmates, people found when you look to your left or right, not when you gaze upwards. This candid piece of advice was in itself an example of this approach. While my friend was far more accomplished than I was in our respective careers in the arts, our friendship dismissed the hierarchy that existed between our professional identities. 

I started looking back through my career path for accomplishments I did not feel I owed to my mentors. There were plenty. I asked myself - who was part of these accomplishments? And I realized that while I was unaware of my friend’s advice, I had practiced it many times. Many of my professional peers served as “mentors” during my career. Many of them generously shared the experience they had already gained and that I had not. In fact, I had also mentored many of my friends in the same way. For each person I had a healthy working relationship I could name a unique skill or passion that defined the asset of their experience, an asset I could access based on mutual generosity, mine and theirs. 

As someone who deeply values professional experience and accomplishments I have often felt that a mentor is the only solution to certain professional challenges. Experience is the best teacher, right? That may be true in some cases, but in some, it is not. I am glad to have found another way to take on the unfamiliar and challenging in my career, one that is based on lateral reciprocity, and mutual exchanges of value.