One of my goals for 2020 has been to get professional mentors. Now that I have really ace individuals taking me on as a mentee, I feel I am partially squandering the opportunity, especially with the mentors who are multiple rungs ahead of me experience-wise. I need help figuring out how to be a better mentee! More below.
I am a mid-career woman of color working in a mostly (straight, white) male-dominated profession. Since the whole point of having a mentor is to learn from more experienced professionals how to prepare myself for more senior roles, naturally some of my mentors are white men. Despite being on an executive track professionally, due to my own imposter syndrome, I feel like I'm not building the best mentoring relationships I can and not making the most of my access to my mentors due to feelings of inferiority. It's as if I don't know how or am scared to reach out my mentors for guidance when my work struggles seem too pathetic or alien, for example talking about toxicity and sexism, but also other more mundane topics that are not at the level or scale of issues they deal with.
To be clear, my mentors are great and are not intimidating or aggressive in any individual way. Trust me that I have experience with toxic folks, and this is a very different experience. I naturally want to feel like I am bringing value to a conversation, so I feel ashamed to ask for help or to talk about my work struggles, and sometimes even avoid reaching out to my mentors, which is incredibly self-defeating in a mentoring relationship. It's as if I need to act more entitled!? Which sounds ridiculous, but there we have it.
My questions:
1. If you've had a very positive mentoring experience, what did you do to facilitate your mentor being The Best Mentor for you?
2. What did you ask of your mentor that really paid off for you?
3. How did you learn to ask for the help, advice, guidance, assistance that you really needed instead of feeling ashamed and avoidant about it?
4. General advice for how to be a great mentee?
Bonus points for addressing imposter-syndrome and figuring out how to leverage being outside the good ol' boy crowd while advancing in one's career. |
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