Career development articles always say: "Find a good mentor." What advice do you have for getting someone like Bill Clinton or Warren Buffett to meet for even 30 minutes with a 24 year old?
You're barking up the wrong tree. No doubt both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Buffett would give you profound insights into how to succeed in life and work. But a mentor isn’t a luminary with 30 minutes to spare. Frankly, a mentor isn’t even a vip executive at your own company with an hour allotted just for you every other week.
Or it might be, as long as you have lots of other mentors. And that's our point. The all-important mentor--The Delphic Oracle of career advice--is too limiting. You want everyone to be a mentor in one way or another, teaching you whatever they know that you don't.
Many companies, of course, don't approach mentoring with the same mindset. Instead, they sponsor formal programs in which bright young things are linked with older-and-wiser types for regularly scheduled meetings. Devoid of any real chemistry, such manufactured relationships are too often valuable mainly for directions to the lunchroom. The best mentoring relationships are informal, forged not only with higher-ups but also with peers and subordinates. What we're saying is that while getting on the calendars of the world's leading lights would be great--more power to you--good ideas are everywhere. Every time you find one, you've got yourself another mentoring experience.
This question and answer originally appeared in Business Week magazine on March 13, 2006.
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