Make sure your mentor has a mentor

and how this will help your business

You’re swamped. You feel like everyone relies on you for motivation, inspiration, leadership and advice. And frankly, you don’t mind. You chose to be a leader. You enjoy it. Some days you even really feel like you did some good.

But who do YOU ask for help when you’re the person who everyone relies on for advice?

The answer is easy right? Get a mentor, a life coach, a business coach. We are sure you already have one, but let’s quickly recap the benefits of having a mentor, just in case you’ve been too busy to remember about this essential part of running a business (and life).

All successful people in the world whether they’re an entrepreneur, an athlete or a musician all had great mentors to help them unlock their potential, so…

Why do you need a coach?

1. Mentor will help you identify and achieve your goals.
2. You need someone to challenge you and to ask you tough questions because being in the leadership role, you’re more often looked up to rather than challenged.
3. A mentor will provide a fresh perspective. They can do that because (hopefully) they are more experienced and removed from the situation.
4. They will help you expand your professional network which can create new opportunities.
5. Your coach will give you constructive feedback and praise. It also helps to be accountable to someone. When you’re in a leadership potion, there isn’t always someone to pat you on the back and say “Well done” other than your family.

We also recommend that you have more than one coach or mentor in different areas of your life. Moreover, it doesn’t hurt to join groups like Vistage or TEC Canada for an even bigger “hive-mind’ coaching and experience sharing.

How do you choose a mentor?

You will most likely reach out to someone who:

1. Is more experienced in your industry
2. Is successful (This is a tricky one. We encourage you to define success for yourself first)
3. Has mentorship experience
4. Is recommended by other people (Hopefully not from your own team. It’s best that your business coach is fully removed from the ins and outs of your business)
5. Is someone you look up to, a role model.
6. Has a mentor of their own.

Now wait a minute… Why is that important? What does it matter if my mentor goes to someone else for advice? If anything it’s counterintuitive. I’d like my mentor to be an expert. If he/she goes to someone else for coaching, doesn’t that mean they are not knowledgeable enough to mentor me?

Not at all!

In fact, we encourage you to ask your mentor who mentors them.

Tony Robbins, a life coach and business strategist who has coached over 50 million people around the world, including A-listers like Oprah and a former president of United States, has mentors of his own who he looks up to.

Here’s what Tony says about his coach Peter Guber:

“Our relationship has been a symbiotic one. We’ve coached and supported each other. He’s pushed me, he’s asked me the tough questions that have lead me to my own answers, and he’s taught me how to draw upon my own resources. We’ve developed a dialogue ourselves, we pitch and catch with each other.

He’s helped me understand that what makes someone a great leader is being a servant to something bigger than one’s self. He’s helped bolster my belief that a key part of personal growth is contribution and giving back to others. And most of all, he’s helped accelerate my own personal, emotional, and mental growth.”

Why choose a mentor who has a mentor?

1. You don’t want your coach to be you ceiling. Yes, you look up to them, they are more experienced and perhaps more successful. But if they are not progressing in THEIR life and career, you will only ever get as far as their achievement. And while that may be fine for the time being, there’s a ceiling, a limit to their mentorship. However, if your coach has a mentor of their own, you know that you will be continuously growing together.
2. You need a mentor who values growth as much as you do. The best mentor/mentee relationships are based on shared values and goals. How can you take advice from someone who doesn’t adhere to the same principals in business, the most important one being continuous self-growth and self-improvement?
3. You need to know that your mentor is doing this for the right reason. If they do not have a coach or a mentor of their own, it makes you wonder if success has made them arrogant and whether they are mentoring for the right reason. Are they just doing it to add a line to their skill set? or to leverage it for their personal business goals? or to fuel own significance?

Our final pearl of wisdom is…

Try mentoring yourself.

You may feel like you are not ready for this but let us ask you this: Have you achieved something in your life that someone else hasn’t yet? Have you made mistakes that gave you valuable experience? Have you learned by example what to do and what not to do in your line of work? If you got to reading the end of this post, we are sure that the answers are yes, yes, and yes.

So give it a try. Be a mentor to someone. And we don’t mean to your children or to your employees — you are already doing that. We mean one-on-one sessions when you go deep into a person’s circumstances and challenges and summon all your collected knowledge to date to give the best advice you can or even just be the listening ears that the person needs.

And by the way, never be ashamed to say you don’t have an answer. That’s one other thing that distinguishes great mentors from poor ones. They don’t pretend to know it all and are never ashamed to admit their limits and failures.

Good luck!