DIY Mentoring

No one should care more about your career than you do. It is difficult to be successful and reach career objectives in isolation. The help of others is needed along the way: to train, to advise, to motivate, to give perspective, to educate, and to interject healthy doses of reality. Unfortunately, this need does not change with seniority ' particularly because goals get set higher and usually require significant effort and energy. Mentors can serve any or all of these roles. In fact, similar to financial investments you will want a well-diversified portfolio of mentors who can contribute to your career in different ways depending on your goals.

Mentors are not, however, panaceas for all career woes or facilitators of all aspirations. No one should care more about your career than you do. Not even a mentor. If any of these people care more about your vocational plans than you do, you are in for a very unsatisfying career. Similarly, if you are waiting for a mentor to create an opportunity, you may be waiting a long time ' especially if you have not asked for it or shown what role you can play in helping to get it.

Your Career Toolbox

Mentors are an important tool in your career toolbox.
Hammers, for example, do not pick themselves up and start building walls. You have to pick up the hammer and bring your own energy and exertion to it. The same holds true for mentors. It is imperative to stop and take stock of the role mentors are playing in your career because when approached with clarity and strategy, they are an invaluable, time-saving resource.

For mentor relationships to be successful, you need an active, not passive, approach. Many law firms, legal departments, agencies and even bar associations have wonderful formal mentoring programs. Formal mentor programs, however, are prone to flaws and are often the victim of the time constraints of the lawyers who participate. If you have a mentor who continually checks in; asks you about your goals; gives you unsolicited advice; makes connections and creates opportunities ' consider yourself very fortunate. Even if you have someone who just “looks out” for you, he or she may not being doing it in the most helpful and strategic way. It is important to take some time to get clear about what you want and need from a mentor and put a plan in place to get it.

To get the most out of your mentor relationships, consider doing 60%-70% of the work yourself. This may seem paradoxical but my observation is that the more work you do on your own career, the more you will inspire others to work on your career as well irrespective of how senior you may be. The law can be a time-starved and pressure-filled industry so the easier you make it for people to help you, the more inclined they will be to do so.

Get Organized

In order to do the bulk of the work on your own, you first need to get organized. Here's how:

Career Vision

Step back and consider what your overall career vision is. Even if you can only project this out one year, that will at least give you a framework from which to work. Or if you have had a long-standing career vision that you have lost sight of, take the time to get reconnected.

Goals/Objectives

Once you are clear on your vision, identify what goals you will need to accomplish in order to reach your vision.

Resources

What resources will you need to reach your goals? Political capital? Specific opportunities? Targeted contacts?

Obstacles

What could get in the way of your goals and vision?

Workaround

What would you need to successfully navigate the potential obstacles?

Do It Yourself

Once you have worked through the steps above, ask yourself what role a mentor or several mentors could play. Take as an example, the goal of wanting to be a federal judge. You might use one mentor to put you in touch with his/her network of current and/or former judges. Another might be a current or former judge him/herself and would be helpful from an information standpoint with respect to the appointment process. You may discover that you need to have a track record of public service for which you are currently coming up short and another mentor could help fill that gap by giving you opportunities based on his/her community involvement and connections.

Now that you have a strategic, diversified mentor plan, drill it down one layer further. For the mentor for whom you need contacts, go on to LinkedIn and see which of his/her contacts would be most helpful. Volunteer to reach out to the contacts yourself with his/her permission. Do research on these individuals and go to your mentor with a detailed outline of what you would want to ask or cover with each of these individuals so he/she can just suggest changes to your approach, not coach you through originating one. For the mentor who is a judge and will be helpful with the appointment process, do as much of the research as you can ahead of time and go to him/her with a list of specific questions about his/her experience that will strategically tap insider knowledge and help identify hints as well as pitfalls. Finally, for the mentor who can line up public service exposure, identify specific opportunities you may already know about and have an elevator pitch ready that explains how prepared you are to take on the challenge and how you will add value.

Reap the Rewards

What you will likely find in taking more of an ownership approach to your mentoring is that you will get more out of your mentors than you were expecting and than what you might have gotten from a formal program. It is the equivalent of taking out an insurance policy to make sure you, your career and your goals do not fall through any cracks even as a seasoned practitioner.

Diane Costigan is a managing director and coach with Shannon & Manch, L.L.P., where she assists lawyers in defining career goals and applying creating strategies to achieve them. She is the author of the blog LiveWorkEatPlay, and can be reached at [email protected].

No one should care more about your career than you do. It is difficult to be successful and reach career objectives in isolation. The help of others is needed along the way: to train, to advise, to motivate, to give perspective, to educate, and to interject healthy doses of reality. Unfortunately, this need does not change with seniority ' particularly because goals get set higher and usually require significant effort and energy. Mentors can serve any or all of these roles. In fact, similar to financial investments you will want a well-diversified portfolio of mentors who can contribute to your career in different ways depending on your goals.

Mentors are not, however, panaceas for all career woes or facilitators of all aspirations. No one should care more about your career than you do. Not even a mentor. If any of these people care more about your vocational plans than you do, you are in for a very unsatisfying career. Similarly, if you are waiting for a mentor to create an opportunity, you may be waiting a long time ' especially if you have not asked for it or shown what role you can play in helping to get it.

Your Career Toolbox

Mentors are an important tool in your career toolbox.
Hammers, for example, do not pick themselves up and start building walls. You have to pick up the hammer and bring your own energy and exertion to it. The same holds true for mentors. It is imperative to stop and take stock of the role mentors are playing in your career because when approached with clarity and strategy, they are an invaluable, time-saving resource.

For mentor relationships to be successful, you need an active, not passive, approach. Many law firms, legal departments, agencies and even bar associations have wonderful formal mentoring programs. Formal mentor programs, however, are prone to flaws and are often the victim of the time constraints of the lawyers who participate. If you have a mentor who continually checks in; asks you about your goals; gives you unsolicited advice; makes connections and creates opportunities ' consider yourself very fortunate. Even if you have someone who just “looks out” for you, he or she may not being doing it in the most helpful and strategic way. It is important to take some time to get clear about what you want and need from a mentor and put a plan in place to get it.

To get the most out of your mentor relationships, consider doing 60%-70% of the work yourself. This may seem paradoxical but my observation is that the more work you do on your own career, the more you will inspire others to work on your career as well irrespective of how senior you may be. The law can be a time-starved and pressure-filled industry so the easier you make it for people to help you, the more inclined they will be to do so.

Get Organized

In order to do the bulk of the work on your own, you first need to get organized. Here's how:

Career Vision

Step back and consider what your overall career vision is. Even if you can only project this out one year, that will at least give you a framework from which to work. Or if you have had a long-standing career vision that you have lost sight of, take the time to get reconnected.

Goals/Objectives

Once you are clear on your vision, identify what goals you will need to accomplish in order to reach your vision.

Resources

What resources will you need to reach your goals? Political capital? Specific opportunities? Targeted contacts?

Obstacles

What could get in the way of your goals and vision?

Workaround

What would you need to successfully navigate the potential obstacles?

Do It Yourself

Once you have worked through the steps above, ask yourself what role a mentor or several mentors could play. Take as an example, the goal of wanting to be a federal judge. You might use one mentor to put you in touch with his/her network of current and/or former judges. Another might be a current or former judge him/herself and would be helpful from an information standpoint with respect to the appointment process. You may discover that you need to have a track record of public service for which you are currently coming up short and another mentor could help fill that gap by giving you opportunities based on his/her community involvement and connections.

Now that you have a strategic, diversified mentor plan, drill it down one layer further. For the mentor for whom you need contacts, go on to LinkedIn and see which of his/her contacts would be most helpful. Volunteer to reach out to the contacts yourself with his/her permission. Do research on these individuals and go to your mentor with a detailed outline of what you would want to ask or cover with each of these individuals so he/she can just suggest changes to your approach, not coach you through originating one. For the mentor who is a judge and will be helpful with the appointment process, do as much of the research as you can ahead of time and go to him/her with a list of specific questions about his/her experience that will strategically tap insider knowledge and help identify hints as well as pitfalls. Finally, for the mentor who can line up public service exposure, identify specific opportunities you may already know about and have an elevator pitch ready that explains how prepared you are to take on the challenge and how you will add value.

Reap the Rewards

What you will likely find in taking more of an ownership approach to your mentoring is that you will get more out of your mentors than you were expecting and than what you might have gotten from a formal program. It is the equivalent of taking out an insurance policy to make sure you, your career and your goals do not fall through any cracks even as a seasoned practitioner.

Diane Costigan is a managing director and coach with Shannon & Manch, L.L.P., where she assists lawyers in defining career goals and applying creating strategies to achieve them. She is the author of the blog LiveWorkEatPlay, and can be reached at [email protected].