by Mark Sanders, LCSW, CADC
"If I have Seen Further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton
In 1978 an article published in the Harvard Business Review stated, Everyone who makes it has a mentor (Irby & Boswell, 2016). My long time mentorship relationship with historian and Senior Research Consultant William White has played a major role in my career success.
Over the years scores of African American addictions professionals have said to me, "You're my mentor or you have been my mentor for years." Some of them I have never met. In this post I will make a distinction between a ghost, role model and mentor. I will share two models of the stages of the mentorship relationship, offer suggestions on how to pursue and make good use of mentorship and highlight how mentorship has impacted my career.
Definition of Key Terms
Ghost: Someone whom you look up to but you will probably never meet. They might as well be ghosts. These include famous people like Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, presidents of the United States etc. You might meet them at a book signing or something, but the encounter is likely to be brief. The good news is that through their writings and interviews you can still be impacted by them.
Role Model: A role model influences you through their example in areas such as ethics, hard work, achievements and how they treat others. Role models may or may not work within your profession. You may not have much contact with them, but they influence you. When African Americans emerging in the profession, whom I did not know said I was their mentor, they probably meant role model. If this is true, I pray that I am worthy of such distinction. A key difference between a role model and a mentor is a role model demonstrates what's possible. A mentor helps you figure out how to get there.
Professional Mentor: An experienced and trusted career expert who guides, advises and helps support the career of a less experienced colleague, to help them grow in the profession. Unlike the ghost and many role models, you actually have a professional relationship with the mentor.
5 Stages of the Mentorship Relationship
Rapport Building. You get to know each other and assess if you can work together.
Direction Setting. They share goals, objectives and expectations.
Progress Making. The mentee works on goals while the mentor provides guidance and feedback. Accountability and follow through is important in this phase if the mentorship relationship is to continue. Over the course of a long relationship, additional goals can be added.
Winding Down. Goals are largely met and the formal mentorship relationship begins to come to an end. This may not always be the case as Bill White and I have worked together for 41 years, with the continuous establishment of new goals to achieve.
Moving On. The formal mentorship relationship ends. They celebrate accomplishments. They transition into an informal peer relationship.
What about the stages of long term mentorship?
These are the stages I have observed.
Admiration and Rapport Building. A potential mentee admires the work of a potential mentor. A meeting is set up, and they decide to work together. This phase mimics the clinical relationship (without being therapy) in that trust is built over time.
Goal Setting and One Sided Problem Solving. Early in the relationship the mentee might have a lot of questions for the mentor to help guide their career path. In this stage the mentor helps the mentee with goal clarity, goal setting and problem solving.
Mutual Problem Solving. In this stage the mentor encourages the mentee to engage in mutual problem solving, which may help them move their career forward.
Shared Interests and Projects. As their relationship develops they may begin to discover shared interests. The mentee has proven to be consistent as it pertains to follow through. The mentor might invite the mentee to partner on projects. One of the most rewarding aspects of my career has been the many projects I have worked on with my mentor Bill White. For emerging professionals reading this post there is a cautionary tale. It is important to pursue mentorship to help you grow as a professional rather than utilizing the mentors success or notoriety to quickly climb to fame. My experience has been if you have not done the work and developed the skills to climb to the top of the professional hill, there is a good chance you will slide down the hill. The mentors wisdom is often the most important gift.
Mutual Mentorship. As the relationship continues to grow, the mentor and mentee may begin to mentor each other.
The Mentee Becomes the Mentor’s Mentor. Over the course of a four decade career, I have been blessed to receive mentorship in specialty areas from people who I mentored years earlier. A full 360 degree experience. What a blessing!
Legacy Goals
About a decade ago, Bill White introduced me to the concept of setting legacy goals. This concept was introduced to him by his mentor, the late Dr. Ernie Kurtz. In the golden years of your career, it is natural to think about the legacy you want to leave to the profession you dedicated your life to. Once a year for the past decade I have met with Bill for my annual Legacy Goals Meeting. This has been an enriching experience which fills me with gratitude as I plan little goals each year to give back to the profession which has given so much to me and make plans to leave work and lessons learned to the next generation.
Getting Started. My ideal reader for this post are individuals in the spring or summer of their careers who are interested in pursuing mentorship. Where do you begin? Sometimes pursuing mentorship can begin with your being on the lookout for people doing the work you are doing at the level you want to do it. You can take a deep breath and approach them with a statement and a question like this. “I admire your work and I think I can learn from you. Would you consider providing mentorship for me?”
Years ago, Bill White told me that in the early phases of his career he made a list of the top professionals in approximately 7 areas of the addictions field including, pharmacology, history, treatment, medication assisted treatment etc. He approached these leaders for mentorship and established a number of mentorship relationships. A lesson I learned from that is it’s possible to have more than one mentor.
Closing Comments
In courteous society it is ok to ask the person who has agreed to mentor you about compensation for their time. If they quote you a fee my suggestion is that you run in search of another mentor! Four decades ago, I asked Bill White what I owed him for him for his time as my mentor. He told me that he asked Ernie Kurtz the same question years earlier and Ernie told him to “Pay it forward.” Bill went on to say, as you advance in your career people will seek mentorship from you and ask what it costs? Tell them to pay it forward by mentoring the next generation. What I am learning is that mentorship is a way of giving back to the profession as a form of gratitude for the benefits you have received from the profession. This type of giving is priceless!