How many mentors have you had over the past dozen years of your business career? Please take the NoSpin Poll of the week. I just filled out my answer on this week’s poll.

I needed a short break myself from debunkers about web site content and web site marketing, but there will be more installments coming in future weeks.

Have you ever had a real mentor in your business career? Maybe you’re a lucky one. Maybe not. Some folks readily admit that, no, they really haven’t had a true mentor. But others, as a knee jerk response, answer that question,"Well, sure–of course–who hasn’t?"–but are they just hesitant to admit that they haven’t been that lucky either?

• They take a genuine interest and extra time when they don’t have to (or weren’t told to)--even when they are busy
• They give advice and wisdom freely asking nothing in return
• They listen and encourage over time--not just once or twice
• They do "it" informally, but authentically

Mentors teach, inspire, encourage and leave lifelong impressions. They make a difference in people’s business lives and their lives outside of business

Mentors are NOT about the following:

• Letting you keep your job out of the goodness of their hearts
• Giving you well-deserved raises, promotions, or stock options
• Kicking your butt to toughen you up, macho-style
• Including you as "one of the boys in the club"
• Letting you ride on the corporate jet
• Merely acting as a "good" (or bad) example for you to figure out how to follow
• Including you in a formal "corporate coaching" program.

Based on the definition of "mentor" offered up in this debunker, I don’t think that a very high percentage of business people over the past decade or two have had true mentors. But we’ll see what the debunker results have to say.

Maybe there are some older mentors still around, and do I hear stories about mentors from the past. But I haven’t seen much mentoring going on for years. Why so few real mentors these days? Why do the old ones seem to be going the way of the saber tooth tigers?

Business today is not very conducive to mentoring: mentoring is hard to bill for; it doesn’t produce immediate financial results; there’s no way to calculate its ROI; and frankly, there’s just too much else important stuff to do (e.g. mindless meetings, following bureaucratic protocols, kissing butt, etc that take up a lot of time everyday).

One can only hope that especially in the wake of Sept 11^th that more business folks will sit back and reconsider the real value of their work efforts. Perhaps even ponder the idea of taking time to becoming a mentor–it would make a lot more difference than most of the other stuff they do. And I’ll bet the ROI is pretty good as well.

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Tom Ranseen NoSpinMarketing 615.383.7157

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Tom Ranseen NoSpinMarketing 615.383.7157