This is Part Three of a 7-Part series on leading with knowledge-based power.

Recently I was invited by the local ATHENA Chapter to speak with their new Emerging Leaders Program cohort about one of their eight leadership principles: Learn Constantly.

In Part 1 of this blog series, I described how Expert, Referent, and Informational social power can create leadership opportunities through learning and growing a specific type of knowledge base. In Part 2, I discussed when to seek the most traditional method of education for career advancement.

Unless you want to change to a new career that had specific educational requirements or expected credentials, when you are looking to the next step of career advancement, going back to school for more education isn’t always the best investment in most cases. So what else can you do?

Here is the first of five less structured, less traditional ways to grow your career and move to the next step.

Mentored Learning

From childhood through college, we have multiple mentors helping us learn how to navigate the world around us—teaching us to survive, grow, and thrive.

These mentors may include parents and guardians, aunts and uncles, siblings, teachers, and friends.

We somehow think when we arrive as adults in the world of work, we no longer need that. The academic degree we earned should be enough, right? It rarely is.

I would argue that no matter what your age or job, we all need mentors for most of our lives. At work, those can be formal mentors, but they don’t have to be.

And you should never have just one mentor you lean on. It’s impossible for just one person to provide you with everything you need to be successful; and it’s not fair to expect that of one individual.

Think back to when you were a child...

Perhaps your mother offered support in one special way, your father in a different way, your friends in yet another valuable way—each of them enhanced a different strength you had or filled a needed gap. And one couldn’t really offer you what the others did. It was a group effort to raise you—and you likely contributed to someone’ else’s growth as well (whether you knew it or not).

The same concept applies to your career growth and advancement—there are potential mentors all around you that you can learn from.

Mentors do not need to be formalized. Nor do they even need to know you see them as your mentor.

I have learned so much from so many people who didn’t know they were my mentors, including peers and supervisees. I listened, watched, and followed.

What is the potential value and cost of having mentors?

The Value

I have found that this type of learning—the kind that is pulled from listening, watching, and following mentors—has been by far one of the most critical in my career.

When I didn’t have good mentors, I was overzealous and underprepared. My “confidence-pendulum” swung wildly from feeling overconfident to underconfident (neither perception being all that accurate) with insufficient feedback about what I was doing right and wrong. I made many mistakes—and it was hard to learn from them or grow from those mistakes without more direct feedback.

When I had great mentors, and many types, my growth skyrocketed—not only because of what they explicitly taught me but also because they found strengths in me I never knew I had and they taught me how to pull these strengths out and apply them.

The Cost

Mentorship is usually low cost in terms of money. The cost of time can be significant for a mentor, especially one that is a “formal” mentor. However, when there is a good fit, it is almost always quite mutually beneficial. I have learned just as much from the people I have mentored as from my own mentors.

So, if a mentor chooses to invest that time in you, do NOT squander it away.

How Do I Find a Great Mentor?

Mentors are EVERYWHERE. They are the friends, colleagues, and coworkers you admire. They are the peers and supervisors in your field or department, as well as in OTHER fields and divisions. Forget the linear, hierarchical nature of how most organizations are structured.

You may or may not find good mentors in your supervisors. Not all direct supervisors are a great fit for you as a mentor—these roles are two different roles.

Instead, do two things:

Reach out to the people you admire and ask them out to coffee or lunch. Don’t be shy about this. Let them know you admire them (be specific about what it is) and ask them how they got there. Most people love to share their career paths and decisions with others who are truly interested. Develop relationships with as many people you admire as you can. Over time, some of them will become amazing mentors, whether you asked them to be mentors formally or not.
Watch, observe, listen. You may not always have easy access to some of the people you admire. When it doesn’t seem feasible to ask to speak with them directly, watch, observe, and listen to what they say, how they say it, and what they do that sets them apart and makes them so successful. And listen to what others say about them. You can learn a lot even from a distance.

The next post will be about a second semi-structured strategy you can use to continue to advance in your career: experience. Yes, of course, experience. But what are by far the best types of career-boosting experiences? You’ll find out in the next blog post!

Do you have others to add or success stories using these methods? I’d love to hear them!

(Part 1 of this series: 3 Models of Power that Break Through Traditional Barriers

(Part 2 of this series: The Best Time to Seek More Education to Advance Your Career

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