Mia Burroughs and Leah Storie have a fine viewpoint piece in the Miami Herald titled: “Mentors aid careers, companies.” Here’s a key excerpt.

“The numbers paint a clear picture. Research has shown that more executives are leaning on their mentors more often for career advice. For instance, a recent study by Accountemps showed that 41 percent of executives said they would consult their mentors first before making a career transition, compared with 28 percent in 2002. Promoting mentoring relationships can help all businesses retain talented associates in which they have invested precious training and development dollars.”

Burroughs and Storie are aiming their piece at corporations, but they share personal examples of their own experience with mentors. Both are attorneys. And both have benefited from assigned mentors. They’ve been lucky.

Assigned mentor programs can work, but even the good ones are an attempt to replace a natural relationship with a program. That’s why you need to take charge of your own mentoring. If you leave it to your employer, you leave it to chance.

You’re not limited to one mentor, either. Seek out mentors for different areas of your professional life.

Be sure to stop back here and check the resources we’re building at Momentor. You’ll find ways to hook up with mentors and many other resources to help make your career the success you want it to be.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Mentoring and Coaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.