23rd MMA All-India Management Students’ Convention 2024
Lakshmi Chandrasekharan, Sr. Managing Director, CHRO, Accenture India, & Ganesh Chella, Co-Founder, Coaching Foundation India (CFI), discuss the importance of finding a suitable mentor early in one’s career.
Ganesh Chella: As students who are about to complete your education and take up a profession, you will find socialisation challenging in the initial days. It is important to realise that there are other persons who can play a role in your growth and success. These persons can be anyone—your parents, your siblings, your family friends, a college professor or school teacher whom you respect, or somebody else whom you look up to and whose views and opinions matter to you. The question is: Do you have at least one such person in your life today—one person whom you can go to for help?
Lakshmi Chandrasekharan: Mentorship is not merely about someone offering you career advice but about someone who has shaped who you are and helped bridge the gap between who you are today and your potential. A mentor can be someone at work, college, or home. Let me share my three questions on mentorship and my perspective based on my experiences.
Is the mentor one person you go to for everything?
Your mentors have been unconditionally helping you make choices and guiding you. They know your strengths and weaknesses. When you enter the corporate world, mentoring becomes a bit conditional and a lot more intentional. Sometimes, the initiation of this relationship is done by you. You have to seek out mentors. You can have different mentors for different facets, based on your goals. Form your personal board of mentors. They can be from your faculty, community, friends, or an elder person in your family. For that, you need to be skilful in networking.
Think of the people and map them in three circles: the inner circle, the middle circle, and the outermost circle. The innermost circle includes those with whom you are close and can take liberties. The middle circle comprises your regular acquaintances, and the outermost circle includes those you occasionally come across.
Both the mentor and mentee have to invest in the relationship. As you invest your time, a mentor in the outer circle can move to the middle and inner circles. Determine what you want to leverage in the relationship. You can’t act on 100 pieces of advice from 100 people. So, decide on who should be your mentor and what attributes you are looking for. Trust is an important quotient in the relationship. For different situations, you may need different mentors.
What do you look for in a mentor?
A mentor should be someone who does not judge you and challenges you to bring out your best. The success of a relationship can be written in a formula: (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-orientation. Anything in the numerator goes up, the trust goes up. Anything in the denominator goes up, the trust goes down.
How are leadership and mentorship related?
Leadership is about lifting people as you rise, ensuring you develop the next generation of leaders. When you start leading organizations, you start by leading yourself first, then you lead others. I studied at XLRI in a batch of 130 students. I know all 130 students in my batch, the senior batch, and the junior batch. Anytime I need advice, I can call any of them. They are just a phone call away. That is the power of investing in a relationship. Leadership starts with mentoring others.
Ganesh Chella: Where do I find a mentor? How can I know if the person will be interested in me?
Lakshmi Chandrasekharan: If you had to take back four words from this session, they are: Seek, Nurture, Strive, and Give.
Ask yourself, what is the worst that can happen? The person can say, “I can’t or I don’t have time.” Many organisations have a structured framework available. In our company, we have built a platform called ‘iAspire,’ where employees can state what they are seeking mentoring for, or they can offer to mentor someone. If such a tech platform is not available, ask the HR department. When you seek, you may be surprised by how many people are willing to help you.
Ganesh Chella: A mentoring relationship need not be long-term and open-ended. It can be even finding an answer to your one question. Quite often, mentors learn a lot from mentoring. For the students, the right mentor will help them find the right job—not necessarily the one that pays the highest, but the most suitable job, and will clarify the questions on their mind.
Lakshmi Chandrasekharan: At XLRI, I was devastated when, on day one of the campus interviews, I was not selected. I got a job at Nestle on the second day. Only later did I understand that rejection does not mean the candidate is not good. It is just that they are not the right fit for that organisation. A mentor can help students find the right fit by knowing their strengths.
Ganesh Chella: It is very important to frame the right questions. Be specific. It becomes easier for the mentor to respond. It is important to know the boundaries of mentoring. Today, we have many mental health issues. It is useful to know where mentoring ends and when you should seek other sources of help.
Lakshmi Chandrasekharan: True. When there are medical or other issues, it is better to seek counselling.
Ganesh Chella: A mentor can share a perspective, an insight, and point you in the right direction. A mentor can help shape the life skills of the mentee. If, despite repeated efforts, the mentee is not able to cope, perhaps other forms of help may be needed.
Lakshmi Chandrasekharan: In today’s world, where virtual working is a reality, mentoring can happen both physically and virtually. You can build your network in the virtual world too.
