Mentorship in Life

Mentorship --- at a basic level it's someone with a little more experience in the world showing the ropes to someone with less.

We've discussion mentorship in terms of finding a mentor, mentoring yourself, coaching others, and mentoring as one of the elements of great managing. There's no doubt that mentorship (both on the part of the mentor and the mentee) involves finding acceptance and community at work and making work better---it is an important practice. But we haven't discussed mentoring in life (as opposed to mentoring only at work), which gets far less treatment in the literature, and we haven't discussed how difficult mentoring is.

In the best case scenario, a mentor will provide you not only with help and contacts to make the most of your work, constructive criticism about your own work, and the ins and outs of your job, but with ideas about how to have a happy and productive life. As the mentee, you will gratefully accept and apply the advice. And it does happen.

More often mentorship involves struggles. Milena's Mentor Stays on the Case describe how Milena Slatten, a Russian "orphan" who was thrown from a third floor window by her mother, spent time in orphanages in Russia, and foster homes here, and her mentor, Thomas Higgins, a career prosecutor with the city of LA relate to one another. Struggles and conflict are central to the story. Not only did Higgins get Milena a job at the court house, but he's slowly showing her some of the skills she needs to succeed (at least in our version in Los Angeles). It's a story about extreme alienation brought on by abuse and hardship and about finding acceptance not only in the workplace, but in life. I hope you'll give it a read because I've been thinking about it for days.