One of the best pieces of career advice that I ever received was actually not an advice, but rather a question. In 2003, as I was wrapping up my doctoral dissertation, I started applying for university jobs in healthcare administration departments around the country. I was fortunate enough to get a couple of offers and one of them was from Trinity University (my current employer) and another was from a large public university. They were both top-tier programs, but they were very different: Trinity is small, private, and teaching-oriented and the other university is large, public and research-oriented. I was starting to agonize over the decision, so I went to see my mentor, a wise professor called Vern Weckwerth. I told him about my dilemma, and he thought about it for a bit and then said to me: “Kaissi- I am not going to make the decision for you. You have to decide who you are: are you a teacher that is also good at research? Or are you a researcher that can teach?” Once he put that way, it became an easy decision. Teaching has always been my passion. I have always known that I am teacher at heart, a teacher that can do research and not the other way round. And this is how I decided to come to Trinity and have been happily working here for the last 14 years.
I start with this story to emphasize the importance of making your own career decisions with the help of good questions. Vern did not make the decision for me, because he knew that I was the expert on my own strengths, weaknesses, and career aspirations. He asked an insightful question and let me make the decision for myself. Unfortunately, Vern is an exception among mentors. Too often, mentors give advice to their mentees about what they should do and sometimes that advice may be the wrong one.
In a recent book entitled The Mentor Myth, HR and workplace expert Debbie Carreau argues that many mentors are undertrained to provide sound career advice. Unless a mentor has undergone formal training in their organization, their advice can be misleading, or even disastrous. Carreau relays the example of Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook and one of the most influential leaders in corporate America today. Earlier in her career, Sandberg was considering a job offer from Google. Her mentor at the time thought that the job was too risky and ill-suited for her and advised her against taking it. Sandberg took the job anyway, which changed her career forever. More recently, a similar situation happened to her with another mentor. When Sandberg was offered the COO position at Facebook, her mentor strongly advised her to take a position in a more traditional company. Against the advice, she took the position and has excelled in it ever since.
The lesson for you as an aspiring leader is that mentors are important, but the key to your success lies in your own hands. Mentors typically give advice based on what has worked for them in the past, but that is not necessarily applicable to you. “This is one of the largest pitfalls of mentors: they draw on their experience to give you advice, but they are not you,” notes Carreau. They can’t possibly understand the nuances of your personal situation. Moreover, the advice that you get from your mentors may sometimes be outdated. You may have a better understanding of new technology trends and models of healthcare delivery than a seasoned executive. It is also important to remember that mentors are humans: they can be biased, narrow-minded, jealous and often competitive, so take their advice with a grain of salt.
While most mentors tend to give advice without thinking twice about it, executive coaches give advice only sparingly. Instead, they focus on asking the right questions that will help the other person find the answers on their own. The mentor-mentee relationship implies a certain hierarchy with the mentor having the wisdom and the mentee being in need of advice. The coach-coachee relationship, on the other hand, is a partnership of equals, each with their own expertise: the coach is an expert in the coaching process and the art of asking questions, whereas the coachee is an expert in their own job, organization, career and life. When good-old Vern asked me that pivotal question that set the direction for my career, he was acting more like a coach and less like a mentor!
Bringing It All Together
Mentorship is presented to young people as a silver bullet: ‘You can’t succeed unless you have a mentor or multiple mentors’, they are told. But mentors are over-utilized and under-trained, and very often they under-deliver. If you can find a mentor that will give you good professional feedback, that is great. If not, your career is not over. Instead, you may want to look for an executive coach that will ask you the hard questions and empower you to discover your own road to success.
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Dr. Amer Kaissi is a Professional Speaker, Executive Coach and an expert on Leadership, Humility & Ambition, Assuming Positive Intent, Psychological Safety & Accountability, Growth Mindsets & Resilience.
