Do you have a mentor or do you try to get by on your own? Do you like to mentor new people at your place of work or in a professional organization?
Traditionally, a mentor is someone assigned to you in your place of work. Sometimes a coworker may take you under their wing, becoming a mentor. It is a senior level guiding a junior level in the way of their place of work. I had a mentor when I first started working a Systems Analyst. Even after we moved on in our career we keep in touch and I can count on him for advice. He even came to my wedding!
After working for a few years it seemed that mentors became someone who you were told to seek out. Go find a mentor. Ask someone you admire to mentor you. The work is put on you to figure out what you need and get help for it. I observed my various managers and boss until I decided who I wanted to be my next mentor. I chose my boss because of the type of leader she was. Everyone respected her and called her in when a project needed help.
These days, with social media, mentors can be found anywhere. You can follow someone you admire who offers good tips without ever interacting with them with more than a “like”. This is a little trickier because some accounts post generic statements like, “work when everyone else sleeps” without a meaningful description. Someone who does this well is iamprettytech on Instagram.
In the same way, you can become a mentor. Create an account and start giving advice. Mentoring is outside of the workplace, it’s abstract in helping people become who they want to be as a person. Once they figure that out, they should be able to soar in their careers. As Anthony Tjan wrote in the Harvard Business Review said, “the best leaders go beyond competency, focusing on helping to shape other people’s character, values, self-awareness, empathy, and capacity for respect.”
Lily Snyder 
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