What is mentorship?

We've all signed up for this program because we want to participate in a mentoring program, but, what does that actually mean? The dictionary definition of mentor is: an experienced and trusted adviser. A mentor can be someone who is a friend, a champion, a guide, a role model, a sponsor, a cheerleader, a source of feedback, or a resource. But one mentor can't be all of these things! To be successful in our careers, as mentees it can be helpful to form a mentoring map, where we think about what we need and how we can get it, and to find a variety of people to fill those roles. 

The mentoring map below (that I borrowed from Dr. Mirjam S. Glessmer's blog and the NCFDD) is a nice template to follow. In this exercise, you identify different types of mentoring you may need in your career and then try to think of the people that fit those roles. You might not be able to fill out every space, or you might find that one person fits multiple spaces. So take a moment to think about what type of mentoring you need, and then think of people in your life that can fill those roles and then fill them in. This map will change over time, so it is a good exercise to come back to. For more details about how to do this exercise, and what each box means, please check out Dr. Glessmer's blog post on this topic.