I recently walked into a coffee shop, sat down with someone I’d never met, and had an hour-long conversation about marketing, entrepreneurship, education, and a number of other topics. I’ve written before about my experiences with mentorship, which have typically involved me working with and coaching an individual over a length of time and after establishing a personal relationship with them. This coffee meeting was different.
A casual acquaintance, whom I’ve known less than a year, knew my line of work and asked me to meet with my coffee companion, who was pursuing some continuing education in marketing. My coffee companion was interested in the marketing field, trying to find some specializations to hone in on within her studies, and wanted to know what life was like working as a creative in a rural, manufacturing-based economy, largely for remote clients. Those are deep subjects to delve into, but I was happy to oblige. Our mutual acquaintance helped arranged the meeting, largely via email, and thus, I found myself meeting a complete stranger – someone I’d never spoken to – for coffee.
So how can you mentor someone you’ve never met? I spent the first several minutes asking about her coursework, her preferences, what she identified as her strengths and several other probing, “interview”-type questions. Once I had a sense of her interests and direction, I filled in with my own experiences, and gave her some ideas for avenues to pursue in her studies. But aside from the one-on-one, here are some ideas for keeping yourself open to opportunities like this – opportunities to coach, mentor, and build people up, and to be known as someone who does those things.
Be Available
Everyone wishes for help at some point in their lives/careers. Be the help you’d wished you’d have had at whatever your critical juncture was. It doesn’t have to be big, it just has to happen.
My situation was for an initial conversation, with about 15 minutes of time. But we were having a good conversation, she was asking interesting questions, and I didn’t have anything hard-and-fast on my calendar, so I was able to accommodate a longer discussion. I’m not saying you have to allocate an hour the next time someone asks you to chat about a job or career trajectory, but try to be available. If you can’t meet in person, offer to field some email questions!
Be A Connector
Don’t have the insights or expertise someone might be looking for? That’s OK! You don’t have to be the answer to every question. But be ready and willing to leverage your networking as a more seasoned professional. You don’t have to throw your contact list at them without a second thought – those are your contacts, you’ve cultivated those relationships, and you don’t want to be pegged as someone who plays fast and loose with other people’s’ personal information. But there’s a lot to be said for opening your network to less well-connected people and helping a rookie.
Be Honest
With the proliferation of social media channels (particularly professional ones like LinkedIn), there’s a growing tendency to paint our jobs as the best, our coworkers as the most sociable, and our companies as the coolest to work for. And while we tout social mediums as being “authentic,” often what we put on them is an edited version of reality. We use them to incur others’ favor, their respect, even their jealousy (who hasn’t had a tiny bit of office-culture jealousy when faced with a bottomless beer keg at work, or unlimited vacation time?), without thinking critically about its basis in reality.
That approach doesn’t work in mentoring. I firmly believe that if someone’s asking you about something as important as their future – their livelihood! – you owe them the express courtesy of truthful, warts-and-all responses to their questions. So acknowledge your biases, inhibitions, and need for “#instaperfection” in your career, and be honest.
Offer Without Asks
This is directed at the acquaintance who first arranged the meeting. The acquaintance knew about my business, education and background through our mutual involvement in a service organization and a fledgling exploration of some possible future business interactions. However, when he approached me about the coffee meeting with his friends, my response with to offer without asks – I acknowledged by ability to provide some guidance and insight to his friend, and did it free from any ties to our business dealings. Don’t get into a “I-scratched-your-back, so-you-scratch-mine” thing in a situation like this, where a request is made of you by a quasi-business connection but for a non-business purpose. If you can’t do it without strings, don’t do it.
This list isn’t exhaustive, but it’s a good place to start if you’re approached about a coffee meeting for mentoring someone in their career progression. And while no one has an overabundance of time to give, you might be surprised by what you receive!
Vaulting Out the Window 