GIVING BACK AND MENTORING

“It’d be great if successful people did their part

and mentor budding entrepreneurs.

There is also such thing as peer mentoring

where entrepreneurs going out and talk to each other”

              Give back to those who has given or chip-in to your success.  Recognising all the parties that have contributed to your success reinforces a virtuous cycle of gratefulness and good deed.  People say that part of being successful is to be likable.  Likeable people will attract others.  Likeable people are humble, willing to learn, hardworking and persistent.  They do their research beforehand and ask intelligent questions. They also offer help or add value, before they ask for help.

              There’s always this misconceptions that we need mentoring to be successful.  The several issues that often comes to surface are:

-       There aren’t enough successful entrepreneurs to help mentor

-       The ones that are around are too busy building their next big thing.

-       Most prefer to remain in the background because that modest Asian culture tends to miss construe talking about success as bragging or wanting attention

-       Others don’t want people to think they’re rich successful because they want to avoid being discovered and being asked for help

  But the truth is that we don’t always need successful people to mentor us.  Peer-mentoring do actually worked.  In this case, mentees should not expect mentors to give miraculous answers that will solve all their problems.  Mentoring is really about building a two-way relationship where both parties derive something from each other and gain the satisfaction of knowing they’re added or derived value.

Generally, good “mentors” subscribe to the Socratic Method and will ask deliberate question so that the other person can ponder and think from different perspectives to help with decision making.  What entrepreneurs really need is people who are willing to bounce ideas of each other, leverage different experience and perspectives, and share challenges.  Verbalising the problem is already half the problem solved.

Instead of asking someone to be your mentor, just establish an on-going relationship with a person you respect and make a point of asking educated question or advice.  Then follow up with your progress.  Mentors get excited and want to know if their advice actually helped.  They will likely help more if they hear feedback and progress.