Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
On five separate occasions this year, people have asked me some variation of this question: How did you find your mentors?
And usually I stammer out some combination of: I met them through a job. Or through a recommendation from a boss. Or through a networking organization. But the truth is, really, how I met these people is that I put myself out there to meet them. And then, I really, really talked with them. It was like I was dating them. I courted them. I complimented them. I asked them to “be mine,” in a sense.
As one of my last professional acts of 2015, I was on Levi Weinhagen’s Pratfalls Podcast. It’s a wonderful show about the literal and metaphorical pratfalls of being a creative person living a personal life, which can come with relationships and children and parents and siblings and friendships. On the show, we talked about mentors and it strikes me that there are two kinds of mentors in my life. The ones that I’ve talked about above were a certain type of valuable relationship, but the ones I’ve been exploring more recently have a different kind of makeup. I call them, Mutual Mentorships.
It’s sort of like the concept of the squad, but blown up even bigger. It’s this notion that we can break down the structural expectations we have about what mentorship looks like (one person with all the knowledge comes in and provides someone else with knowledge) and expand it to be about a more collaborative exploration of everyone’s unique talents.
Mutual Mentorship says: No matter what your title, role, salary, bonus plan, career path, education - you have something to offer others professionally.
It’s funny, in all other areas of work and play and love and relationships - we stray away from the concept of top-down hierarchy because it’s largely considered ineffective at best and downright foolish at worst. It disincentives listening because it communicates that some people have more to offer than others. And it perpetuates traditional power structures by reinforcing the idea that you have to have a certain amount of it in order to be worthy of giving other people advice.
Deconstruct that idea and suddenly the available talent pool for “mentors” grows exponentially. People that have asked me to “mentor” them have often taught me just as many things about myself. Defining our relationship under traditional power dynamics limits what I can take away, which frankly, is a lot. It undermines mentors too, because it suggests that we don’t have the ability to expand into bigger roles or evolve our thinking even on topics which we are considered to be the “experts.” Perhaps challenging who can be a mentor would allow us all to broaden its value.
Now back to the question of finding mentors. I suspect the reasons this question comes up is because many a person is looking to improve their network in 2016. New Year’s has that effect of making people want to be more goal-oriented. And finding those powerful mentors is important and can change your life. But don’t let that be the only network you build this year.
Consider investing just as much time and effort building a mutual mentorship society in the circles you already live and work in. Invite former colleagues. People you’ve hired. Vendors you’ve collaborated with. Friends who you admire professionally. Old professors. Your yoga instructor. The diversity of the group will help to establish a powerful sense of “We” - and what the “We” can offer one another is beautiful.
