So here’s something interesting from 12: The Elements of Great Managing, which I forgot to return to the library today:

More than half employees 18 to 24 say that someone at work encourages their development.

For example, when I had an assistant editor to help, I took her out to lunch and we talked about where her life was going and what her skills were and what she was working on. She was nineteen. It’s what we like to do with the kiddies. And by kiddies, I do mean 18 to 24 year-olds.

But then something happens….the mentorship, the encouragement, it lets up as we grow older and stay with the company. By the time you’re with a company for 10 years, only 1 in 5 people say someone encourages their development. Good Lord!

We’ve had letters on mentoring here and there as far as coaching goes, but it’s time to take on mentoring head on.

Here’s what doesn’t work: forcing people to pair up mentor to mentee and assuming that something good will happen. I could give you Sister Magdalena as an example. She was my teaching “mentor,” because she was the other math teacher at the school. We were teaching opposites. I like exploring, hands-on work that involves communicating and some noise. She likes drill and practice. She thought I sucked. And the better I got as a teacher, the more she thought I sucked. She also was a praise miser, but that’s a different story.

So here’s what may work for you: choosing someone that you admire who has a skill set that you covet and trying to work with them more than you already do. Yes, that’s general, but the relationships between mentor and mentee are varied and you need to treat the relationship not as a formula (need help = get mentor), but as a long-term relationship that you want to build.