Why Mentors Matter

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Career Development  

I don’t know what percentage of you reading this have a mentor, but it will be a long way short of 100%. And of those who do have a mentor, I’m guessing that many, perhaps most, don’t meet with that mentor on a regular cadence.

I’m also willing to bet that, at least for some of you, your mentor is really more of a role model. Someone that you worked with or came across in the past who you aspire to be like, but whom you don’t have a current relationship with.

None of that is a criticism, it’s simply that mentors—real mentors—aren’t as common as they could be, or as they should be.

That needs to change, especially given the complexities of the current project management environment.

What is a mentor?
We need to start by defining a mentor, at least in the context I’m referring to here. I see a mentor as someone who has a long-term relationship with an individual with the goal of helping them in their career development. They shouldn’t have a current working relationship with the person that they are mentoring, as that can cause a conflict, but they may be a former colleague or manager.

The mentor should be someone who has significant experience in the field that the mentee operates in, but they don’t need to be an expert. The goal of mentoring is not to provide solutions or direction, rather …

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