Successful Mentor-Mentee Relationships

Source: Monterail.com

Kellogg Insight features a very good article this week on how to be a better mentor (and mentee).   I found the tips to be quite useful.   One of the most interesting points made in the story centers on research by Kellogg Professor Brian Uzzi and his co-authors.  Here is the excerpt:

An analysis of the careers of more than 37,000 scientist mentors and mentees confirmed that having a mentor who is at the top of their game improves a mentee’s odds of ultimately becoming a superstar themselves by nearly sixfold.

But here’s something surprising. The study also suggests that the most successful mentees are those who go off to work in a different subject area, charting their own paths.

“When a student gets this ‘special sauce’ and they apply it to being a mini-me of their mentor, they still do well. But if they apply it to an original new topic of their own, they do even better,” Uzzi says.

This special sauce, the researchers argue, goes far beyond specific technical skills or subject-matter expertise, and includes tacit knowledge of how groundbreaking work is ideated and produced. This highlights the importance of mentors and mentees spending time and working through problems together, rather than simply ensuring that discrete skills are mastered.

This research strengthens advice offered later in the article by former IBM Chief Marketing Officer Diana Brink.   She argues that mentees need to own the agenda in these relationships.  They should be focused on how to secure the help and advice needed to achieve their goals, rather than simply trying to pursue the career path that the mentor may have chosen and attained quite successfully.