How to create a relationship with a potential mentorby Derek Lidow If you want an important person to be your mentor or someone who will give you advice, then you have to offer a shared objective and payoff that is specific to what makes them feel good. (We discuss shared objectives in depth in sprint 8, “How to build strong relationships” and sprint 10, “How to create shared objectives.”) Since everyone is different, you need to understand all you can about any stranger you plan to ask for help. Internet search and AI are good starting points for learning about someone. The more you can understand this person’s motivations, the better you can pitch them to cooperate with you on a shared objective. Most people want to feel good about themselves, so giving a person a ‘freebie’ taste about how you can make them feel good—say, by explaining briefly and sincerely how much you admire their work as well as how much their public words of advice and being a role model have helped you. They may then listen to a brief question where their answer could make them feel even better. “What motivated you to want to do … . At this point you insert something pretty unique that they have accomplished. And then you quickly let them know that you will use their experience as motivation for your quest to improve the lives of other people. They are likely to remember the interaction, particularly if you reference it in your next outreach. To turn this initial brief shared objective interaction into a full-fledged mentor relationship, you want them to feel further good by telling them, when you have their attention for a moment, how you sincerely used the previous interaction as inspiration, which you combined with some other advice they gave in a book or speech, and that it resulted in you doing something valuable or creative. You are then in position to briefly ask for more specific advice in an area the person you have approached feels expert in. Since you have made them feel good about the advice they previously gave you, even if they didn’t remember it at first, they will nonetheless likely feel inclined to give you advice again. If you then follow up with a thank you note relating how their specific advice led to your success, then you are in position to ask for yet more advice. You do this a few times and the stranger will want to know who you are, which begins turning the stranger into a mentor. Remember, sincerity is key because people are very good at sensing someone being disingenuous. With gratitude, Derek and Ben P.S. If you like what we’re doing, please consider recommending this newsletter to another person you think would benefit from us. It really helps us build out our free content platform.
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