How to get the mentors you need—from a shy misfit turned L.A. Deputy Mayor

In the early years after I moved to Los Angeles, I struggled a lot.

All those times that I felt lost, there was no one to guide me. My parents couldn’t exactly introduce me to their influential friends --they had none.

After a few years, I successfully wrangled a job at my dream company, Maguire Thomas Partners, at the time America’s most powerful, best-financed, most glamorous real-estate development firm. 

That was the good news.

The bad news? I was a lowly assistant. Who desperately wanted to become a developer. 

Problem was, every one of the developers was white, and male, and fancy. And there I was, a short, young-looking Asian American woman, who was not from a country club. 

So, to boost my credibility, I went back to earn not one but two graduate degrees, an MBA in real estate finance and a master’s in urban planning. 

While I was working full-time.

I barely slept. 

Then, luck🍀 entered my life, in the form of a woman named Maureen Kindel, who was, and is, one of L.A.’s most charming and influential business leaders. 

At the time, her Saturday night poker parties were legendary among California’s business and political elite, but her assistant hated all the busy work. 

So, I jumped in. 

This was the ‘90s, pre-Internet, so I printed up invitations, hand-addressed envelopes, then called the assistants of the VIPs to check if they were coming. 

On party days, I set up chairs, poured drinks, picked up cocktail napkins.

That’s not all I did. 

Working the parties let me be in the room, to observe first-hand how powerful people interact with one other.

I was fascinated. They socialized in a totally different way than did my parents with their friends. 

I watched and learned.

Maureen generously introduced me around as her talented young friend.  

She and I began spending a lot of time together. Being in her milieu was totally different from the way I grew up.

And she was totally different than anyone I'd ever really known. She was vivacious, expressive, charismatic. It was easy to see why the Los Angeles Times called her one of the two most powerful women in local politics.

It took me another 15 years to pay off all that graduate student debt, but in the end, even more valuable to me than all that education was the experience of being mentored by Maureen and others.

Because what I lacked in my toolkit was not more technical skills, but instead, the insider knowledge, the network, and the emotional and social skills necessary to become a leader in the West. 

I got mentored by the best. 

At age 31, I was appointed a Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles, where I created education and workforce development programs that by now have helped a generation of Angelenos to better succeed in new-economy jobs.

Since then, I've had two more careers that took me all around the world including especially China.

When I was a confused young person helping out Maureen and my other mentors, I didn't know I was investing in my future. Only in hindsight did I understand how pivotal these individuals would be to my trajectory.

One day, I was chatting about all this with my dearly departed friend, Joel Kurtzman, the former Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Business Review, and he said something I'll never forget:

“Every successful leader has had mentors. The way to get a mentor is to be someone’s indispensable assistant.”

I love the way he phrased that! Be someone's indispensable assistant.

I would just insert an addendum: For free.

How to get a mentor? Be someone's indispensable assistant. For free.

Why work for free?

Because if they pay you, you’ll just be any other employee. And the relationship you are seeking is much more valuable to you than money. 

You are seeking permission to be in someone's life. And if you become someone's indispensable assistant for free, then by the universal human principle of reciprocity, they will be motivated to help you back.

Over the past 20 years, I’ve spoken to tens of thousands of people about how to become a leader. 

After each speech, I’ve been surrounded by folks hoping to keep in touch with me.

They've followed up with polite notes asking if they could take me to lunch so that they could pick my brain about their career.

Or they've simply asked, “Will you be my mentor?”

That never works. Powerful people are powerful because they know how to manage their time. Which means they do not randomly give away their time.

Powerful people are focused on changing the world. 

So, if you want to hang with them, stop focusing on how they can help you. 

Figure out how you can help them.

Here's how. After you identify someone you want as a mentor...

⛔️ Don't ask, "Is there anything I can do for you?" They'll say no. They don't trust you yet, and they have no time to figure out what you could do for them.

✔️ Observe them closely. Understand what they are trying to achieve in the world. Figure out what they need done, that no one else wants to do, that you can do.

⛔️ Don't think, “I went to Harvard, doing [insert task] is beneath me."

✔️ Just look for the intersection of [they need it done] and [you can do it]. Offer to do it. "Hey, can I take [insert task] off your plate?" 

✔️ Then, deliver, consistently, with excellence and a smile. For free.

Keep iterating, keep repeating, until you earn for yourself the loyal mentors you need to get to where you want to go.

In the case of Maureen and me, I'm so grateful that once upon a time, I jumped in to work those poker parties. What began as a mentorship quickly evolved into a beautiful intergenerational friendship which, after three decades, is still going strong.

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Joy Chen 陈愉 is CEO of the Multicultural Leadership Institute and a former Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles. Learn more at themli.net