Mentors - Impact on life

Every kid needs a mentor. Everybody needs a mentor. - Donovan Bailey

Every one has mentors but we some times don't seem to realize how people around us have been influencing our lives more than we can imagine.

Early childhood makes us look up to parents and every kid aims to be like parents or any one else living in same house like grand parents or uncles/ aunts/ cousin.  We later realize them as early stage mentors or Home mentors when life is just about shaping up.

Schooling/ College days , we mostly have successful people from various fields like sports, films, literature or politics. I remember idolizing Swami Vivekananda possibly because of my Hindu upbringing, Kapil dev - India cricket captain who won world cup first time and Mahatma Gandhi as he seemed to be everyone's ideal. :-) This stage can easily be called Star mentors as seldom the mentors would be ones who are not successful.

Career Mentors actually begin from the time one makes choices about what education one would choose and make career out of. Some times its based on our own choices, or the people we look up to. I remember Engineering and Medicine as top most looked after professions while growing up and people I looked up to were our family doctor and father's friend who was electronics engineer. Father was a mechanical engineer himself, but his grease filled clothes discouraged me from mechanical engineering.

From some of early part time jobs that I did, I feel there was always some one to look up to. However, Mentors truly are people who also have more direct input in one's life than just inspiration and the sh*t gets real as we start working. Dealing with office politics, crazy managers or colleagues, hating office time or a particular rule to so much more.

The first mentor I truly admire was a Manager in Tata's who when I complained or a certain employee not doing his work fully asked me to own up. I was like shocked to know that the onus has fallen on me to do that person's job. Only realize later that there were real challenges which made the job difficult. Some time outside view is not enough. It made me to start thinking from others perspective as well.

Secondly, I met a manager who asked me what the F*ck I was doing in that job role. It was only my first months and I was told clearly that it wasn't for me. Honestly, today when I look back, that was one of best decisions of my life to leave it there rather than the anguish and pain I felt on being told on my face that I wasn't good enough or suited for it. This is very important as it takes a life time to realize that we are not doing what gives us inner satisfaction.

Next I met a Gentleman who had the single most impact on my career. The person made me believe in myself and demonstrated how being passionate about what we do makes it so simple to do it. Apart from bringing out the best in us.

There are so many more who contribute in our daily life but finally It is important to share your thoughts personally with some official from the same organization or work domain. It helps to get perspective on what's right or could be done better or differently. Also helps define the career paths more clearly than we would do ourselves.

The belief is Mentoring becomes serious business as soon as we enter our careers. I beg to differ as each stage mentoring was equally important. It was extremely important to have good home mentors to avoid kids from bad habits like drugs. Similarly our star mentors help us gain good perspective about our surrounding, country and race. Some mentors helped us make right choices about the careers we would pursue. Finally some have made us what we are in our work.

Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.
- John C. Crosby