Are mentoring and networking still relevant?

I’ve been meaning to post about my experience last month getting to know members of the Young Women for Change program, part of the Michigan Women’s Foundation. The program has grown a lot since I participated in high school, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the strength of the young women involved. Speaking to the group of young women was admittedly more exciting (and intimidating) than participating in the foundation’s board meetings… Young Women for Change members always remind me that being young and not yet very attached (politically, personally, and otherwise) affords an individual a kind of fierce authenticity that is thrilling and terrifying.

I’ve thought a lot about things like that lately, particularly as they relate to women of my generation. I’ve had conversations with friends who are frustrated with personal dissatisfaction. Some have bemoaned the overwhelming sense of having the power to do everything and having no idea where to get started. Others have told me they feel like maybe they are just “too picky” to work anywhere happily–maybe they just don’t fit in the box as well as others might. And another young woman looked at me and said quite directly, “You keep telling me to get out there and network. What does that even mean?”

These frustrations led me to wonder if typical language of empowerment and professional development are still relevant to my generation. As I prepared to speak at the Young Women for Change conference, I decided to tackle networking and mentoring, which is probably just one piece of this potential new territory. In lieu of telling the Young Women for Change members to simply get out there and network , I decided to rethink an approach for how an individual might learn and grow continuously. Because as my friend reminded me, it’s actually pretty meaningless, even intimidating, to suggest that you should just get out there and network to be successful.

So I boiled it down to the three steps: Identify, observe and connect. As I thought more about this, I realized that the whole time I thought Young Women for Change helped me network with others and discover my career path, it was actually simply providing me with space and people that helped me identify, observe and connect:

Identify
Something important happens when you identify, appreciate, and nurture what makes you great. We live in a world that would prefer to pick us apart flaw by flaw. We all need to create a safe place and a challenging environment where we have the opportunity to get to know ourselves and see ourselves in new ways.

I think each one of us is a leader in different ways—some are more visible and vocal, some are more quiet but influential. The only way we can benefit from this diversity of leadership is to start within ourselves and identify our strengths, our talents, and our dreams. To help Young Women for Change members think about this, I suggested the following:

Think of a moment when you felt like you were totally energized by a conversation or making a big contribution to some work. What were you talking about? What were you working on? How were you approaching it?

Observe
The process of identifying your strengths and passions is never-ending. That’s probably one of the most frustrating things for me… I’m impatient. I want to know what I have to offer and then attack a problem or seize a really good opportunity to create big change. One of the ways I’ve been able to manage my stubborn impatience is to take the time to observe others.

This reminds me of the phrase “learn by doing.” I am starting to think that phrase is focused too much on the self… autonomy is good, but when does it become isolation? When it comes to knowing what makes you who you are, I don’t think you can learn about that and act on it in isolation. I’d like to suggest that we all need to understand by observing:

Think of a time when one of your peers got really passionate about something she was talking about. Think about a time when she said something that surprised you or made you learn something new. What was she talking about? How did she approach the situation?

Connect
Finally, so many of the young women I meet have a penchant for action, and we have really high expectations about it. We believe that when you bring people together with different but complementary strengths and perspectives, incredible things can happen. And because we take the time to identify those strengths within ourselves and then observe them in others, we have real confidence in our ability to connect people and ideas in unexpected, powerful ways.

This is really the crux of it all for me. Forget what people tell you about networking—even, to some extent, forget what they say about mentoring. I think our generation of women realizes that while these things are still important in some ways, they can imply too much of a one-way street. They often put you, as the young person, in the position of simply receiving perspective, knowledge or help from another source.

I think our generation can be and wants to be co-creators and connectors. Especially when we identify our own strengths and observe what others offer, we have the potential to learn, grow, and achieve in new ways. And I think by starting with our mutual strengths, we may be able to bypass some of the traditional barriers to networking or mentoring… such as gender, cultural, or generational differences.

What if we refine the language of mentoring and networking with language that’s more focused on swapping strengths?

Identify one of your strengths and one you’d like to develop, learn from, or even apply to do something new. Think of your peers and colleagues. Who has that strength? Observe her in action. See how she responds in the group. Then, make the connection. Share what you’ve learned from her, and share what you’ve identified in yourself—swap your strengths and seek opportunities (e.g., collaborative projects, informal lunch dates, etc.) to continue learning from one another.