The Real Meaning of Mentorship

There’s something heavy on my heart this week that I want to share. I realized and felt what it was like to have mentors in my corner, cheering for my success and pushing me out of my comfort zone, up-levelling to where I belong, with the help of people who have known me for over a decade. 

I’ve had mentors throughout my career as an engineer, but none of them embodied what it truly means to provide someone else a leg-up. None of them were really mentors in the true sense of the term. Mentorship is transformative. It places your feet firmly on a foundation of surety, self-confidence and emotional support.

A Tale of Two Mentorship Models

There are two types of mentorship that have been offered up to me as Kattie, the Engineer. The first is what I’d like to call Directional Mentorship and the second is Real Mentorship. Unfortunately, I’ve been subjected to the directional model for most of my career, and it’s taken its toll. I left my job in engineering broken and I’m starting to put the pieces together to explain exactly why.

1. Directional Mentorship

In the Directional Mentorship model, the superior guides your career technically or strategically. The mentor throws their support behind you, hires you, initiates a working relationship and gives you a boost to start working at the company or on a project. 

The key differentiator here is that the mentor is leveraging your position and knowledge to make more money, solve more problems or to make themselves look better to others. You, like me, may have been called their “secret weapon”.

You’ll be told how much you’ll make as an employee or contributor they will dangle the proverbial carrot in front of you: how much you can expect to make in the future. It’s always delivered as a range, so as to make you think you can reach the peak, but after a couple bonus cycles, it’s always out of reach. 

These mentors directly profit from you accepting less money than you are worth. You may actually learn a lot from them, but it comes at a cost: advancement, pay, and recognition. 

You are being groomed by this type of mentor. You’re conditioned to listen, to always slot into the organizational structure beneath them and to quiet your ambition in the hopes of impressing them with your work. 

This is where people-pleasers and perfectionists get sucked in. It’s not until they are completely broken and burned-out that they give up on the relationship or the mentor. Typically it manifests as an illness, adrenal fatigue or a stress leave. Years later you’ll connect the dots on who created the culture that led to your burnout in the first place. 

2. Real Mentorship

A Real Mentor likely has more experience than you in a particular area, but they aren’t necessarily your superior, nor do they view themselves as such in relation to you. They like you and respect you more than they care about your degrees or accolades.

Real Mentors may or may not have skin in the game when it comes to your success, but they don’t pressure you to help them out. They are the definition of a trusted advisor; someone who is an open book and willing to share the good, bad and ugly.

They want you to make more money and they negotiate on your behalf, so that you come out on top. They are also happy for you to move on to the next opportunity, even if it means leaving their company. They believe in building up talent, possibly to surpass even their own station.

Real Mentors provide encouragement, build your confidence, and act as a bridge between you and new opportunities or relationships. They will tell you right to your face how proud they are of you, and they’ll be there celebrating your successes along the way. They build you up and talk you up.

Gender, race, religion and sexual orientation have no bearing on who they choose to mentor. Instead, they choose mentees that are kind, conscientious, brilliant team players. They truly recognize the benefits of diversity and the necessity of putting their might behind people that need champions to just get their foot in the door. They would describe themselves as your friend; your equal. 

Thank You to the Real Mentors

This week I discovered that my mentors were people I have known for a long time now. People who I went to university with, who know who I am and how I tick. People who have been incredible friends over the last few years and supported me through the ups and downs. People who are working to build back up a very broken professional so that she can take on challenges she is more than equipped to tackle. 

Thank you for reminding me of my abilities, strength and total badass qualities. I owe you more than my gratitude for new opportunities. I owe you my sincere thanks for speaking up on my behalf and for reinstating my self-worth.