OG Tuesday Issue #188

🧠 Flow: Focus is good for productivity, but does too much focus have the opposite effect?

✋ Entrepreneurship: Your growing new business might benefit from drawing a line between your professional and personal relationships.

🗣️ Communication: Please stop saying please already.

💭 Work/Life: One woman ponders the relationship between babies and productivity.

🤔 People: Why knowing how to give and receive help can be so confusing.

“Getting a mentor” is the most beneficial career milestone you might not have on your to-do list.

Yes, the time and effort it takes to find a mentor cuts into the time you could spend on other career goals, but here’s the thing:

Getting a mentor is an investment because mentors pay back in career dividends.

Find a good one, and you’ll get trusted guidance and advice related to not just one specific goal or task but all your big-picture goals.

Just consider one of the world’s first mentors to appreciate what your mentor might do for you. This OG mentor is a character named Mentor you might recognize from Homer’s Odyssey.

When the epic poem’s main character decides to leave home to play with Cyclopes, watch his crew turn into pigs, and win the Trojan War and stuff, who does he leave behind to take care of things at home?

That’s right — Mentor.

To the characters in the Odyssey, Mentor provides counsel, knowledge, support, and loyalty.

His decisions keep his mentee’s best interests in mind.

5 Mentor POWERS (Read: Benefits)

1. They can help connect your ambition to a precise sense of direction.

In general, people who seek mentors are going to achieve the success they want someday.

Mentors, however, have already achieved the success they once only dreamed of.

They know what can be done and what needs to be done.

Even if your path looks different from theirs, their experience can help you navigate it.

2. They have years of work experience and a wealth of tacit knowledge to show for it and pass on to you.

(An investigation on mentor-mentee pairs conducted by the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University found that prizewinning mentors may help their mentees become prizewinners as well.)

3. They care about your career goals as much as you do but can view your progress and potential from an outside POV.

They’ll see ways you can develop and challenge yourself that you might have been blind to.

4. They can empower you to pursue learning, growth, and advancement while making you feel a sense of belonging in your work or at your organization.

5. They can help you make both small and large career decisions.

Good mentors won’t tell you what to do.

Instead, they’ve mastered the art of asking guiding questions.

They help you realize what you should do in a way that feels like magic.

They can even tease a decision from someone known for chronic indecision.

Can you benefit from a mentor?

Don’t think too hard!

If you are interested in advancing your career, then the answer is “yes.”

Finding a mentor at work

It might seem daunting to identify someone who embodies the qualities you seek, but an easy place to start is at your own company.

To find a mentor at work, first pinpoint what you need help with — be it leadership skills, project management, or career advancement.

Keep an eye out for colleagues whose career paths inspire you and who are known for their supportive nature.

Strike up a casual conversation, share your goals, and ask if they’d be open to giving you some guidance.

Mentorship programs at work

For those ready to amplify the benefits of mentorship on a larger scale, a structured mentorship program is your next move.

Whether you’re looking to launch a program from scratch or enhance an existing one, having a robust framework in place is key to success.

Check out our next section for an indispensable guide that lays out best practices for initiating and maintaining a successful mentorship program.

Together’s definitive guide to mentorship equips leaders like you with the tools to effectively launch, manage, and refine mentoring programs, resulting in:

• Increased Retention: Employees in mentorship programs are twice as likely to remain with their company for five years or more.
• Career Advancement: Participants are five times more likely to receive a promotion.

Key features include:

• Launching Your Mentoring Program: Best practices to generate initial excitement.
• Pairing Participants: Strategies to find the right mentor for every employee.
• Program Management: Support for mentoring relationships post-pairing.
• Success Checklist: Essential tips to ensure your mentoring program thrives.

Start building a community of mentorship that enhances employee satisfaction and career growth.

Download the free guide today.

Last week, I noticed my direct report’s quality of work and communication was slipping.

She was making multiple errors in campaigns, kept pushing back on tasks my cofounders were assigning to her, and wasn’t taking ownership for projects that fell under her purview — it was very out of character for her.

After she had a poor response to an email chain that included our entire leadership team, I knew I had to step in, so I scheduled a 1:1 meeting with her the next morning.

I approached the conversation with empathy and started by asking how she was doing, and if anything was going on personally that was affecting her work.

She opened up immediately and was in tears explaining how she had received some bad health news, and on top of that, other family members were struggling with health issues.

She was suddenly a caretaker, and struggling to balance that with her new projects, but didn’t know how to communicate that to me without feeling like she was letting our team down.

I reminded her that her health and family were more important than work, and as her mentor and boss, it’s my job to support her and help set her up for success.

It’s also my job to give her feedback and help her own and grow through mistakes.

I told her that in the future, if she’s struggling because of personal reasons like this one, to let me know so that we could come up with a plan together if she had to miss work, etc.

I also shared some career advice that my own mentors passed down to me that helped me approach work problems more effectively, and also gave her examples of how she could have improved her responses when it came to the email chain and requests she received from the leadership team.

She wasn’t defensive, listened to my suggestions, fully owned her mistakes, and said she would work on her communication.

She also thanked me for taking the time to talk to her and listening.

Though having these conversations aren’t easy, they are crucial for nurturing trust and understanding within the team.

It’s important to create a culture where challenges are openly discussed and support is readily available.

This conversation not only helped us address immediate issues, but also strengthened our commitment to supporting each other.

As leaders, our responsibility extends beyond management to genuine care for our team’s well-being, reinforcing that our people are truly our greatest asset.

  Joanna Ericta (Co-Founder of TA)

Paleovalley Essential Electrolytes is a potent, natural source of sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and over 60 trace minerals.

Increasing these intakes of electrolytes helps:

• 🧠 Support healthy brain function
• 💪 Improve exercise performance
• 😃 Help with mood issues
• ❤️‍🩹 Support a strong immune system
• 👍 Encourage healthy hormone levels

Most electrolyte products contain overly processed ingredients which diminishes the beneficial, synergistic elements.

But Paleovally Essential Electrolytes use unprocessed sea salt, organic coconut water, and more to replace the nutrients you need to function optimally.

Save 15% sitewide at Paleovalley here.

💻 Shift is the only app-integrated browser that merges your web apps into one seamless online experience. Shift is calming the tab chaos that lives inside our browsers, giving us a better way to organize our digital lives.

✨ Elevate your skincare routine with this essential dry brush for a radiant glow.

🎧 Discover transformative insights on motivation with Mel Robbins’ audio guide, Take Control of Your Life.

📚 Dive into The Power of Habit to master the life-changing skills of habit formation.