Speaker 1: He works for me. Listeners, A quick note before we
Speaker 1: start the show, we would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: What work problems do you have? Have you tried any
Speaker 1: of our productivity hacks to fix them? Leave us a
Speaker 1: voicemail at two on two six months seven zero one
Speaker 1: six six and we might play it on the show. Hey,
Speaker 1: it's Becca. Recently I went to a podcasting conference and
Speaker 1: I had a question, do you have a mentor? I've
Speaker 1: had a number of mentors that boss is probably the
Speaker 1: closest thing to my mentor that I go to them
Speaker 1: for advice, like a couple of times a week. Can
Speaker 1: I use them more for life purposes than I give
Speaker 1: for audio purposes? Because I wish I had more of
Speaker 1: a life mentor. My advice would just be to like,
Speaker 1: only reach out to the people who like really get
Speaker 1: you excited. And who do you think you could learn
Speaker 1: from someone who's doing something that you're just did in
Speaker 1: So I met my first mentor I had gone to
Speaker 1: a radio conference. We just met and she scared me
Speaker 1: a lot. And she was also the first like women
Speaker 1: of color that I met in audio. So I contacted her, say, Hi,
Speaker 1: I am I don't know is it this is weird,
Speaker 1: but could you be a mentor? Her response was like
Speaker 1: she was overjoyed, Like I was just waiting for you
Speaker 1: to ask me. This whole weekend video would be like
Speaker 1: I would look at your mentor. I think she just
Speaker 1: felt flattered and I'm very lucky to have her as
Speaker 1: my mentor. Just asking around it seems like everybody has
Speaker 1: a mentor, everyone except for me. This week on Works
Speaker 1: for Me, I go mentor hunting. Welcome back to Works
Speaker 1: for Me, to show where we try out solutions to
Speaker 1: our productivity problems to see if they will work for you.
Speaker 1: I'm Francesca Leity and I'm Becca Greenfield. This week it's
Speaker 1: Becca's turn to take something that's going wrong at work
Speaker 1: and attempt to fix it with an experiment. Becca, what
Speaker 1: is your issue of the week. Basically, I've gone through
Speaker 1: my whole career without much guidance. I have people I
Speaker 1: can talk to when big things come up, like job changes,
Speaker 1: but I don't have a dedicated person like a mentor
Speaker 1: I can go to when any other work related issues
Speaker 1: or anxieties come up. Do you have someone like that
Speaker 1: in your life? Do you have a mentor? I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't have anybody like that, and I totally understand
Speaker 1: the desire for one. I think the closest I've ever
Speaker 1: come to that was when I was in graduate school
Speaker 1: and I had professors who helped me get into the
Speaker 1: industry and help me get jobs, and I kept in
Speaker 1: touch with some of them for a little while after
Speaker 1: grad school, but those relationships have fallen off. In fact,
Speaker 1: I saw somebody recently at an event who I at
Speaker 1: one time I would have considered her mentor, and I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure she didn't remember who I was. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like that's one problem, is that these relationships don't
Speaker 1: really stick where we feel like we're supposed to have them,
Speaker 1: but there's not really a designated forum. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are workplaces that do give people mentors, and I've talked
Speaker 1: to some people and they say, usually those aren't the
Speaker 1: people who end up being your mentors. So it just
Speaker 1: seems like this elusive, magical thing we're supposed to have
Speaker 1: and I don't really know how to find it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You hear a lot about about the value of mentor,
Speaker 1: like in the kind of productivity circles that we run
Speaker 1: in and the kind of productivity articles that we read. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that stuff. Pops up all the time about
Speaker 1: the importance of a mentor and how there are mentors
Speaker 1: and there are sponsors of sponsors, like a mentor, like
Speaker 1: plus somebody who who's not who won't just give you advice,
Speaker 1: but they'll advocate for you at work. So you hear
Speaker 1: constantly about the value of a mentor, you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: hear about like how to get one. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: that's what I want to do. So your problem then,
Speaker 1: really is that you don't have a mentor and you
Speaker 1: want one. What is your plan to find one? Yea.
Speaker 1: So we don't get a training manual for this. So
Speaker 1: I went out and found someone who's very good at
Speaker 1: finding mentors. I have two core traditional mentors that I've
Speaker 1: had for over twenty years, and then as I've taken
Speaker 1: on different roles personally and professionally, I've added mentors. So
Speaker 1: maybe I have like any given time, maybe five to
Speaker 1: seven that I'm actively talking with and connecting with. This
Speaker 1: is Ellen Nsher. She's a professor at Loyola Marymount University
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, and she's the co author of a
Speaker 1: book called Power Mentoring. She has spent decades researching mentors
Speaker 1: and is a poet, finding them and keeping them. Ellen
Speaker 1: is what I would call a mentor enthusiast. And the
Speaker 1: reason she's so enthusiastic is because decades of research has
Speaker 1: found the benefit of having one. There's a whole body
Speaker 1: of research that we've been doing for thirty years that
Speaker 1: shows definitively that people who have mentors actually make more money,
Speaker 1: get promoted more rapidly, are more satisfied and happier with
Speaker 1: their jobs. Life and work is hard enough, and you
Speaker 1: don't always have to do everything the hard way. You
Speaker 1: can learn from other people's experiences. I asked Ellen how
Speaker 1: I could find a mentor, and she said, it's as
Speaker 1: easy as following the four urs. Oh yeah, reading, writing, arithmetic,
Speaker 1: different different ours. What are the four ours? So the
Speaker 1: first R is to reflect. Surprisingly, the whole how to
Speaker 1: find a mentor starts with yourself, So you need to
Speaker 1: take a moment and think about who you are and
Speaker 1: what you want. After reflecting, step number two is re search.
Speaker 1: Once you figured out what you want out of a mentor,
Speaker 1: Ellen says, research the go to people in your industry
Speaker 1: and find the people that they mentor. She suggests an
Speaker 1: all out internet deep dive find as much information on
Speaker 1: potential mentors as possible. Then the third are is to
Speaker 1: reach out. At this point, you've narrowed down a list
Speaker 1: of people who you want as mentors. Now you have
Speaker 1: to email them or call them and ask if they
Speaker 1: will talk to you or meet with you. And the
Speaker 1: last are is to reflect again. This happens after you've
Speaker 1: already met up with them, and it's important for making
Speaker 1: the relationships stick past the initial meeting. Reflect again and
Speaker 1: ask yourself what is it I can do from my
Speaker 1: mentor and how can I show appreciation? Because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times the reason that mentoring relationships don't
Speaker 1: get off the ground or have an early fail is
Speaker 1: because a protege goes in, has a meeting, sucks up
Speaker 1: some time, the mentor makes a bunch of recommendations, and
Speaker 1: then the protege gets busy doesn't follow up. So to summarize,
Speaker 1: the four ours, not reading, writing, arithmetic are reflect, research,
Speaker 1: reach out, and reflect again. So reflect is in there
Speaker 1: twice feels a little bit like a cheap But now
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like that is there's nothing in
Speaker 1: there that is so surprising. But I actually think it's
Speaker 1: nice to have a roadmap, like just that there's somebody
Speaker 1: out there who spent the time to think about what
Speaker 1: the plan is for going out and finding a mentor, because,
Speaker 1: like we said, you don't. It's just not something we're taught.
Speaker 1: We're taught about the value of a mentor, but not
Speaker 1: how to get one. So it's nice that she's giving
Speaker 1: you steps. Yeah, I was. It's encouraging that there are
Speaker 1: steps one can take instead of just waiting around to
Speaker 1: be a perfect person. So I'm assuming that doing the
Speaker 1: four hours is going to be your experiment this week.
Speaker 1: That's correct. I'm going to do the four ours and
Speaker 1: see if I can land me a mentor. How will
Speaker 1: you know if you succeeded at fighting a mentor? One
Speaker 1: of them are challenging aspects about a mentor relationship is
Speaker 1: making it stick past that first meeting. But Ellen assured
Speaker 1: me that within a month I should be able to
Speaker 1: meet up with at least one mentor potential and if
Speaker 1: it goes well, set up another meeting with them. Okay,
Speaker 1: So if you can get a meeting and then get
Speaker 1: a follow up meeting, that's your definition of six sense.
Speaker 1: That's right. Okay, So I need to reflect this is
Speaker 1: step one of mentoring I need to reflect on who
Speaker 1: I am, what I offer to someone else, my growing edges.
Speaker 1: So here I was reflecting in my apart mint. I
Speaker 1: enlisted my boyfriend Danny, so I wasn't just talking to
Speaker 1: myself about myself all alone. Ellen said a good way
Speaker 1: to figure out what you want and a mentor is
Speaker 1: to identify your strengths and what she calls a growing edge,
Speaker 1: which is a uphemism for something you're not very good
Speaker 1: at but you want to get better at. I'm Becca,
Speaker 1: I'm a journalist, damn, and my editor tells me my
Speaker 1: strengths are the I'm fast and I'm smart. I agree
Speaker 1: with that. My growing areas I would like to be
Speaker 1: be better at, like thinking of bigger story ideas and
Speaker 1: be better at coming up with, you know, ideas for
Speaker 1: things I want to pursue. I feel like I really
Speaker 1: I get in my head about that. I found this
Speaker 1: part challenging. It sounds like it's hard to talk about yourself,
Speaker 1: and it's especially hard to say nice things about yourself.
Speaker 1: Or I find it hard, and I think many people
Speaker 1: can relate to that. But after some reflection, I just
Speaker 1: sided I wanted a mentor who could push me on
Speaker 1: my story ideas. Ellen also said that during this step,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to think of something that you can offer
Speaker 1: your mentor so that the relationship isn't completely parasitic. I'm
Speaker 1: happy to read things or give opinion on things. I'm
Speaker 1: also really good at writing emails, so if they need
Speaker 1: like an email editor, I feel like you can attest
Speaker 1: to that. Yeah, you're pretty good. I mean, yes, I
Speaker 1: I am also someone who thinks they are a good
Speaker 1: email comes out. No, I just don't wanna be recorded
Speaker 1: as saying someone who like constantly need to help with
Speaker 1: their emails because constantly struggle your emails. I am always
Speaker 1: helping my sad, sad poor boyfriend craft emails. So what
Speaker 1: do you think is so great about your emails? That's
Speaker 1: what I want to know. I mean, your emails are,
Speaker 1: your emails are great. But I'm just wondering why you
Speaker 1: listen as a skill because I think people come to
Speaker 1: me and asked me to edit their emails often, and
Speaker 1: I enjoy it, and I think I do a good job,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a skill that I can offer
Speaker 1: a potential mentor. Okay, after my reflecting period, I had
Speaker 1: arrived at step two research. I had identified what I
Speaker 1: wanted in a mentor somebody to push me on my
Speaker 1: story ideas. It was time to find the right person
Speaker 1: to help me with this growing edge. Ellen suggested thinking
Speaker 1: of some superstars in my field and using LinkedIn to
Speaker 1: find people related to them. I sat down with Toefort,
Speaker 1: our producer, and we researched together. Well, so one idea
Speaker 1: that I think I'm gonna do is Susan Arlene, which
Speaker 1: is someone who's like such a reach I wouldn't even
Speaker 1: think to reach out to her, but like, she's cool
Speaker 1: and she has a podcast, cry Babies. I don't even
Speaker 1: know if Susan relians on LinkedIn, so she is on
Speaker 1: LinkedIn that she clearly does not use this website. I
Speaker 1: mean it is not filled out at all. It says
Speaker 1: experience writer and there is a blank photo that's supposed
Speaker 1: to be filled in, and it just says in the
Speaker 1: last forty years she's been doing that and that's the
Speaker 1: whole thing. She's been very consistent. It doesn't even say
Speaker 1: what publications she's She's a dead end. So it was
Speaker 1: not just Susan Orlean. A lot of people in our
Speaker 1: industry are not big users of LinkedIn, and it became
Speaker 1: almost immediately clear that that was not going to be
Speaker 1: a fruitful path for me. So I decided to do
Speaker 1: my own version of internet research, and tofor suggested that
Speaker 1: we look for people who have been interviewed on the
Speaker 1: long Form podcast for inspiration. Are you familiar with that show?
Speaker 1: I am. I'm a subscriber actually, for those who don't know,
Speaker 1: long Form is a podcast where each week the hosts
Speaker 1: interview writers, editors, and journalists about their careers. So I
Speaker 1: went through the roster of guests over the years to
Speaker 1: try to find some potential candidates. After twenty minutes, Tob
Speaker 1: and I had a solid list of ten people. It
Speaker 1: was a nice representation of people who do the different
Speaker 1: things that I do from my job. It was writers, reporters, podcasters.
Speaker 1: I felt good about it, and once I had my names,
Speaker 1: it was time for the third are reach out, which
Speaker 1: is where things got scary. We'll see how that went
Speaker 1: for me. After the right I had arrived at step three,
Speaker 1: which is reach out. This I think is the most
Speaker 1: intimidating step. You have to email complete strangers, tell them
Speaker 1: how much you like them, and then asked them for
Speaker 1: their time. It took me a while to build up
Speaker 1: to this step. About a week after I did my research,
Speaker 1: I finally got the courage to contact my potential future mentors.
Speaker 1: I sat down with my list of ten names and
Speaker 1: their contact information, which was readily available online, and I
Speaker 1: started writing an email to the first potential mentor on
Speaker 1: my list, Susan or Lean. Hi, Susan, my name is
Speaker 1: Becca Greenfield' reporter, writer, podcaster. I currently work at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: and have worked at various other outlets since I started
Speaker 1: working eight years ago. I guess I say work a
Speaker 1: lot um. It took me at least four drafts to
Speaker 1: write what I considered a decent email, and as we know,
Speaker 1: you have very high email standards, so that must have
Speaker 1: been an amazing email by the time you were done
Speaker 1: with it. Yes, I was using my special skill. I
Speaker 1: wanted to personalize it to Susan, but I also didn't
Speaker 1: want to sound too neat. It's a very delicate balance.
Speaker 1: And then I had to do the hardest part, which
Speaker 1: was sending. Ellen said a lot of people get stressed
Speaker 1: about this step, understandably, so she has a check for
Speaker 1: getting over it. I really recommend that people come up
Speaker 1: with some kind of courage ritual so it might be
Speaker 1: a poem, it might be a song, it might be
Speaker 1: a quote. So a lot of people run into this trouble,
Speaker 1: like reaching out to strangers as a problem, But it
Speaker 1: never occurred to me to like have a little thing
Speaker 1: that you always fall back on that makes you feel braver. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she sings a song, she sings, so I like amps
Speaker 1: you up. So yeah, she she sings a song, and
Speaker 1: she suggests that you just do something to make yourself
Speaker 1: feel confident in the moment. What did you decide to
Speaker 1: do for your courage ride rule? I picked a song
Speaker 1: that always lefts my spirits And also bonus is a
Speaker 1: metaphor for my current tap. I Ain't no Mountain high
Speaker 1: enough by Marvin Gay and Tammy Terrell. Okay, so the metaphor,
Speaker 1: how is it is a mountain email. The email is
Speaker 1: a tall mountain. That's right my stress climate. Well, there's
Speaker 1: lots of metaphors. The email itself, this moment is a
Speaker 1: mountain that it's not too high for me to climb over.
Speaker 1: I can do it, you can do it. Also finding
Speaker 1: a mentor, it's the scary amount and the song goes
Speaker 1: to keep me from getting to you. So that's the mentor.
Speaker 1: The mentors on the other side of the mountain. The
Speaker 1: emails not too tall for you to climb over, and
Speaker 1: I didn't get to your mentor. That's great, thank you,
Speaker 1: It's perfect. I thought about it now, so after reading
Speaker 1: through my email one last time just in case, I
Speaker 1: was ready to send it. I'm pretty nervous to send it.
Speaker 1: But first email, here we go, pressing send, Hey, okay,
Speaker 1: it's guy scary. Onto the next one. I found it
Speaker 1: surprisingly exhausting to write and send that email. It took
Speaker 1: a lot of emotional energy, and then I had to
Speaker 1: do it in nine more times. Hi Erin Hayman Niche Jodi, Hi, Rebecca,
Speaker 1: my name is Becca. My name is Becca Greenfield. I'm
Speaker 1: a reporter. I'm on the race Class and Gender in
Speaker 1: the right Place team here and I admire I feel
Speaker 1: crazy looking for some guidance and how to go as
Speaker 1: a writer, reporter and idea generator. So respectable, Marvin Gay,
Speaker 1: you inspire me submit. Sending the emails was so exhausting
Speaker 1: that I only ended up emailing eight out of the
Speaker 1: ten people on my list. I just stopped. Then it
Speaker 1: was out of my hands. I had to wait for
Speaker 1: responses and then right there right. Then I got one
Speaker 1: and it was a rejection, A really nice rejection, but
Speaker 1: a rejection. So I waited even longer. I refreshed my inbox,
Speaker 1: waited more days passed. It felt like an eternity, and
Speaker 1: then finally people responded, and they were more rejections. People
Speaker 1: were very nice and sent me some incredibly thoughtful emails.
Speaker 1: Some of them had specific advice in them for me,
Speaker 1: but they were for legitimate reasons, too busy to meet up.
Speaker 1: I think if you're reaching out to people you admire,
Speaker 1: there is a very real possibility that they're going to
Speaker 1: be too busy putting time and energy into their own
Speaker 1: careers to meet up with you. I think that's true.
Speaker 1: But I think that you might be underestimating how big
Speaker 1: a deal is that people responded at all. Like I
Speaker 1: think that they could have just ignored your email altogether.
Speaker 1: After all, you were a stranger, and it sounds like
Speaker 1: some of them gave you real advice or thought through
Speaker 1: what you had written to them. So clearly the fact
Speaker 1: that you put a lot of thought into your email
Speaker 1: resulted in them putting some thought in their responses, And
Speaker 1: I think that's it's kind of a win. Like you're
Speaker 1: on their radar. Now, all I'm hearing is that I
Speaker 1: sent a really good email. Yes, correct, I know, iratulations
Speaker 1: on your amazing email. Thank you. I was genuinely delighted
Speaker 1: to hear from people and very touched. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: didn't help me get closer to my goal. It didn't
Speaker 1: get you exactly what you wanted. But I think it's
Speaker 1: a nice lesson the next time you're scared of something
Speaker 1: like that, because I think the assumption is these people
Speaker 1: are going to be like, what the heck is this?
Speaker 1: Totally ignore it. And actually you can get a lot
Speaker 1: more out of people than you realize. People will give
Speaker 1: you more of their time than you might expect. Dare
Speaker 1: I say, ain't now mountain high enough you? Dare? I
Speaker 1: had to keep waiting. The holidays came, they went, and
Speaker 1: then on January two, I got an email from Manus Samarodi.
Speaker 1: Manusha is an accomplished journalist. She used to host a
Speaker 1: popular radio show called Note to Self. Last year she
Speaker 1: left to start her own podcast company called Stable Genius Productions, where,
Speaker 1: among other things, she hosts their flagship show zig Zag.
Speaker 1: She was the perfect person to help me with my
Speaker 1: growing edge. She had to put out hundreds of episodes
Speaker 1: of her show, and she seemingly does not have a
Speaker 1: problem coming up with good ideas. I responded immediately and
Speaker 1: set up a meeting with her a week later. Hi. Hello.
Speaker 1: We met up in her coworking space on a chilly
Speaker 1: morning for coffee. I sat down, put my recorder between us,
Speaker 1: and right then and there she gave me my first
Speaker 1: tip of the morning, how to hold a microphone like
Speaker 1: a pro something. This is gonna just gonna bug me,
Speaker 1: but I really think you should talk like this and
Speaker 1: then hand its musume. One minute in and I had
Speaker 1: already learned something. Plus Manush had put me at ease.
Speaker 1: She made me feel okay asking her some of my
Speaker 1: other career questions. After talking for a few more minutes,
Speaker 1: I brought up my growing edge and I asked her
Speaker 1: how I can get better at coming up with story ideas.
Speaker 1: You can't do this in a vacuum. Ideas are iterative, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's not. The chances of you coming up with something
Speaker 1: that's fully formed and totally baked and amazing are pretty
Speaker 1: darn slim. Like what do the IRA glasses like? Your
Speaker 1: ideas want to be bad? It's a team sport. Journalism. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are people who just like put out amazing things
Speaker 1: all on their own, but I don't think it's like
Speaker 1: being an artist to paint something and has a vision
Speaker 1: in their mind. I think I have ideas of where
Speaker 1: I want to go, but there never they're never what
Speaker 1: we end up doing. The news made me realize that
Speaker 1: I was maybe putting too much pressure on my own
Speaker 1: ideas and that I should seek out other people to
Speaker 1: brainstorm with. We spent an hour talking about stuff like
Speaker 1: this and remembering what Ellen said. I tried not to
Speaker 1: just suck up her time, and I answered some of
Speaker 1: her questions. Sadly, she did not request my email writing services.
Speaker 1: Maybe you consider another email and she'll just be so
Speaker 1: willed by the quality that she'll ask for more help.
Speaker 1: One can dream. Then, as we were wrapping up, I
Speaker 1: had yet another challenge. Ellen said after the first meeting,
Speaker 1: if things went well, I should try to get on
Speaker 1: my mentors calendar again in the next month or so
Speaker 1: to try and make the relationships stick. I asked manus
Speaker 1: when she thought it would be reasonable for us to
Speaker 1: meet up again. Look, I have two kids, I run
Speaker 1: my own business, I host multiple podcasts, I traveled giving
Speaker 1: a lot of talks. Time is not is the one
Speaker 1: thing right now in my life I do not have,
Speaker 1: but I do believe in like, like, this session was
Speaker 1: extremely productive and fruitful and wonderful, And if I don't
Speaker 1: see you for another six months to a year, I
Speaker 1: really feel like we'll just pick up right where we
Speaker 1: were because it was I hate this word speaking of
Speaker 1: words authentic, but like we didn't both, do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? We just got to it, and like
Speaker 1: I have a lot of time for people who I
Speaker 1: feel like I can meet them right where we need
Speaker 1: to be without the lead up to get there. Minusia
Speaker 1: had already given me so much of her time to
Speaker 1: ask her to commit to another meeting in the next
Speaker 1: month or two felt selfish. She's busy, and I agree
Speaker 1: with her. We got a lot out of our session.
Speaker 1: I couldn't bring myself to ask for more, so I
Speaker 1: left without scheduling another meeting. I love how skillfully she
Speaker 1: kind of rejected you in a way, like when you
Speaker 1: asked her about meeting up. It sounds like you gently
Speaker 1: broached meeting up again without being direct about it, and
Speaker 1: then she just had this way of like making it
Speaker 1: a compliment to you that she wasn't gonna probably see
Speaker 1: you for her six months to a year. She's like,
Speaker 1: that's high quality mental material right there. Yeah, I didn't
Speaker 1: even think of it as a rejection. That's the first
Speaker 1: time I'm thinking it as right. Sorry, Well you didn't
Speaker 1: give yourself the chance to be rejective because you didn't. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was a little meta about it. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to do this thing. What do you think?
Speaker 1: But she's obviously probably wisely protective of her time. Yes,
Speaker 1: I told yes, that's the correct answer, and no, say
Speaker 1: no to mean that that's She made me feel like
Speaker 1: she did the right thing. But you probably got scared.
Speaker 1: You probably got you got scared away by her saying
Speaker 1: she didn't have a lot of time, and then you
Speaker 1: didn't push it further because it's just like that email situation.
Speaker 1: You just assumed that as someone who doesn't have a
Speaker 1: lot of time, she wasn't going to give you this.
Speaker 1: You know, she wasn't gonna give you this specific thing.
Speaker 1: But maybe what you could have used is a courage
Speaker 1: with rule. Oh my goodness, yes, just excuse me, I
Speaker 1: need to play this song right now so I can
Speaker 1: ask you another question, like put on you just be like,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna put on my earbuds for like thirty
Speaker 1: seconds next time. But just because we hadn't set up
Speaker 1: another meeting right there, didn't mean I had completely failed
Speaker 1: at making the relationship stick. It was time for step
Speaker 1: four reflect again. Ellen said, I should reflect on what
Speaker 1: I can do for my mentor after the meeting to
Speaker 1: keep the relationship going. MENU should ask me to send
Speaker 1: her an episode of this show that we're working on
Speaker 1: right now. So I sent her an email thanking her
Speaker 1: for a time, with a link to our podcast. And
Speaker 1: that was the end of my mentoring journey. So, Becca,
Speaker 1: was your mentoring experiment a success? Technically, No, I failed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew that. I knew the answer because you didn't
Speaker 1: get a follow up meeting. That's right. I didn't set
Speaker 1: up another meeting with Manus, which was the goal. And
Speaker 1: I don't think I got the kind of mentor relationship
Speaker 1: that I've been fantasizing about. I was thinking of having
Speaker 1: someone I could meet up with regularly to talk about
Speaker 1: career stuff. But I don't know that I will ever
Speaker 1: have an explicit, ongoing relationship like that. And maybe I
Speaker 1: just need to come to terms with that I don't
Speaker 1: think you should give up so easily on having that
Speaker 1: kind of relationship. I think maybe that the like intensive
Speaker 1: in person I r L meetups might be hard, but
Speaker 1: some of the advice she gave you, it sounds like
Speaker 1: it was kind of a way of helping you help yourself.
Speaker 1: Like she was saying, reach out to the people around you,
Speaker 1: collaborate more with the people that you work with, and
Speaker 1: so she was almost like teaching you how to fish
Speaker 1: instead of giving you a fish like she you know,
Speaker 1: if you had even an email relationship with her um
Speaker 1: or just a really occasional relationship that wasn't as regular
Speaker 1: as you might like, she could keep kind of feeding
Speaker 1: you that stuff that would help you be better in
Speaker 1: your day to day life. So it's interesting that you
Speaker 1: brought up this email relationship because I called Ellen back
Speaker 1: up after my experiment and I asked her how I
Speaker 1: could have done things a little better, and that was
Speaker 1: one of her suggestions. She was like, you should keep
Speaker 1: trying to build this relationship with the news. You can
Speaker 1: email her things and not like here's a question I'm
Speaker 1: having about my life and we're like, oh, this is
Speaker 1: something we talked about. It reminded me of you like, Remember,
Speaker 1: I'm a person. I'm very like post date. It is
Speaker 1: a lot the mentor finding experience is very much like
Speaker 1: you should make her mate. Yeah, I'll make her a
Speaker 1: Spotify playlist. See. I think you're right. I should not
Speaker 1: give up on my goal. So in the end, do
Speaker 1: you feel like Ellen's for ours? We're helpful? I do.
Speaker 1: I'm the kind of person who likes to have an
Speaker 1: actionable plan to follow in small increments to reach a
Speaker 1: larger goal, and it forced me to go on this
Speaker 1: path of finding a mentor. I think it also forced
Speaker 1: me to reach out to people I assumed were inaccessible
Speaker 1: and unattainable. And everybody I emailed, people who I am
Speaker 1: scared of and an of and who do awesome work.
Speaker 1: They were happy to hear from me, and I think
Speaker 1: they wanted to help, or they pretended to want to
Speaker 1: help even if they couldn't. I don't think before ours
Speaker 1: consider how busy people are, especially the women that I
Speaker 1: reached out to. A lot of them are also working parents,
Speaker 1: and they I know they execute at high levels at
Speaker 1: their jobs, so it's reasonable to me that they don't
Speaker 1: have time to meet up with a complete stranger. Did
Speaker 1: you bring that up with Ellen when you called her back, like,
Speaker 1: did she have any advice about people being really busy?
Speaker 1: She did. She was like, yes, what people say, can
Speaker 1: you meet for coffee? They think, oh gosh, no, Like
Speaker 1: I don't have time for that. She said, to phrase
Speaker 1: my asks in smaller increments and say, do you have
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes to get on the phone to talk about
Speaker 1: X Y Z thing? Which I I don't know if
Speaker 1: I could do that, but it does. Why not? I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's just someone really gonna get on the
Speaker 1: phone talk to me for fifteen minutes. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it's more about this asking for this specific thing, because
Speaker 1: I can totally see people being overwhelmed by hearing somebody
Speaker 1: who sounds like they really look up to them saying
Speaker 1: I would like you to help me with my whole life,
Speaker 1: because you know, just like you had fears about being
Speaker 1: important enough to email, these people like they might have
Speaker 1: some kind of imposter syndrome too, just because they happened
Speaker 1: to be really accomplished. They might think, who am I
Speaker 1: to help this person figure out their whole career, and
Speaker 1: they might feel like it's easier to take on something smaller.
Speaker 1: It's that's a very good point. They might have needed
Speaker 1: a courage ritual to respond to your email, as to
Speaker 1: be included in my email asks, do you have fifteen minutes?
Speaker 1: I also here worried about responding to this email. If
Speaker 1: you're scared to respond, here's the ritual. Um. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: actually was listening to a podcast recently where somebody said
Speaker 1: she asked other writers to walk her through their stories,
Speaker 1: which again is a very specific ask. I could have
Speaker 1: done that and said, you know, journalist X, I loved
Speaker 1: this thing you out, can you tell me about it?
Speaker 1: And they might be more receptive. So I learned that
Speaker 1: MINUS is not going to solve or help me solve
Speaker 1: all of my career anxieties and problems, and that's not
Speaker 1: really any one person's job. But I did learn some
Speaker 1: useful tools and tips for learning how to find more
Speaker 1: people to help me do that. And I guess that
Speaker 1: just involves sending more emails. Oh my god, you're so
Speaker 1: good at emails. I just find more ways to send
Speaker 1: more emails. It's actually perfect for you. Next week on
Speaker 1: Works for Me, Francesca and I go to couples therapy.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you about some things that have been
Speaker 1: challenges between the two of you, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: let either of you start, I can start. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to another episode of Works for Me. If you
Speaker 1: like the show, please head on over to Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or ever you listen to rate, review, and subscribe. You
Speaker 1: can also find all of our episodes and more things
Speaker 1: like articles Rewrite It about our detailed experiments, plus very
Speaker 1: cool illustrations done by Jordan's Spear at Bloomberg dot com
Speaker 1: slash works for Me. Have any workplace problems that you
Speaker 1: want to solve, we'd love to hear from you. Give
Speaker 1: us a call at two on to six seven zero
Speaker 1: one six and we might play your voicemail on the show,
Speaker 1: or you can tweet at us I'm at urs Greenfield
Speaker 1: and I'm at Francesca Today. The show was reported and
Speaker 1: hosted by Me at Greenfield and Me Francesca Leady. This
Speaker 1: episode was produced by tofur Forehs. Francesca Levi is Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Head of Podcasts. See you next week him