Speaker 1: Where do you go when you need career guidance? Maybe
Speaker 1: the right book or video or article can help. But
Speaker 1: what about when your questions are more specific? What about
Speaker 1: when you're in a really unique situation and you just
Speaker 1: can't figure out the next step or the right direction
Speaker 1: for you? Well, maybe it's time to find a mentor.
Speaker 1: But before you go cold emailing or the top thinkers
Speaker 1: in your industry, you might need to check some of
Speaker 1: your assumptions about mentorship, which is where doctor Ruth Gotian
Speaker 1: can help. Ruth is a global leadership expert, author, educator,
Speaker 1: and mentoring master. Well, Ruth is well versed in the
Speaker 1: cold reach out, she doesn't approach it exactly how you
Speaker 1: might expect. So how does Ruth approach her very first
Speaker 1: reach out email to a potential new men. My name
Speaker 1: is doctor amanthe Immer. I'm an organizational psychologist and the
Speaker 1: founder of Behavioral Science Consultancy Inventium, And this is how
Speaker 1: I work a show about how to help you do
Speaker 1: your best work. On today is my Favorite Tip episode,
Speaker 1: we go back to an interview from the past and
Speaker 1: I pick out my favorite tip from that interview. In
Speaker 1: today's show, I speak with Ruth Godie and about getting
Speaker 1: better at finding and utilizing mentors. There have been a
Speaker 1: couple of occasions in my career where I have been
Speaker 1: matched with a mentor and you're absolutely right, the relationship
Speaker 1: did not work. And I think about the people that
Speaker 1: I go to now for super wise counsel and they
Speaker 1: are absolutely what you described their relationships that have evolved.
Speaker 1: So then when you're going into a chat or a
Speaker 1: coffee or a meeting one of your mentors, how are
Speaker 1: you preparing for that?
Speaker 2: I really have a goal, And this is really what
Speaker 2: I try to tell people. You can have plenty of
Speaker 2: coffee chats, but they have to there has to be
Speaker 2: a goal of the conversation. Is there something that you
Speaker 2: want to learn? If it's someone who you're meeting with
Speaker 2: them not as a catch up, but you're meeting with
Speaker 2: them for a mentoring discussion. And I always tell people
Speaker 2: you never call the person a mentor. You never ask
Speaker 2: somebody to be your mentor, because that is asking them
Speaker 2: to take on another job or another obligation. Instead, you
Speaker 2: want to ask them for their perspective on something. Can
Speaker 2: I get your thoughts on something? Can I hear what
Speaker 2: you have to say about something? I really want to
Speaker 2: tap into your experience because I'm kind of stuck and
Speaker 2: I was wondering what you think I should consider as
Speaker 2: my next step. That's a whole lot better than help
Speaker 2: me with the next stage in my career. WHW do
Speaker 2: I even begin with this? Have to come ready to
Speaker 2: that conversation.
Speaker 1: How do you approach a cold reach chat? And I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if I'm assuming that you do cold reach outs,
Speaker 1: and you must have for the process of writing your books,
Speaker 1: So what's your strategy there, perhaps when you're looking to
Speaker 1: get some advice from someone that you don't know, and
Speaker 1: particularly like when let's say, when you're you know, punching
Speaker 1: above your weight, if that makes sense, which is.
Speaker 2: Every day for me. I mean, I study extreme high achievers,
Speaker 2: so every day I'm reaching out to people who are
Speaker 2: way above my intellect and my achievement. Most of the
Speaker 2: people in the book the Success Factor, and they are
Speaker 2: very much household names from every industry from science to
Speaker 2: sports to business, and usually I have a connection with
Speaker 2: somebody who knows them, and I would ask them for
Speaker 2: those introductions because those are people who know like, can
Speaker 2: trust me and they can vouch for me. But for
Speaker 2: those cold those cold outreaches that I have. I never
Speaker 2: asked them for anything. Ever. I try to offer something
Speaker 2: before I ever ask for anything, because why should they
Speaker 2: give me anything, even their time, which is their most
Speaker 2: precious resource. They don't even know me. I have to
Speaker 2: really prove my worth. That is the most important. And
Speaker 2: when you prove your worth to somebody, they want to
Speaker 2: help you. That's why half of the Nobel Prize winners
Speaker 2: were actually mentored by other Nobel Prize winners. Somebody saw
Speaker 2: their worth.
Speaker 1: Can you give some examples of what you have given
Speaker 1: to initially build that trust.
Speaker 2: One Nobel Prize winner who launched his own book, Brilliant Scientist,
Speaker 2: I mean brilliant, He won the Nobel. He doesn't know
Speaker 2: the first thing about marketing a book, not the first thing.
Speaker 2: He was only reaching out within his network. He didn't
Speaker 2: even consider doing anything on social media, didn't even know
Speaker 2: about doing podcasts. And we started talking about that quite
Speaker 2: a bit, and I said, you know, if you really
Speaker 2: want to expand your reach, you should consider social media,
Speaker 2: on podcasts and so on. And say He's like, well,
Speaker 2: how do I even get to those people? And that's
Speaker 2: when I was able to offer those introductions. Little Oe
Speaker 2: me to a Nobel Prize winner. Now we're in regular
Speaker 2: communication about it, because now I can make that introduction. Afterwards,
Speaker 2: I could say, how did it go, what did you think?
Speaker 2: What was the toughest question, what were you prepared for?
Speaker 2: What were you not? Now we have a whole discussion going.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So there's so many ways that you can offer something.
Speaker 1: I love that example. I'd love to know a couple
Speaker 1: of other examples. I even, just for my eye, selfish
Speaker 1: raisins to steal.
Speaker 2: So I have reached out to different people who wrote
Speaker 2: articles on topics that I was fascinated about and I
Speaker 2: really wanted to learn more and get inside their head.
Speaker 2: And I would really reach out to them and I
Speaker 2: would say, I love the article that you wrote about
Speaker 2: such and such. It reminded me about the article I
Speaker 2: read by so and so. Here's the link. I do
Speaker 2: quite a bit of work on this. Hope you enjoy
Speaker 2: the article. And now we start to engage a few
Speaker 2: more times, not enough that I'm stalking them, but enough
Speaker 2: that I am now on their radar. And now all
Speaker 2: of a sudden we can have these regular communications. I mean,
Speaker 2: look at the two of us. Yeah, what was our conversation?
Speaker 2: We looked for a common thread, and you always want
Speaker 2: to find that common thread with people, whatever it is
Speaker 2: I want. I spoke to someone, I had a zoom
Speaker 2: meeting with someone, and I saw in the back of
Speaker 2: his of the room there that he was zooming in
Speaker 2: from all of these trophies. Now I recognize what these
Speaker 2: trophies were because I sat for endless hours on cold
Speaker 2: metal chairs in a karate dojo as my kids were
Speaker 2: earning their black belts, and I knew that these three
Speaker 2: foot trophies could only be for martial arts. So I
Speaker 2: said to him, I said, what kind of martial arts
Speaker 2: do you do? Because I knew I knew that's what
Speaker 2: they were. And he said, how did you know? So
Speaker 2: I said, I sat on those cold, hard metal chairs
Speaker 2: for hours and hours, and then we started getting into
Speaker 2: what style of karate do you do? And we got
Speaker 2: into this whole discussion. You want to find that common thread.
Speaker 2: The two of us actually met in the green room
Speaker 2: of the Thinkers fifty Awards gala. Right we have yet
Speaker 2: to meet in person. It would have been so much
Speaker 2: fun if we could actually meet in London. But we
Speaker 2: met on a zoom green room and that's when we
Speaker 2: were able to connect. That was our common thread. So
Speaker 2: I think everyone needs to be able to find that
Speaker 2: common thread, and it could be anything I talked to somebody,
Speaker 2: to an olympian, our common thread was her blue glasses,
Speaker 2: which happened to be my favorite color. And she was actually,
Speaker 2: this is an Olympian. She was actually facing a challenge
Speaker 2: with a difficult conversation that she needed to have with
Speaker 2: her boss. And we actually talked through how to be
Speaker 2: able to have that conversation. This was something that as
Speaker 2: an outsider, it seemed very obvious to me, but she
Speaker 2: was so deep in it she couldn't see it. She
Speaker 2: could get to the Olympics, but she couldn't have this
Speaker 2: difficult conversation. But yet we bonded over the color blue.
Speaker 2: So you always look for that common thread. It's not
Speaker 2: so difficult. You just have to try.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this excerpt from my chat with Ruth,
Speaker 1: and maybe you're now thinking differently about how you might
Speaker 1: approach the next person that will be a mentor in
Speaker 1: your life. If you're looking for more tips to improve
Speaker 1: the way that you work, I write a short fortnightly
Speaker 1: newsletter that contains three cool things that I've discovered that
Speaker 1: helped me work better, ranging from software and gadgets that
Speaker 1: I'm loving through to interesting research findings. You can sign
Speaker 1: up for that at howiwork dot com. That's how I
Speaker 1: Work dot co. How I Work is produced by Inventing,
Speaker 1: with production support from Dead Set Studios, and thank you
Speaker 1: to Matt Nimba who does the audio mix for every
Speaker 1: episode and makes everything sound so much better than it
Speaker 1: would have otherwise. See you next time.