I heard a while back that, "Women don't ask for help, we just pedal faster!" I am SO guilty of this!
Have you ever thought that having a mentor and being a mentee is a proactive way for "Asking for Help, before you need it" It's taking care of you. Many women will look at taking care of everyone around them before they do something nice for themselves.
Like for me, if I've had a bad day, I have two methods of operation:
- I either go find a big cookie and then feel guilty the rest of the day that when I walk in the door to my apartment I confess to my husband immediately – I actually look down at the floor – I'm such a loser.
- Or I buy a present for someone else.
So instead of doing something nice for me….I do something destructive to myself or blow money on someone else. I know I'm not alone; I'e talked to several women who do the same thing.
Recommended For You
So why not do something nice for ourselves? There's a reason they tell you to put your mask on before assisting others. Becoming a mentee is you putting your "mask on first" so that you can turn around and be a mentor to someone else in the future.
If you've decided you're set with having a mentor but you're like me and have a bit of a "Wonder Woman Complex" looking to be the hero to someone else in the business, look around in your community or organizations you're already tied to. I'm part of a few large mentorship programs, one through WIFS.
Another is through Baruch College in NYC that has an Executives on Campus program for "Mentor for a Morning" and "Mentor for an Evening" sessions where you help three students for an hour on topics they are struggling with.
The last one called the Griffith's Leadership Society through the University of Missouri, where I went to school, that actually has you come back to campus once a year for a Leadership Conference and meet your mentee.
At the conference this past year there was a woman who spoke and explained something that really resonated with me.
"In this world everyone wants your time, and time is precious," she said.
So she strategically decided that, at any given time, she was going to have nine "deep" relationships:
- 3 mentoring her
- 3 people she's mentoring
- 3 peer relationships.
It's not that she doesn't have other people she's friends with or meets with along the way, but these are the nine people in her life that she'll consciously make time for and work at being an important part of their lives. Pretty amazing, huh?
Einstein's definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results," so why not look into trying something different and start with developing three deep relationships to start.
Statistics don't lie. According to MDRT – whether you are a mentee or a mentor – they've found that first-year commissions increased between 29 percent and 191 percent.
Just ask yourself, if you could do one small thing that could impact your bottom line like that wouldn't you be crazy not to? Now go do it.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
