A topic that comes up all the time in the world of development is mentors and mentoring.

I'm going to share a personal experience with this. A guy named Sam, Master Samwise as I often call him, mentored me for more than twenty-five years. It started out in recovery, but then it morphed into personal and professional development. It was really, really remarkable.

People often ask me how to find someone with whom you can practice for twenty-five years or even a few years with. I've thought about it a lot. Obviously, some of it is serendipity, but I still I have a couple of thoughts about this.

Probably the most important idea is that it needs to be valuable to the mentor. After all, we're asking them for their time, their energy, their ideas. Way too often, we're egocentric, and we make it about us rather than them. I have found that using our conversations to pinpoint what the mentor would find valuable has been instrumental in how we engage. Long story short: what would be both interesting and useful for them?

Then of course, it probably should go without saying that we need to be mindful that they're donating their time to us and to treat them accordingly. This could include, if necessary, buying them a latte, or treating them to dessert.

The other thing I think a lot about is for the value to be there for a mentor, we have to do the work. Nothing is more frustrating for a mentor than to find out that you're chugging along at a slow pace. That means you're going to have to do whatever homework, do whatever prep work, come well prepared with good questions, anything to bring energy to it.

The amazing thing about mentors, as I have found it, is almost everybody loves giving their experience, sharing what they know and what they've learned. And if we make it valuable for them, we're going to get everything we need.

You probably noticed I didn't talk much about being the mentee. That's because it's all about the mentor - that’s because we have to make it valuable to them.