Find Your Mentor Online
Project managers may find that a trusted career guru is only a click away.
8 June 2010
Imagine you’re working on a project and have some ideas you’d like to toss around. Or maybe you want to talk about your career goals and options with an objective professional. Whatever the reason, mentors can help project managers in several ways — if you can find the right one. And in today’s hectic work life, an online relationship may be the way to go.
“There are always questions that come up while working in a pressure-laden project management job,” says Steven Blais, PMP, a consultant at Parkson International, a training and consulting company in Lakewood Ranch, Florida, USA. “Having someone to talk with, even electronically, helps to put things in focus, especially when that person might have had similar questions in the past and found the answers.”
Here are four ways to find an online mentor:
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Check out social media and professional networking sites.
Social media and professional networking sites are a great resource for finding a mentor. Search within a community of practice, or look for people’s blogs, tweets and personal websites. Social networking sites are useful, too.
“LinkedIn is a very good tool to find an online mentor,” says Lee Kuntz, president, Innovation Process Design, a process management consulting firm in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. “Joining LinkedIn project management groups and seeing who the members are is valuable.”
If you find someone who you think could be a potential mentor, reach out to them, but not without researching them first. Select only those professionals who seem to possess what you’re looking for in a mentor. Make sure they will have something offer to you, whether it’s working in the same industry or having relative experience.
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Look beyond your online community, too.
Ask current or former colleagues for referrals. Or, attend professional gatherings and networking events and consider asking for guidance from those you meet there. Think about professionals outside of project management, too.
“The right consulting company owner, training company manager or business consultant can be invaluable,” says Ms. Kuntz. “They bring a completely different perspective the project manager rarely hears.”
Of course, “online” doesn’t have to signify distant.
“People in the same locality can still communicate online,” says Frederick Pearce, an online business mentor in Houston, Texas, USA.
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Develop multiple contacts.
Contact a lot of people who interest you and who may be a good fit to be a mentor, Ms. Kuntz advises. Your mentor should be able to lead you in specialist areas or the industry where you work.
“Some project managers approach only one person, putting all their eggs in one basket,” she says. But, “many people are too busy. If getting an online mentor is important, approach multiple people knowing their time is limited and each potential mentor brings a different valuable attribute you need.”
Before you contact someone, look for information you can reference, like an article they have written or a speech or presentation they have given. Then when you reach out, reference the material, or something that you’ve read or heard about them to show that you’ve done your homework.
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Don’t rush the relationship.
Before asking someone outright to be your mentor, gauge his reaction to the concept, Ms. Kuntz suggests.
“The potential mentor might be the right person for the job, but they may be too busy. If you make an impression, yet they are busy, they may suggest another person who might a better mentor for you,” she says.
Ask questions about their work, what they look for in a mentee or how they view the relationship developing, and see how they respond, he says. If the conversation goes well, let them know you’re interested in utilizing them as a mentor, Ms. Kuntz says.
No matter how you find your online mentor, one thing is for sure: They must be someone who is the best fit to take you on the right path through your project management career.
