Why do you need a mentor? After all, knowledge is everywhere. Between Google, Glassdoor, ChatGPT and the water cooler, can’t you find everything you need to know? Relationships, interpersonal awareness, communication skills: while ChatGPT can write your presentation for you, it can’t deliver that presentation for you. You still have to stand and deliver, interacting with customers, co-workers and your boss. A mentor can help you to stand tall, even in the midst of change. The great basketball coach, John Wooden, said it best: “It’s what you learn after you know it all that really counts.” Assuming you are competent in your position (you know how to do your job), you may wonder about the insider insights that can help propel your career forward. During times of layoffs and firings, where performance is rarely the reason why people are let go, you’ve got to wonder what it takes to make an impact – and move ahead in your career. Thats’ where a mentor can help – and if you’re looking for some inside guidance (beyond ChatGPT prompts) here’s where to start. The best mentors offer the following top qualities for your career growth:
Look for These Qualities in a Mentor
1. Objectivity: if your mentor is your boss, you don’t have a mentor. You have a boss. What if you need to talk to your mentor about your problems… with your boss? You can’t do that if there’s a conflict of interest. Your boss can’t listen to you objectively, and their feedback will be colored by their own agenda. Maybe you’re thinking of a skip-level mentor, where you go to your boss’s boss? Clever idea, but just ask yourself: how’s your boss going to feel about that? Objectivity matters – and so does some sensibility around office politics. So, objectively speaking: What guidance or insights would help you to move forward in your career? The best mentor is the one that can help you to find the answers, inside yourself, and objectively help you to see what you are missing.
2. Listening: does your mentor rush to judgement and answers, or are they willing to listen? As a coach to thousands of business leaders and aspiring leaders, I’ve discovered that listening is where every powerful conversation begins. A good mentor knows this, and listens – asking wise questions to help you to discover life on your own terms. Listening is the mentor’s job. If they are asking you to listen to their life story from birth up till yesterday, they are talking at you (not listening to you). What’s going to help you most?
3. Understanding: a key component of empathy and listening is understanding. Mentors need to show understanding around this key area: the answers you seek will always come from the same place… inside of you. If your mentor is giving you a prescription based on how they did things, you have to wonder: will their life lessons work for you? Consider this fact: you can’t enter a river in the same place twice. Because it’s not the same river. The metaphor of the river represents your career. What worked for your mentor in 2017 may not be a great fit for you in 2025 – the “current” is different, and the river is flowing in a new way. Understanding is what helps you to keep your career afloat.
4. Connections: who does your mentor know that could help expand your network? Mentors are a great resource for connecting with folks you don’t know. A great mentor is a trusted resource for both parties, making introductions easier. One of the things that people like about Jodie Cook’s articles on Forbes is how she shows you how to make powerful connections, using LinkedIn and other resources. Can your mentor do the same, on a personal level?
5. Support: the key criteria for any mentor is: are they looking in the direction of your success? Mentoring isn’t about sharing war stories, or telling people how to live their lives. As a coach to thousands of clients, focused on personal and professional growth, there’s one thing I’ve learned. Life is not a prescription. There’s not a “one-size-fits-all” template – otherwise, you would have received it by now. Mentors that waltz you through their past are missing the real opportunity here, which is to help you to see the future. The past reminds us, it does not define us. Is your mentor able to turn their past experience into salient (meaningful) advice? Mentoring takes time, and investing in that time is a key component of supporting your career goals.
A Mentor Will Tell You What ChatGPT Can’t
Ultimately, finding a great high-impact career mentor is a way to access what ChatGPT can’t tell you. An LLM (large language model) like Gemini, Microsoft Azure, OpenAI or other platforms can’t offer knowledge about how things work inside your particular company or industry. Insider information and insights can make a huge difference in your career, and your relationships – so make sure that your mentor has your success as a shared goal. Ultimately, discovering if a mentor is right for you is (like anything in life) a matter of feeling. Get a feel for how your mentor listens, what guidance they offer, and how they might be of service to you. In an age when knowledge is everywhere, insight is what is needed – a deeper understanding of relationships, and ultimately, of yourself. While clever prompts can help ChatGPT to offer guidance, it’s worth it to look towards a human support system as well. A good mentor won’t teach you how to do your job. They will help you to get out of your own way, and out of your own head, so that you can do what really needs to be done. (That’s one of the values of an objective point of view). If you’re serious about career success, remember: you don’t have to go it alone. A high-quality mentor that meets each of these five criteria above can be a real difference maker in your professional growth.
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