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Mentorship is the New Black: New York Times Edition
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Specialists in the career development space can all tell you that the term “mentorship” has become a buzzword around the internet in the past few years. Mentors are requisite for success, we’re told. Without mentors, we have no support system, no structure– sometimes we don’t even know what career possibilities are out there without the proper mentorship programs or support structures in place.
Whether mentorship is an over-saturated hype word or still resembles something of a useful career strategy (hint: we bet on the latter), you’re going to find yourself reading about it whether you’re seeking out advice on it or not.
The Levo editorial team is on a mission: to root out sources that write frequently on the subject of mentorship and put their views under a microscope.
The New York Times & Mentorship
The New York Times expresses its opinion on the subject of mentorship frequently.
Really frequently.
Mentorship is important. We all agree on that point. The New York Times summarizes their perspective succinctly in a piece called “For Children at Risk, Mentors Who Stay”(alright– the piece is on adult/child mentorship relationships, but the concept is there.).
This is cool. But it’s also fairly obvious. So tell us, New York Times: What do you know about mentorship– whatever that great white beast is– that we don’t know already?
Seriously. We dare you.
The New York Times strikes again with its “For Women in the Workplace, an Upgrade Problem.” This is a slightly more interesting point– or at least one that’s pointed out a little bit less often than all the other points about women in the workplace: that culturally, there’s no reason to really expect that men and women would have acclimated to a totally new culture in the short period since women have introduced themselves to the professional world.
Now for the “Duh” factor.
In a piece entitled “The Power of Mentorship” spectacularly devoid of any observation or criticism on the concept of mentorship, we learn the story of Gerald Chertavian. Gerald came from median means and started a foundation in Boston for the mentorship of youths.
Kudos to you, Gerald. I imagine all youths in Boston to be not unlike the young people in Scorsese’s “The Departed.” So in my mind, you’re fighting a good fight in the middle of a war zone. But seriously, we can learn nothing from the article on you.
Here’s a piece that’s spot-on: in “Helping Small-Business Owners Find Mentors,” Paul Sullivan writes about a few different programs that have had varied levels of success. Here are a few excerpts that drive home an oft-ignored point: that mentorship isn’t identical from situation to situation. And measuring whether or not a mentorship relationship is having any positive effect whatsoever can be quite difficult.
One great piece of advice from “How to Adopt Mentors Without Really Asking,” Shellye Archambeau has the following amazing advice: DO NOT ASK your mentor to BE your mentor explicitly. From that article:
For more on Mentorship from the New York Times, check out the following links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/world/europe/27iht-women27.html?pagewanted=all
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/world/series/the_female_factor/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/business/smallbusiness/02sbiz.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/jobs/gerald-chertavian-of-year-up-on-the-power-of-mentoring.html
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/for-children-at-risk-mentors-who-stay/
http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/a-program-that-matches-mentor-to-small-business/
I think it is great that the NY Times is highlighting the importance of mentorship, but I sometimes wonder if it is a good idea to hang onto these buzz words like mentorship. It seems like we may be looking towards mentorship as the key to all of the obstacles in the way of women reaching the top. I do like the article that points out how far we have come so quickly (it's too bad it wasn't a level playing field in the beginning!) but we definitely need to pick up the charge as Gen Y women to get more women to the top!
So true, Amanda. It's interesting to think about mentorship and it's special meaning for women. There seem to have been lots of articles recently, by the NYTimes and others, explaining how important mentorship is for women. But these articles often also say that a good female mentor is hard to find, let alone hold onto. I wonder what we as Gen Y women can do to help find mentors and how women in the position to be mentors can find us?