Yes, You Need a Mentor

Talk to a career coach and sooner or later they'll get around to mentoring. We write a lot about it (see our latest here) because having a mentor whom you can trust with your confidences, and can trust to offer frank insight, is such an important component of effective career-management.

So, of course, I noticed an article on MSNBC about the importance of mentors to women as they strive to break through the glass ceiling. Eve Tahmincioglu writes about Deloitte & Touche USA Chairman Sharon Allen's experience:

"I can’t stress enough how important mentoring is to achieving success in one's career," says Sharon Allen, Chairman of Deloitte & Touche USA LLP. She credits the mentors she’s had in her career with helping her enter the small club of high-ranking women executives.

A key mentor for her was the managing partner in Deloitte’s Boise, Idaho, office where she worked early on in her career. "He would give me a little bit of additional confidence by standing by me and giving me that nudge to assure me I was doing the right thing," she explains. "As I developed in my career and moved along up the ladder, I established new connections with people I felt were looking out for me."

The lack of female role models, she adds, continues to hinder advancement for women, so women find themselves "establishing their own way and styles that work for them, and as a result, the additional reinforcement from a mentor is useful."

Work is complicated today, and even if you don't aspire to the chairman's office (woman or not, that's Allen's title) having a mentor can help you determine the best course through any number of issues you'll face as your career develops, whether its positioning yourself for a promotion to taking family leave. Tahmincioglu's article is a good primer, even for men.

Mentors can help women shatter glass ceiling [MSNBC]
Strategies to Help You Move Up [JITM]