Strategic Relationship Building

“You can never truly grow without first making yourself vulnerable – trusting that the reward of learning will outweigh the risk of rejection”

Whether you are in the private or public sector, those of us who work within traditional organizations sometimes think of entrepreneurs as a separate professional species.  Entrepreneurs and employees of traditional organizations have a lot more in common than we often think.  This is part one of a three-part series on Three Entrepreneurial Practices Every Organizational Leader Should Adopt.

Part 1: Strategic Relationship Building

While strategic relationship building sounds impersonal and less than genuine, it simply means that you have a plan for how you want to learn and grow by choosing to seek others that can help stretch you professionally. In other words, it is tapping into the power that comes from people:  those that you know well, those you are making an effort to get to know and those that are, and will remain, complete strangers.

Modify Mentorship

Entrepreneurs relay on the wisdom of mentors. At one time mentoring meant having a one on one relationship with a trusted person willing to guide you, answer your questions and give you truthful feedback.  While this is still very much the ideal mentoring relationship, how we define mentorship can and should be modified.  A mentor is anyone you allow to speak into your life for a specific purpose toward personal and professional growth.

New media has added a dimension to mentorship in that it has given us a new level of access to those we do not know personally, and may never meet.  This empowers mentees to take more personal agency and strategically develop a learning plan based on what you need from specific people seeking to create a pseudo mentoring relationship using books, social media, podcasts or online video.

Take the next 20 seconds and respond…

• If you could have a standing lunch meeting with two thought leaders or influencers in your professional field, who would they be?
• What are two specific things you would hope to learn from them at these on-going lunch meetings?
• What are some of the means by which you have been exposed to them (conference speaker, books, published articles, trade publications, on-line communities, social media)?

Take 20 more seconds and…

• If you could have a standing lunch meeting with any two thought leaders or influencers in the world who would they be?
• What are two specific things you would hope to learn from them at these on-going lunch meetings (remembering these are focused on your professional learning and growth)?
• What are some of the means by which you have been exposed to them (books, podcasts, media appearances, social media)?

Now take your responses and begin to seek out what these thought leaders and influencers have to teach you.  My ultimate point is that it is not necessary to have direct contact with someone to begin to internalize their advice and incorporate it into your own professional practice and in this sense be mentored by them.

Trust the Brain Trust

Entrepreneurs find other like-minded individuals with whom they form mutually beneficial groups called Masterminds. A mastermind is a group of peers that meet in a predetermined time frame (perhaps every two to three months) and serve to:

• Help set realistic, attainable and time bound goals related to your business or field
• Help hold you accountable for progress made toward those goals since the last meeting
• Share victories and failures (small or significant) to provide and receive truly honest feedback for the purpose of growth
• Provide support and encouragement (carrot or stick) anytime when needed

While entrepreneurs ultimately share the goal of growing and perfecting their businesses, here are a couple of examples of how organizational leaders may choose to use the mastermind structure:

• Departmental or division leaders looking to guide their organization in a specific direction
• A group of professionals working toward specific lofty career goals
• Professional seeking to inspire a culture of innovation within their organizations

Whether face to face, via live video or a conference call, the desire for self-honest reflection and willingness to use the honest feedback from others to grow is what distinguishes the idea of a mastermind from other professional groups. The acceptance that you can never truly grow without first making yourself vulnerable – trusting that the reward of learning will outweigh the risk of rejection, it what makes them powerful.

So what do you think?  Is it possible to be mentored by someone you never met? Could a mastermind be helpful for you in setting, attaining and resetting your goals? Let me know in the comments below.

Visit thyrone.com where you can read past blog posts and we can connect on LinkedIn and other media.  Follow me on Twitter @thyrone and if you are in the Columbus, OH area @careercolumbus and I will let you know when parts two and three of this series are posted.