After nearly two decades mentoring mid-career professionals who are keen to make their mark, I’ve come to believe there are three preconditions for career success:
- You have to be good enough to succeed in your career.
- You have to want to succeed.
- Your friends, colleagues, and peers have to also want you to succeed.
I didn’t set out to become a mentor. It happened almost by accident.
I kept getting calls from CEOs and GMs asking me to mentor their direct reports. And I kept turning them down which, if you’ve read my piece on the Opportunity Train, is a clear miss.
Since then, I’ve built mentoring into my work through @ArrowheadConsulting and with professional bodies like @CAANZ.
Lately, I’ve been asked a few times to write down what I’ve learned. Here’s a start.
The first two preconditions are obvious.
If you don’t have the right skills, at the right level, at the right time, success can remain just out of reach. And wanting to succeed matters just as much. You have to be willing to push yourself, often into uncomfortable territory.
But the third is the one most people misunderstand.
Too many professionals operate like they’re on their own track; head down, self-reliant, and reluctant to ask for help. They assume support is scarce, or that success is a zero-sum game.
Most people around you are far more willing to help than you think.
They’ll share advice. Make introductions. Open doors. Offer perspective you simply can’t see from where you’re standing. But only if you let them or more specifically, if you ask.
The “Opportunity Train” I spoke about in my last post doesn’t just arrive. Often, it’s driven, or at least accelerated, by the people around you.
If you’re not getting the help you need to move forward, ask for it.
And when help comes, remember to pay it forward. If others help you advance, you owe it to the next person to do the same. It’s a good thing in life to want others to succeed.
While I said I “figured out” these three preconditions, that’s not entirely true. I’d thought about them before, but I hadn’t articulated them this clearly.
That framing comes from Hugh O’Donnell, CEO of Bermuda Brokers, originally in the context of organisational success. But in my experience, those three preconditions apply just as powerfully at the individual level.
