Mentors, Mentees, and Building a Board of Directors: The Big Questions in Personal and Career Development Through Mentorship

Whether you are aiming for career advancement, academic accomplishments, or a more engaged or balanced personal life, a team of quality mentors can help you achieve your goals. Increasingly, society has spoken to the value of finding a mentor though research suggests the majority of adults are not heeding these recommendations. Similarly, research tells us having more than one mentor, referred to by the authors as a personal board of directors, yields greater long-term outcomes. This paper will discuss what effective mentor- and mentee-ship relationships look like, how to identify potential mentors, and how to be a mentor to others. The aim of this paper is to empower readers with new personal insight and skills to establish mutually beneficial mentoring relationships, both in their personal and professional lives.