Originally Published on LinkedIn.com.
By Roger W. Ferguson Jr., President and CEO at TIAA
People often ask me for suggestions about how to advance their careers. One piece of advice I always like to share: find a good mentor.
Mentors are invaluable for helping you to grow, both professionally and personally. They encourage you to get out of your comfort zone and stretch yourself. They understand your strengths and weaknesses and act as sounding boards, helping you make good decisions and avoid big mistakes. Studies have shown that having a mentor provides clear benefits in areas like winning promotions, earning higher compensation, and feeling satisfied with your career.
In my own career journey, mentors have been a key part of my progress at every step of the way. One of my earliest and most important mentors was a college professor who encouraged me to follow my gut and embrace my “crazy idea” of pursuing both a law degree and a Ph.D. That advice made a profound difference in my life and career. At the very beginning of my career, I was fortunate enough to work for two great organizations that were both deeply committed to mentoring and training. In those years, I had several strong mentors who helped me navigate through the inevitable bumps in the road and guided me in learning from my experiences and growing my human capital. I became a better professional because of them, and they taught me an important lesson: none of us get to where we are, or where we want to go, on our own.
If you are fortunate enough to find a good mentor, recognize that mentorship is a two-way street. Having a mentor makes you a “protg,” defined as someone who is “trained or whose career is furthered by a person of experience, prominence, or influence.” You have responsibilities to your mentor, and they include being fully engaged in the relationship and committed to doing the best you can do. After all, mentors want to be associated with success. There’s nothing quite like the pride of being able to say “Here’s the protg I helped bring along who turned out to be successful.”
Never take your mentor for granted. The best way to show your appreciation is to validate the time, energy, and trust your mentor invests in you by working hard to develop your skills and abilities in line with his or her guidance. It’s also imperative to give your all in your current role. Some protgs, with their sights set on bigger and better opportunities, make the mistake of losing focus on their current responsibilities. That’s a sure-fire way to fail in your job and in holding up your end of the mentor-protg relationship.
As I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve had the pleasure of moving from protg to mentor, and I’ve enjoyed helping a number of people develop in their careers. But even now, I still rely on mentors to help me grow, although these days my mentors tend to be many years younger than I am. I take advantage of formal and informal “reverse mentoring” opportunities at TIAA in which my Millennial colleagues help me to hone my digital skills while also sharing their perspectives on topics like investing, financial literacy, and workplace dynamics. Our interactions help me to be a better leader at a time when TIAA is enhancing our digital capabilities, when our employee population is increasingly made up of Millennials, and as we work to meet our customers’ financial needs at all ages and life stages, whether they are Millennials, Gen Xers, or Baby Boomers.
In my role as protg, I endeavor to uphold my responsibilities to my mentors. I work hard to show them that I appreciate their time by really practicing what they teach me. I also take the opportunity to “pay it forward” by passing along some of wisdom I’ve picked up along the way. That includes one of my best pieces of career advice: find a good mentor, the kind who can make you a better professional but never forget that the relationship is about giving as much as taking.
