I recently turned 41 years old. The advice you are about to read is the advice I have practiced on myself in last year. Previous version on this was 39 pieces of advice I gave myself.

1. Be ambitious.

2. Dream big. Dreaming big takes practice.

3. If you have to get anything done, we need to focus on it. To make significant progress, focusing on a single goal means while saying "NO" to all the other goals is essential and this is where 99% people fail. (How to Focus)

4. Communication and listening can solve 99% of people's conflicts. Listening (not hearing) is the easy to master when we focus on the other person.

5. The 80/20 Pareto principle says focus on 20% that brings 80% of the value. The overlooked is to identify the right 20% to focus on. Focus on the wrong 20% and you are doomed. Pareto principle is an exercise in focussing.

6. Goal setting is the key.

7. Entrepreneurship is 95% ability to take risks and 5% preparation. Most people who want to start a company or a business will struggle with ability to risk.

8. Be on a constant lookout for mentors and coaches. Having them doesn't guarantee success, but it dramatically increases the chances of success. (Find a mentor and a coach)

9. Going back to school to learn new stuff is always a good idea.

10. The fastest way to make progress is to take regular breaks. Breaks help air out thoughts in your brain. Shorter time interval needs shorter breaks, and longer time needs longer breaks. Slow Productivity by Cal Newport is an excellent book on this topic.

11. Taking more actions requires making more decisions. Making decisions is problematic as the risk associated with wrong decisions is often parallelizing. We can reduce the risk of making the wrong decisions by buying insurance for those decisions. The easiest way to do it is to put to checks 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days after the decision is made. And when the 30, 60, and 90 days mark arrives, ask yourself, "Knowing what I know now, would I have made the same decision?". If the answer is no, revert the decision immediately as the cost of reverting it is lowest immediately after the decision and continues to increase the longer we wait to revert it.

12. Calendar is the most important, most under utilized and unappreciated productivity tool. Add all the tasks to the calendar and do them when they appear. See your productivity skyrocket. Note that it's best to plan the entire week at the beginning of the week i.e. Monday mornings for most people.

13. Consistency is the key.

14. Think big, act small, and act now.

15. For healthy living and lose weight: Increase Fiber & Protein, Lower Carb, Sugar &

16. Time must be explicitly managed like money.

17. You can always change your plan if you have one.

18. Not all goals in life are worth pursuing. As life evolves, our previously set goals must be revisited.

19. The easiest way to keep things organized is to put them in alphabetical order. Weather its tools, wardrobe, books, or apps on smart phone.

20. People perceives other people preparation as luck. Best way to get lucky is to prepare. Luck is when opportunity meets preparation. Opportunity is something that we don't control, but preparation is something that we do.

21. Life is all about encountering brick walls and finding a way to continuing the journey beyond the wall. We can go through it, scale it, dig under it, or continue moving to the sideways until the wall ends or you find a gate. But we must get on the other side.

22. Stop complaining but vent out the concerns. We can do that by writing.

23. Work harder as hard work has compounding effects.

24. Find things that have compounding effects like writing, reading, learning different things, public speaking, giving great presentations, and telling stories. They will double up in value every several years.

25. Reduce to doing things that are highly leveraged ie only you can do it and it's easy for you.

26. Think both with your mind and hands, such as when writing or building things.

27. We know that practice makes perfect. But actually, it's consistent practice makes perfect. If the number of days you are practicing a skill is less than the number of days you dont practice that skill, then you are doing it incorrectly.

28. Learn a musical instrument. Music touches parts of the brain and emotions that other skills dont.

29. Make fast decisions. Learn from them to make better decisions.

30. Stop caring what the world thinks about your idea, business, job, process, life, etc. The world will celebrate when you fail and/or succeed.

31. The only way to make progress is to make progress. So, do it.

32. The higher you go in corporate, the more you realize that no one knows what happening. Everyone is trying to figure out things based on new information they discover every day.

33. Having materialistic goals is perfectly fine if they motivate you. We don't need anyone's permission to materialistic and ambitious goals. In case you were waiting for permission, you have mine (from a random stranger on the Internet).

34. All of us have the capacity to do many things but doesn’t mean we should. Its better to focus on doing few things and do them well.

35. Do things that energize you, and stop doing things that de-energize you.

36. Every business is a people business. Build soft skills to work with people.

37. Building a consistent good night sleep habit takes only 1 week of sleeping with your phone/tablet outside the room.

38. Kids learn more from what you do than what you say.

39. How we say matters as much as what we say. Pay attention to the tone. Be humble, honest, clear, and consistent when communicating.

40. We can have multiple identities in life. We can be an employer, founder, athlete, musician, or whatever. It's Life is too short to have one identity.

41. Live like a king or a queen that you are. You deserve it. This doesn't mean spending all the money and treating others as peasants. I only mean that they have the mindset of a king or queen.

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Note: Coaching is a skill that varies from coach to coach, coachee to coachee, the relationship between them, the goal, the situation, the type of coaching, and the industry being coached in. As it varies greatly, in this post, I am sharing the framework that I apply when coaching people in tech. However, I believe this framework will work for others too.

The last few posts focussed on various aspects of mentoring. But coaching is a very different skill from mentoring. In today’s post, we discuss how to coach.

Before diving in, let's refresh what a coaching is or a coach does:

To do this effectively, I have developed the following framework as the basis for all of my coaching. The framework consists of three parts, each building on the previous one. Here is the framework:

1. Self-Reflect: Coaches help coachee self-reflect.

2. Right-Question: Coaches ask coachee the right questions.

3. Drive-Accountability: Coaches keep coachee accountable.

As a coach, doing these effectively is hard. Before diving into why it’s hard, let's understand why these three elements make up the framework and how you can apply them effectively during your coaching sessions.

Self-Reflection

Let's look at the coaching definition again. A coach helps coachees achieve big, ambitious, long-term goals. However, the journey to success has to be covered by the coachees themselves.

During that journey, a coachee must lean on their strengths, build and develop new strengths, and overcome many challenges. This is where self-reflection helps.

All of us have core strengths and areas for growth. A coach must help coachees uncover both by assisting them to self-reflect. The mechanism of self-reflection can be any personality test like Myers-Briggs or INTF, or journaling (my preference) as it’s free and equally effective. Regardless of the mechanism, it's critical to identify the strengths to lean on for the journey towards the goal.

Another area where a coach can help a coachee with self-reflection is by helping them reflect on their actions. This is similar to a retrospective. The mechanism I recommend leads to the next part of the framework, i.e., asking the right questions.

Asking the Right Questions

Both the coach and coachee have different perspectives on the journey towards the goal. A coachee's role is to overcome challenges, whereas a coach's role is to help the coachee think about how they will overcome these challenges.

An effective coach helps coachees come up with solutions to their problems by asking them the right follow-up questions in an inquisitive rather than accusatory tone.

I cannot emphasize enough how critical it is to ask the right question in the right tone. This is the most important aspect of coaching and where many coaches fall short.

Also, the reason I call these the right questions to ask instead of the right inquiries is that questions are information-seeking by nature, whereas inquiries are information-repeating. As a coach, we want our coachee to think or seek information based on our questions, not repeat the information they already know.

Why is the tone of the question important?

We, humans, get defensive when anyone questions our way of operating and the goals we are working towards. If the tone seems accusatory, we stop listening.

As a coach, that’s the worst thing to happen during coaching. We are there to help our coachees. If they shut down, then coaching is ineffective.

Keeping our tone inquisitive rather than accusatory can help avoid this situation.

What are the right questions to ask your coachee?

Our goal in asking questions is to help them see things that are in their blind spots. The right follow-up questions are contextual by nature, so it’s hard to write them down. However, here are a few categories of questions/inquiries that, as a coach, are worth asking:

• Question the unsaid assumptions that coachee have made but haven’t realized.

• Question various aspects of the coachee solution approach like timelines, priorities, velocity, team, etc.

• Inquire about the second-order, third-order, etc., impact of their decisions and how they plan to overcome them.

• Inquire about the best-case and worst-case scenarios for their next steps and why they believe those are the best and worst cases.

• Inquire if you suspect that the next step is taking them away from their goal why this detour is needed and why now.

• Inquire about their strategy or push them to create one.

These are a few examples. There are many categories of questions that I may have missed. If you have them, please leave them in the comments.

As a result of our inquisitive coaching session, our coachee will have some actions to take. This leads us to the next part of the framework.

Drive Accountability

Coaches need to drive accountability from the coachees. Without accountability, coaching is not effective.

There are various ways a coach/coachee can drive accountability. They can create short-term goals, milestones, and even dates by which a certain type of decision has to be made.

The best tool I use to drive accountability is called the State & Date framework (details in a separate post). I learned this from a guest on Lenny’s podcast. The summarized version is that whatever action your coachee is going to do, ask them to give you a state the thing will be in and a date by which it will be in that state.

For example, a coachee may say that they will launch a product in the upcoming months. Ask them to give a state and a date, and then keep them accountable. In practice, this could look like, "I will launch the MVP, which will have these two core features in 30 days." And then, as a coach, you keep them accountable for it. If they miss the state or a date, help them self-reflect by asking questions and repeating the loop.

The above framework is cyclic. It takes many iterations during each coaching session. In a typical session, a coachee reflects, the coach inquires, the coachee reflects and determines action, the coach helps set accountability goals, and then repeats. It is an intense exercise for both a coachee and a coach. But it's completely worth it.

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Summary

This post barely scratches the surface of the topic of coaching. We haven’t even talked about the types of coaching such as executive, leadership, career, performance, business, etc., that a coachee may need and when they should seek one over another.

Regardless, we did cover something fundamental i.e. how to coach. The above framework can be applied to all types of coaching with the right context.

Now the question is, how do you know when coaching is working?

The best way I can describe that coaching has worked is when the coachee leaves with the feeling that they have solved their problem by themselves. The coach and the coach vanish into the background.

This feeling may seem unrewarding to many but not to coaches. A great coach is like a great teacher, a parent, a well-wisher, and a master, who gets more pleasure from seeing their coachees succeed and get well-deserved credit than from being recognized for their coaching.

I hope this information was helpful. If it was, please consider subscribing to this newsletter.

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Here are other posts in the series that you may find interesting:

• Why You Need a Mentor?

• How to Find a Mentor?

• 10 Mistakes Mentees Make During Mentorship

• Difference & Similarities Between a Mentor & a Coach. And why you need both

• FAQs on Mentorships

• Why do you need a coach?

• Why become a mentor?

• How to mentor

In this series on mentoring, we’ve discussed a lot from the mentees’ perspective. Why seek mentorship, how to find a mentor, etc. But what about mentors? We briefly discussed, why to mentor. In this post, we talk about the whats and hows from mentors’ perspective.

If you plan on taking that advice and you are a first-time mentor, this is the post for.

The good news is that mentoring is a skill, and like any skill, it can be developed and improved upon.

As mentors, our goal is for our mentees to succeed. We want them to accomplish the goals they have in mind or overcome the roadblocks they are facing. To do that effectively, as a mentor, we need to what to do and how to do it. So lets discuss that next.

The What of Mentoring:

• Learn: Learn about the mentee, their goals, and the timeline they have for their goals.

• Set expectations: Based on mentors understanding of mentee goals and mentors experience, mentors should have an honest conversation to establish realistic expectations with mentees on how achievable their goals are.

• Create a plan: Once aligned on goals, create a plan and discuss the next steps.

• Check-in and accountability: Finally, as mentors, we want to do regular check-ins and keep our mentees accountable. With every meeting, check on how they are progressing on the plan towards their goal, how they are applying the advice, what new roadblocks they are encountering, what they have learned, and how mentee applied/tweaked the advice to make it work for them.

To many, the "what to do" list may seem obvious, and it is. However, mentoring is a lot more than "what to do." It's also about how we do it. Many first-time mentors mistake the "what" as a checklist, and when they engage with their mentees, they do it passively. Thats why its critical to understand, how to mentor.

The How of Mentoring:

What differentiates a great mentor from a good mentor is how they engage in the mentoring relationship. Now, the following list may seem obvious as well, but it’s easier said than done. As mentors, we have to be:

• Engaged and actively listening

• Supportive and challenging

• Patient and non-judgmental

As I’ve mentioned before, mentors are teachers. And a great teacher/mentor personifies the above characteristics.

But why demonstrating above characteristics important?

A mentor-mentee relationship is only effective when there is psychological safety between the two. Demonstrating above characteristics can help build that.

Feeling psychologically safe leads to transparency, clear and effective communication. Only when a mentee feels psychologically safe they can open up about their challenges and roadblocks.

As mentors, it’s our responsibility to create that psychologically safe environment for our mentees. And we can do that by following the list above.

Finally, as mentioned earlier in the post, mentoring is a skill that anyone can learn and excel at. The sooner you start mentoring, the sooner you can develop that skill. Then, not only do you become a great mentor, but you also become a great mentee.

If you like the post, please consider subscribing.

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Here are other posts in this series that you may find useful as well.

• Why You Needs a Mentor?

• How to Find a Mentor?

• 10 Mistakes Mentee Make During Mentorship

• Difference & Similarities Between a Mentor & a Coach. And why you need both

• FAQs on Mentorships

• Why you need a coach?

• Why become a mentor?

Last several posts received few follow up questions. If you have a follow up question, please leave it in comment and I will answer them in this post. Before we get to them, here are all the posts in these series:

• Why you need a mentor

• How to find a mentor

• Common mistakes mentees make during the mentoring relationship

• Why become a mentor

• Why you need a coach

• How they differ from coaches

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Frequently Asked Questions On Mentorship

What should be the format of recurring meetings between mentor and mentee?

Recurring meetings with a mentor are straightforward. After exchanging greetings, the mentee should start with a recap of the last topic discussed and the advice received. They should explain how they applied the advice and what the outcome was—whether they overcame the roadblock or not. Then, they should discuss the next step or the next roadblock to overcome. Make sure to end the meeting by thanking the mentor.

How many mentors should you have at any given time?

While there are many things a mentee might need mentorship on, it's ideal to start with one mentor for first-time mentees. Once you have had several mentorship experiences, then you can have two mentors at a time. It’s important to ensure that these two mentors provide mentorship in completely different areas of life. For example, have one mentor for your professional career and another for a recreational sport. You never want two mentors for the same thing.

Can your manager be your mentor?

No and yes, but mostly no. Especially in the corporate world, the relationship between an employee and a manager has its own unique characteristics. Oftentimes, mentees seek advice on how to deal with situations related to their manager. This results in a conflict of interest. It’s better to have an uninfluenced and unbiased mentoring relationship. My recommendation is to have a mentor outside your department or organizational vertical.

Can every mentor be a coach?

Not every mentor can be a coach, but every coach can be a mentor. Coaching is harder and more ambiguous than mentoring. In my view, it takes years of mentoring before one can become a coach. Even then, coaching is a different skill. You need to have a lot of experience to be a coach, but not necessarily to be a mentor.

We have talked extensively about mentoring—why you need a mentor, how they differ from coaches, how to find a mentor, and the common mistakes mentees make during the mentoring relationship.

Before we dive into today's post, I would love your feedback on this topic. Please take a moment to participate in this poll.

Now, getting back to today’s post.

Why become a mentor? What’s in it for a mentor?

As someone who has been both a mentee and a mentor for several years, I can provide some insights. When I first signed up for a mentorship program, it was as a mentee, and I had the same question. I couldn’t see any benefit of being a mentor. As a mentor, you share your insights and spend your time teaching a mentee, but what do you get in return?

Many mentoring relationships are transactional, which clarifies the incentive to be a mentor. However, when no money is involved and no other transaction is taking place, why would anyone want to become a mentor?

I asked this question to my mentor at the time. They smiled and suggested that I sign up as a mentor to someone else if I truly wanted to understand. So I did.

During my experience, I discovered two key reasons why people choose to become mentors.

• Giving Back to the Community

Mentoring is a way of giving back to the community you are part of. It’s your contribution to society, the world you live in, and the world of tomorrow that you want to help create.

I’ve often said that mentors are like teachers. Imagine a world without teachers. Being a mentor is your chance to become a teacher. Just like teaching, mentoring is a selfless act, a way to give back.

Today’s world exists because of the teachers from the past. Without teachers, human evolution would not have occurred. Our world is built on the teachings of the past, and the world of tomorrow will be shaped by what we teach our generation today.

• Personal Growth and Learning

Everyone can be a mentor. We all have experiences and knowledge gained throughout our careers. We all have the potential to mentor someone else, passing on our insights and teachings to the next generation.

Now, you may ask, "That's great. Does it help me become a better mentee?"

Yes. Apart from the social aspect of mentorship, being a mentor can help you become a better mentee.

When you become a mentor, you see your mentee's challenges from a different perspective. Sometimes, as mentors, we face similar challenges in different forms. Providing advice not only helps the mentee, but it also helps us resolve our own issues. This is also known as the Protégé Effect.

Furthermore, mentoring improves our communication with our mentors. Remember when we discussed common mistakes mentees make during their mentoring relationships? Mentoring helps us avoid those mistakes.

I hope I was able to convince you on becoming a mentor. While you are searching for a mentor for yourself, consider becoming a mentor to someone else. If you are already a mentor to someone, thank you for being there. I know they appreciate it and so does the world of tomorrow.

In the series on mentorship and coaching, we have talked about why you need a mentor, how they differ from a coach, and how to find a great mentor for you.

Next, I want to share common mistakes that I’ve made as a mentee and see first-time mentees make often. Why am I sharing these? Two reasons:

1. Becoming a great mentee: Your first experience in mentorship will play a huge role in how you engage in future mentorship relationships. Knowing and avoiding these common mistakes can make the difference between an exceptional and an underwhelming experience.

2. Becoming a great mentor: When you become a mentor, you will see first-time mentees making these mistakes. You can engage sooner and help them avoid these pitfalls.

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So, what are the common pitfalls for first-time mentees?

1. Not knowing what they need mentorship advice on, i.e., short-term goals: If a mentee doesn’t know what they need guidance on, a mentor cannot help. If a mentee doesn’t have a short-term goal, then the short-term goal should be to identify one. Some mentors can help with that too, but it’s actually more of a coach's responsibility.

2. Not sharing all the details about the challenge or feeling shy: A great mentoring relationship is about transparency. Mentees often hide details about their challenges, resulting in less effective guidance. It’s important to be transparent with mentors, especially when the mentor is from outside of your organization.

3. Not setting the right expectations on what they want from the mentorship engagement: Some mentees assume that mentors will do the work; no. Mentors only provide guidance. The work still has to be done by the mentee. This is why having a short-term goal helps. A right expectation can be that the mentor will provide guidance that will help the mentee make progress towards their short-term goal.

4. Not having the right cadence of meetings: Meeting too frequently or too infrequently can impact how the advice is being applied. Meeting too frequently does not leave enough time for the mentee to try out the mentor’s advice and experience the outcome, and meeting too infrequently can result in gaps on how to make changes based on the experience. A good cadence is once per month (twice per month for first-timers) for six months, and then re-evaluate.

5. Expecting solutions instead of directional advice: As discussed in a previous post, mentors provide guidance and not exact solutions. Mentors help mentees solve their own problems and do not solve them for them.

6. Not sharing the result of what happened when they applied the mentor’s advice: Remember, a mentoring relationship is based on transparency. When mentees don’t share outcomes of the mentor’s advice, mentors have a hard time sharing further guidance as they don’t know if previous guidance was helpful or not. Also, mentorship is a safe space.

7. Not considering it as a give-and-take relationship: Following up on the previous point, only taking advice but not sharing back the result or the tweaks made based on the mentor’s guidance is not great. Mentors want to learn too, and receiving feedback helps them add more data points towards their future guidance, making it more effective.

8. Not treating the mentoring relationship with respect: Mentors are teachers. Being disrespectful of their time or advice will only result in tainting the relationship.

9. Playing the victim or having a victim mentality: No mentor can help if a mentee has a victim mentality. If a mentee feels like a victim, they are in a state of non-action. No advice from a mentor can help them unblock. The first thing a mentee has to do is get out of a victim mindset. A great mentor can help, but that’s a big ask, and not every mentor wants to do that.

10. Discussing problems not specific to the short-term goal: A mentor is a teacher and can give guidance with respect to the mentee's short-term goal. Often, mentees discuss problems that are not related to their short-term goal.

In the last posts, we uncovered why we need a mentor and a coach, what the differences and similarities between the two are, and why you need both.

Hopefully, you are convinced, and now it’s time to focus on how to find a mentor—not just any mentor, but a great mentor for you. While there are many ways to find one, I am sharing my process that has worked for me.

Let's refresh why we need to find a mentor.

Tl;dr: Mentors are like teachers. They provide tactical and practical advice that helps overcome immediate blockers to our growth. This allows us to grow faster as we don’t have to figure out everything by ourselves.

Finding a mentor can seem like a daunting task, but it isn’t. Here is my simple three-step process, and you can do step one right now.

1. Prepare for mentor search

2. Search for a mentor

3. When you find a (potential) mentor

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The above framework for finding a mentor is very similar to finding information on the Internet: identify what information you seek, know where to find that information, and engage with that information once found to satisfy your curiosity.

The reason I say this process is similar and not the same is because, unlike an online search, step two and step three require you to talk to actual humans. If human interaction gives you pause, don’t worry; we will go over how to do that as well.

Step 1: Preparing for Mentor Search

Most mentees who seek a mentor don’t know what they want from their mentor. This requires identifying and creating a short-term goal. More on goal setting in a separate post.

If you don’t know what you want, how can anyone help you get it?

Going back to the example of searching for information online: if you don’t know what you are looking for, you will open the browser and stare at the cursor before closing the browser window.

So the first thing to identify is what is your short-term goal that a mentor can help you with. The more specific, the better.

If you work in tech (or corporate) and do not have a goal in mind, take a look at the following short-term goals that mentees (including me) in corporate often seek:

• Grow in their current career to the next level or get a promotion

• Change from current career to a new career function (like engineer to product)

• Understand how to manage certain situations in their organization or with their leadership

• Learn how to navigate their current career or organization

• Learn how to enjoy their current role more

• Learn how to navigate a new big challenge

• Learn how to communicate with leadership/organizations

• Brainstorm how to engage with team members without getting their manager involved

• Brainstorm how to approach new opportunities within the organization

• Brainstorm ideas with someone who has organizational context but is not biased by the mentee's current organization

One thing that you will notice is that all of the things above are very tactical and can be achieved in short term. And as discussed in our previous posts, mentors are great for tactical help as they can unblock us and help us accomplish things in our near future.

Why do we believe mentors can do that for us?

Because they themselves have personally experienced and have gone through similar situations.

What if I don’t have a short-term goal?

If one of the above short-term goals does not resonate with you, here is a quick hack to create one.

Complete this sentence with as specific details as possible:

"I want to (learn/understand/brainstorm/seek advice) on how to _______ so I can do/get/become ____________."

For example, "I want to seek advice on how to change my career from engineering so I can become a product manager within this organization."

Do I really need to have a short-term goal?

In general, yes, and when seeking mentorship, definitely yes. Identifying the right goal helps identify the right mentor.

Preparing to search for a mentor is the most critical step. It’s also the hardest step for most mentees because they lack goal. As a result, the default choice they make is to NOT seek out a mentor.

If you don’t know what you seek, pick the thing you like the best from the above list. But do seek mentorship.

If you still can’t come up with a short-term goal, you need to find a coach. More on that in a separate post.

Step 2: Searching for a Mentor

Assuming you haven’t stopped reading the post, let's identify where you can find a mentor. Considering we are talking about professional growth and need tactical advice, a good mentor is someone:

• Who currently works within your organization or company. Why? Because they can give you tactical advice that is applicable in your company.

• Who has been in your organization for more than two years. Why? Because they have navigated the situation in your organization.

• Who is one (minimum) to three (maximum) levels senior and two to four years more experienced than you. Why? Because they can speak from their experience.

• Who is outside of your current team/organization vertical. Why? Because they won’t have any bias or hidden agendas that may taint their advice.

• Whom you admire (most important) ✨ Why? Because if you hate them or don’t feel inspired by them, accepting and trying their advice is going to become hard.

In some companies, this is easy to do as they have internal mentorship programs, but most companies don’t. If yours does, then sign up right away. If yours doesn’t, then here are the steps to find them, but do consider setting up a mentorship program for your organization.

Step 2.1: Making a List of Potential Mentors

First, we want to start by making a list of people who we think could be great mentors for us. Here’s how to make that list:

• Add folks who you think could be good mentors.

• Talk to trusted colleagues and your current/previous manager (based on the case) about who they think/know could be a good mentor. Ideally, someone who has been through the same situation you are encountering.

• As you attend company-wide town-halls/all-hands/meetings, keep tabs on which individuals stand out in terms of their thinking, experience, communication, or level.

Why make a list of potential mentors when you only need one?

• The mentor you want may have many mentees that they are currently mentoring. They may not have the bandwidth to take on additional mentorship commitments.

• Mentorship is work, and mentors are employees too who have their own work commitments. So a potential mentor may be focusing on other aspects of their own role and may not have the bandwidth to provide mentorship.

• The mentor you identify may not be a good match (more on this in step three).

• You may want to have different mentors for different areas on which you are seeking advice. Having a list of different mentors for different roles helps.

Once you have the list (2-5+ names) of potential mentors, we are ready for the next step.

Step 3: When You Find a (Potential) Mentor

It’s time to reach out to mentors. Here are a few things to keep in mind when reaching out:

• The process does not have to be formal, and no introductions are needed. Reach out over Slack, email, or text and introduce yourself. This will seem like the hardest thing to do, but do it. (This is the second place where most mentees take no action and stop the process. DON’T MAKE THAT STUPID MISTAKE.)

• When reaching out, be polite, be precise, and be clear. Do the following things when reaching out:

  • Introduce yourself.

  • Share that you are looking for a mentor who can help with the thing you identified (in step one) and you believe they can help.

  • Ask if they are open to exploring this conversation further over a 30-minute conversation.

  • If yes, set up the call. If not, thank them for their time and ask if they could recommend someone else who may be a good fit. If they don’t share, don’t bother them. Be polite and move on. We made a list in step two for exactly this reason.

• Don’t reach out to all mentors at once. Sort the list by most admired/fit mentor. Start with your top choice, and if a mentorship relationship doesn’t cultivate with them, then move on to the next mentor.

• Repeat the above steps until someone agrees to the first intro meeting. If you run out of the mentor list, re-create the list with new mentors.

Step 3.1: How to Run the First Introduction Meeting with a Potential Mentor

The first meeting is not about getting advice. The first meeting is about exploration, setting boundaries for your mentoring relationship, and understanding if this mentorship relationship is a good fit for both. Here’s why it's important:

• If a mentor is from outside your organization vertical, they don’t have full context of the mentee's situation. Expecting or giving any advice without fully understanding the problem is not ideal.

• Assuming there is no past relationship, mentor and mentee have to get comfortable sharing information. This is almost like the first interview or first date. You need to learn about each other before diving into deeper conversations. Use the first meeting to get to know each other. Do this by sharing your background, current role, etc., just like how you’d do it in an interview or a date.

• Share at a high level where you need the mentor's advice. For example, share that you are looking to switch roles, and as they have done so in the past, you are looking for their guidance through the process as someone who you can partner with to brainstorm ideas and get unblocked. While you will make your own mistakes, you are looking for common pitfalls to avoid and to make the role change in a way that doesn’t burn bridges. And if possible, their advice on how to be successful in the new role and, if any, resources they can share so you can start preparing for the transition.

• If you like the conversation, set expectations on how you plan to build this relationship. Here are some good ground rules to start with, but update and modify them as needed.

  • Set a recurring 30-minute meeting at a monthly cadence.

  • Do it for a six-month stretch.

  • As a mentee, do it when it’s convenient for the mentor.

And that’s it. That’s the whole process that has taken me 5+ years to iterate over 10+ years of practice.

If you are interested in learning further about how to do second meetings and beyond, what to do when the mentorship stretch is over, and what to do if the problem you seek mentorship on is addressed, please leave a topic in the comments. These are nuanced topics, and if there is enough interest, I will explain them.

Summary

The above process will be different for everyone and requires stepping way outside our comfort zone. It requires a lot of human interaction, being vulnerable, opening up to someone, and asking for help. It’s really challenging for everyone, and it was (still is) for me. But growth lies outside our comfort zone.

Trust me and give this process a try. I know it's overwhelming, and only 1% of folks reading this will complete the process. Those 1% will achieve their goals and will become a mentor to someone someday.

For those 99% of people reading this and feeling scared to join the 1%, share what's blocking you. Maybe I can help.

If you like this post, you may find the following posts helpful:

• Why you need a mentor?

• Why you need a coach?

• Difference between a mentor and a coach? And why you need both

• 10 mistakes that first-time mentees make during their mentorship

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Now, let's look at how they are similar.

Similarities between coaches and mentors:

• Accountability: Both will keep you accountable towards your goals.

• Great listeners: Both are great listeners. They listen to the challenges you are encountering and before offering advice, they ask you about what you have done to address the issue.

• Support: You can lean on both of them for support, whether it's emotional support or support with a change. Mentors and coaches are great sources to lean on.

• Perspective and insight: Both will provide great perspective and insight as they are more experienced than you. This is something that can help you progress faster towards your short and long-term goals.

I have highlighted the key similarities and differences between coaches and mentors. There could be many more which I haven’t captured. Please leave them in the comments.

My goal in highlighting the above is to convey that we are not trying to pick between a mentor or a coach. We need to have both in our lives if we want to achieve our full potential. This post is an attempt to highlight the different value they bring to our lives. Remember our mantra:

If you find this post interesting, here our other posts that I think you will

• Why you need a mentor?

• Why you need a coach?

If you are interested in this topic and would like to get following post in the series of mentorship and coaching, please subscribe. Here are few of the upcoming:

• How to Find a Mentor

• How to Mentor

• 10 Mistakes Mentees Make During Mentorship

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In the last post, I made a case for why you need a mentor. In this post, we are going to focus on why you need a coach. Coaching is much harder to understand than mentoring, so we are going to dig a bit deeper.

Long Form:

Before reading further, try recalling a person who has provided you with long-term guidance. For many, it’s our parents, uncles/aunts, or even older siblings who we look up to.

The good news is that most of us have received some form of unofficial coaching when we were growing up.

The experience went something like this:

As a kid, someone would ask, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" And you said, engineer, YouTuber, doctor, professional skateboarder, lawyer, chef, or something else.

Then that person asked you about your whys, how you plan to do it, if you need help, what you have done, etc.

And when you looked blank, they shared resources, answered questions, and provided guidance on what to do next. Then every time you met them, they would checkin and ask, "How are you progressing towards your goal?" and provide direction.

If you had an experience like that, it is very similar to what coaching looks and feels like.

Now imagine if someone could do that for our life’s big ambitious goals. Wouldn't that be amazing? Of course, it would be.

Is that what a coach do?

Yes. A great coach learns about your long-term goals, understands why you want to achieve them, pressure-tests those goals with you, and then supports you on that journey. They keep you accountable and on track toward achieving your goals. They also help you identify when some of your current activities are not serving your goal or, based on your current state, if the goal may not be the right thing to focus on.

Sometimes I refer to coaching as the guidance system for a hiker lost in the Amazon forest.

Imagine you are that hiker. Your goal is to get out of the Amazon forest safely and as soon as possible. A coach in this case is the GPS or, in its absence, mile markers and direction signs that will help you stay on the trail and get out of the forest safely. Without those mile markers and direction signs, the chances of you getting lost are high.

Can we achieve our goals without coaches?

Yes, of course we can. However, by design, big ambitious long-term goals have many opportunities to get sidetracked. Without a proper guardrail system in place, the chances of getting sidetracked are exceptionally high.

Still not convinced you need a coach?

As I shared in the last post, all top athletes have both coaches and mentors. If the goal of an athlete is to become world number one, win a Grand Slam, or be the first person from their country to win an Olympic gold, they need a coach and a mentor.

If you have a big ambitious goal like starting a billion dollar startup, rise in corporate ladder or something else, you will benefit from a coach.

A coach ensures that the athlete continues to focus on the big picture, while the mentor ensures that the athlete recovers and focuses on winning the next tactical match in that journey. More on the similarities and differences between coaching and mentoring in a different post.

Please subscribe to receive the upcoming posts in this series on mentoring and coaching. Here are the topics:

• Difference Between a Mentor & a Coach and Why You Need Both

• How to Find a Coach

• How to Coach

• 10 Mistakes people Make During Coaching

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Mentors and coaches are critical to every individual's growth. Without a mentor and a coach, an individual can only realize one-third (1/3rd) of their true full potential.

In this series on mentorship and coaching, you will see me repeating my above mantra over and over.

In this post, we will focus on mentors and mentorship, and explore why I believe that everyone must have a mentor.

Tl;dr: Mentors are like teachers. They provide tactical and practical advice that helps overcome immediate blockers to our growth. This allows us to grow faster as we don’t have to figure out everything by ourselves

Long Form:

Before reading further, try recalling a great teacher (from school to university) who taught you a specific course or grade. A teacher who made things look easy, made learning fun, and made you look forward to their class. Everyone has at least one such teacher. That teacher was a great mentor. Now, imagine someone like that who can help you in your current situation (in the workplace, in business, or in life), right now. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Of course, it would be. So, let’s see why.

Education is critical for our growth, and in the early years of our lives, it is delivered by our teachers through educational mediums like books, videos, etc. Although we (individuals) can learn directly from educational resources as well, a great teacher helps simplify, analogize, interpret, and explain the educational material at the complexity and understanding level of each student, such that the student can progress faster.

A great teacher does not remove the obstacles for the student but teaches them how to overcome them with resources, frameworks, guidance, assistance, and techniques that enable students to overcome those challenges by themselves in the moment and in the future.

This model works great for our growth until we graduate and join the real world. At that point, we are left to figure things out for ourselves. But why does it have to be that way?

A mentor is that teacher for us who can guide us and help tackle real-world challenges.

Just like your great teacher in school, a great mentor will understand your current state and provide you with guidance, mechanisms, frameworks, and outside perspectives that will help you overcome your current roadblock and make progress. A great mentor, like a great teacher, won’t remove the roadblock for you but will ensure you are not stuck in the same place for a long time.

Can we do things without a mentor?

Yes, of course, we can. It’s just going to take longer. Similar to how long it would take us to learn everything through high school by ourselves if we didn’t have teachers.

But life is too short to figure out everything by ourselves. Lean on mentors (teachers) to make progress and become a mentor to someone else to help them progress.

Still not convinced you need a mentor?

What’s one thing that all top CEOs, athletes, and high performers have in common? They all have mentors and coaches.

It’s easy to validate this with top athletes as they talk about this in public forums like YouTube and podcasts. The same is true for CEOs and top performers in your field.

If top performers of the world have them, why can’t we?

I hope I was able to share some insight on why you should get a mentor. Before you go, I have two favors to ask:

1. In the comments, please share the first name of your great teacher and what made them great from your perspective.

2. Share this blog post with friends who don’t have a mentor.

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If you find this post interesting, please subscribe as I plan to write the following posts in the upcoming days:

• How to Find a Mentor

• How to Mentor

• 10 Mistakes Mentees Make During Mentorship

• Difference Between a Mentor & a Coach and Why You Need Both

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My mentors throughout my life:

I am fortunate to have many great mentors and teachers throughout my life. Here are few:

• Rajan Sir made math fun

• Mukesh Sir made physics and chemistry fun

• Vishal Sir made programming fun.

• Dijiang made challenging things fun

• Satyajayant made objective thinking and writing fun

• Alan, Alex, Jamie, Jatin and many others made workplace fun