What Defines A Mentoring Relationship?
My old Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word Mentor like this:
A trusted counselor or guide; also: TUTOR, COACH
I routinely receive communication asking me for the right formula for education, certification and experience for a security professional. I can’t remember a time when I received a question asking me if I thought a particular mentor would be of value to a security professional.
If a mentor is as the dictionary suggests, a trusted counselor, guide, tutor or coach, how many security professionals have a coach? Who is looking after your career, your career moves, your career progression? Who do you turn to when you need an objective point of view and objective outside advice?
Mentors aren’t always readily available or easy to find. It may take hard work to identify and acquire a mentoring relationship. When I entered the sport of fly fishing, I would have never caught a trout if I hadn’t made the effort to seek out mentors and to occasionally hire a guide or a coach.
I’m a fairly good dry fly fisherman. However, make me fish with nymphs and I still need help. A buddy is great at nymph fishing so I’m constantly picking his brain to learn his technique. I’m not there yet. I still don’t have the fly fishing skill my buddy has.
I’ve done some rock climbing with a number of lead climbers but I’m not a lead climber. I lack the skills, experience and the expensive rack of equipment one needs to be a lead climber. To climb, I seek out a guide, tutor or coach to lead the way with their expertise, expertise I don’t have.
In business, it is a good idea to seek out mentoring relationships wherever you are in your career. Since I work on the telephone as an executive recruiter, I frequently turn to someone whom I believe to be one of the industry’s strongest telephone sales trainers. I’ve been on the phone for 20 years but having a trusted counselor, guide, coach whose sole focus in his business life is to make telephone sales people stronger, continues to be of benefit to me.
So, where does a security professional turn to find a mentor? If you’re really lucky, your mentor might be your current boss. This isn’t always the case though. If you look with the expectation of finding one, you might find a mentor in an ISACA, Infragard, ISSA or ISACA group. You might find a mentor by reading various security blogs and seeking out the authors of those blogs for a potential mentoring relationship. Wherever you have to look to find a mentor, you need to find one!
I paid a fly fishing guide to teach me the tricks of his trade. Perhaps you could think about a paid mentor relationship. After all, isn’t the mentor’s time, energy, experience and knowledge worth something?
