Have you ever had a mentor? What was the greatest lesson you learned from him or her?

I’ve never really had the benefit of having a mentor. Nothing directly that way anyhow. The closest I’ve ever gotten was during college when I felt a glimmer of it in some after-class discussions with professors that I was taking classes with. It never really amounted to much because that sort of thing felt awkward, dwelling too long and feeling that you’re a pest is just too much to bear so you cut it off quick and don’t repeat it.

At work there is some talk from time to time about mentorship but it strikes me quite along the same lines as leadership. You can’t help but walk five feet before you collide with a leadership this or a leadership that. So much attention paid to leadership and I laugh that there is no attention paid to followership. Why train leaders and ignore the followers? Seems unfair to me.

But still, I don’t see mentorship to be all that relevant. Perhaps it’s a definition issue. I see mentorship to be a little sidelong curious, two people who are relating a little too closely, a relationship that is suspiciously intimate and exclusive. Perhaps I suspect people of being more filthy than they might be, but I can’t help but think that there might be something more to the mentoring experience than just intensely training someone intimately. I guess I can’t separate the lecher from the roman senator enough to see mentorship for anything more than it being at best, suspicious and at worse, scandalous.