What Should You Look For in a Mentor?

Listen to Zahra F. Rasul discuss the must-haves in a mentor, and how to begin that relationship.

I think the most important thing I’ve learned that I need to look for in a mentor in this process is somebody who has the same value system as I do. That’s probably the single most important thing. Because there aren’t – women who are in business, or women who are entrepreneurs, face the same kinds of issues but take different approaches to those issues. And they don’t necessarily need to have the expertise in your field to act as a mentor. They have to be somebody who shares your value system and somebody you can trust to go to, to pick put the phone about anything, from how to structure your stock prices, to who to invite into ownership and how that process works, to you know, advice on pregnancy and child-rearing and you know, everything. And so, for me, I’m interested in dynamic women who have come before me, who have faced similar, though not necessarily the same challenges and who can think creatively and outside the box about things, within a particular kind of value system, that is important to me. I don’t think you can just ask them, I don’t think you can just ask somebody right off the bat, will you be my mentor? I think it’s a relationship that develops through mutual trust over time, and I have been very fortunate, I can say I probably have three very strong mentors in my life, and two of them have the last name de Gaspe Beaubien, so that’s very lucky, but even with Nan-B, there’s many generations between us, but I feel like we share this commonality, not just because we went to school in the same place, but because I have such a tremendous respect for her insight, for her experience, for her knowledge of family, and of business and partnership and what it means to be a wife and what it means to be a mother and the chief emotional officer. At the same time, in my case, of being the CEO, the actual business position and so I think that making those connections, having the opportunity to network with women and then finding someone that you feel that soul connection with.