Socrates and Plato. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey. Ray Charles and Quincy Jones. Bob Noyce and Steve Jobs.

    Who wouldn't benefit from a wise mentor? The right one can make a huge difference in your career. You know this: Some 96% of executives view mentoring as an important development tool, according to Lois Zachary, author of The Mentor's Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships.

    "There are lots of benefits to mentoring," says Zachary. "A mentor can help connect you to other networks and can expose you to different ideas, different people that you otherwise would never have that opportunity for."

    In your quest to find your own Mr. Miyagi and develop the perfect mentoring relationship, avoid these five common mistakes.

    1. Having a mentor just like you

    It may be comfortable to develop a relationship with a mentor with a background similar to yours. That's not the way to grow. Instead, seek out a mentor with a different experience and perspective, one who can help you identify blind spots.

    "A lot of mentors of women will be men. A lot of mentors of people of color will be white people because you have to look at who has the power and experience. It's still going to be a lot of older white men," says Michael Melcher, an executive coach with the firm Next Step Partners. "Don't think the only person who should mentor you is somebody who looks exactly like you. It's too limiting and often those people are way oversubscribed."

    When technology executive Sharon Meers, co-author of Getting to 50/50, was a vice president at Goldman Sachs, the women's network discovered that all the male vice presidents were playing basketball with the senior leaders. They asked the partners to create a program that would match women with senior men as mentors. A number of women who participated advanced to become managing directors.

    "It was amazing," Meers recalls. "The guys who participated were partners who really cared about advancing women. The women who participated were high potential. You weren't dealing with performance problems."

    Similarly, your mentors shouldn't all be former supervisors. Pick people who have exposure to a different business area or even those in a different company or sector of your industry.

    2. Asking for general help

    A classic mistake in seeking a mentor is to ask a senior executive to lunch and spend the time aimlessly talking, without knowing what kind of help you need. The more specific and targeted your goal, the better.

    At first, you may not know where you need to grow or develop, but that can be part of the process. Once you identify areas of weakness, pick mentors who can help you in a specific area, perhaps management, communication, or presentations.

    When you do get that specific advice, follow up with your mentor to share the outcome. People like to know that their advice helped. If you end up departing from your mentor's advice, be honest about that too.

    "The mentor's advice is not always going to be good, but if it's not they need to understand why, " Meers says. "The answer can't be, 'I never tried.' "

    3. Wasting time

    When you ask someone to give you advice, you owe the courtesy of respecting their time and making the most of it. That means coming to each lunch or coffee meeting with a clear agenda in mind, being efficient in your conversation and following up afterward. Play an active role in the relationship.

    "The time is the biggest issue and the commitment. It is a big commitment," says Roz Alford, principal of ASAP, an IT solutions company. "There has to be accountability on both sides."

    You should set the agenda for meetings, follow up in between, and define the relationship. "You take your goals in a series of conversations and make them very specific and targeted," Zachary says. "What you're really talking about is how you're going to develop and grow."

    Your mentor doesn't have all the answers but can help guide you to find them yourself. In other words, don't just have lunch with someone once a quarter and call her your mentor.    

    苏格拉底与柏拉图。拉尔夫•瓦尔多•爱默生与亨利•大卫•梭罗。马娅•安杰卢与奥普拉•温弗瑞。雷•查尔斯与昆西•琼斯。鲍勃•诺伊斯与史蒂夫•乔布斯。

    如果有一位明智的导师，谁都会从中获益。合适的导师会给你的职业带来巨大的不同。比如，据《导师的指导：培养有效的学习关系》（The Mentor's Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships）一书的作者洛伊斯•查克瑞统计，约96%的高管认为，导师关系是一种重要的发展工具。

    查克瑞说：“导师制度有许多好处。导师可以帮你进入其他圈子，让你去接触之前没有机会接触的不同想法和不同的人。”

    如果你想寻找自己的“宫城大师”，希望发展完美的导师关系，应该避免以下五种常见的错误。

    1. 找一位跟你气味相投的导师

    找一位与自己有类似背景的导师或许感觉很舒服。但这并不是正确的成长之路。相反，应该找一位有不同经历和观点的导师，因为他们可以帮你找出自己的盲区。

    培训公司Next Step Partners高管培训师迈克尔•梅尔彻说：“许多女性的导师是男性。而许多有色人种的导师是白人，因为你必须找有能力和经验的人。而且许多人会选择年长的白人男性。不要以为只有与你类似的人才能做你的导师。这种想法太过狭隘，而且， 这类人通常都供不应求。”

    科技公司高管莎伦•米尔斯曾担任高盛公司（Goldman Sachs）副总裁，并著有《两性相处之道》（Getting to 50/50）一书。当时，女性们发现所有男性副总裁都去和高层领导打篮球。于是，她们要求公司合伙人制定一个计划，为女性匹配男性导师。参与这项计划的许多女性后来都当上了公司的常务董事。

    米尔斯回忆道：“真是太令人惊讶了。参与计划的男性都是真正关心女性进步的合伙人。而参与计划的女性也都有巨大的潜力。这样一来，你根本就不用考虑绩效问题。”

    同样，导师不应该全部都是之前的上司。要选择曾接触过不同业务领域，甚至来自不同公司或不同行业的人，担任自己的导师。

    2. 笼统地求助。

    在寻找导师方面一个常见的错误是，邀请高管一起吃午餐，结果只是漫无目的地闲聊，根本不知道自己需要什么样的帮助。目标越具体、越有针对性，效果才会更好。

    一开始，你可能并不知道自己需要发展或者开发哪些方面，但这些问题可以在过程之中得以解决。一旦确定了自己的弱点所在，选择可以在具体领域提供帮助的导师，比如管理、沟通或展示等。

    得到具体的建议之后，应该继续跟进，与导师分享自己的成果。人们乐意知道自己的建议有所帮助。如果你最终没有听从导师的建议，也要坦诚地告诉对方。

    米尔斯说：“导师不见得总能给出好的建议。如果你认为他们的建议不合适，应该告诉他们原因。答案不能是：‘我从没试过。’”

    3. 浪费时间

    如果你请求别人提供建议，便应该尊重并且充分利用对方的宝贵时间。这意味着，每次与导师一起吃午饭或喝咖啡时，在脑子里要有一个清晰的议程，交流要有效率，而且要有后续跟进。 “徒弟”在导师关系中要扮演积极主动的角色。

    IT解决方案公司ASAP负责人罗兹•奥尔福德说：“时间是最大的问题，也是很大的投入。双方都必须负起责任。”

    你应该为会面制定议程，期间要持续跟进，要明确双方的关系。“在一系列对话中，你要有自己的目标，而且目标要具体、有针对性，”扎卡里说。“真正要讨论的问题是自己怎样才能得到发展和成长。”

    导师不可能给出所有问题的答案，但却可以指导你自己找出答案。换言之，不是每个季度跟某个人吃一次午饭，就可以说她是你的导师。

    4. Thinking it's a one-way relationship

    One of the most common misconceptions in mentoring is that it's a transaction or a one-direction relationship. Mentors can learn a lot from the people they advise.

    "I feel like I get at least as much as I give," says Jodi Allen, a marketing and brand operations vice president at Procter & Gamble Co. who enjoys discussing developments in mobile tech and social media with people she mentors. "They give me a huge amount of energy. They're young and ambitious and so much more skilled than I was at that point in my life."

    5. Forcing the relationship

    It's tempting to rush right out and ask your professional hero to be your mentor. That would be a mistake. Such a relationship has to develop naturally.

    First of all, some people hate to be explicitly asked to be a mentor. Get to know someone before you pop the question, if indeed you need to ask outright.

    "It has to be such an organic thing that I feel uncomfortable asking," says Nicole Loftus, CEO of marketing firm Hit Big. She says her mentor relationships generally develop out of lunch meetings or conversations.

    When looking for a mentor, ask your contacts and colleagues for someone with the kind of industry expertise, personal characteristics, or connections that you're seeking. "You have to go out and be able to say to people, 'I want to learn x, y, and z and here are my priorities,' " says Zachary, "It's much easier to get a good answer from someone other than saying, 'I'm looking for a mentor, who do you know?' "

    Melcher agrees. "You have to cast a wide net," he says. "Instead of saying, 'Will you be my mentor?' you could say, 'I have really enjoyed meeting you. I've learned so much from this conversation. I'd like to reach out to you again in a few months.' "

    It may help to take the pressure off to realize that you'll have multiple mentors at different points in your career, perhaps some of them even simultaneously. One person may mentor you about your work-life balance, while another introduces you to important potential customers.

    "It's not just one mentor for life," Zachary says.

    4. 将导师关系视为单向的关系

    导师关系中最常见的错误想法是把它看成一种交易或单向的关系。实际上，导师也可以从自己指导的人身上学到很多。

    宝洁公司（Procter & Gamble Co.）市场营销与品牌运营副总裁乔迪•艾伦说：“我感觉，我的收获几乎与付出同样多。”艾伦喜欢和自己指导的人讨论移动科技与社交媒体的发展。“他们给了我许多能量。他们很年轻，心怀抱负，比同龄时的我掌握了更多技能。”

    5. 强行建立导师关系

    许多人容易直接要求职业偶像成为自己的导师。这是错误的做法。导师关系应该自然而然地形成。

    首先，有些人并不喜欢被人直接地要求作为导师。如果确实有必要直白地提出要求，在提出问题之前要先对对方有所了解。

    市场营销公司Hit Big的CEO妮可•洛夫托斯说：“导师关系的建立应该是自然而然发展而成的。我并不喜欢直接提出要求。”她表示自己就是通过午餐会、交流会逐渐与导师建立起关系的。

    寻找导师时，可以询问自己的熟人和同事，是否有人具备你正在寻找的行业知识、个性特点或人脉。查克瑞说：“必须主动走出去，相比直接问其他人：‘我在寻找一位导师。你有认识的吗？’对人们说：‘我想学习x、y和z。我优先考虑的条件是哪些。’更容易得到满意的答案。”

    梅尔彻同意她的观点。他说：“要广撒网。不要问：‘您愿意做我的导师吗？’你可以这样说：‘跟您见面我很高兴。与您的交流让我受益匪浅。希望在未来几个月能再次见到您。’”

    一个人在职业发展的不同时期会有不同的导师，甚至会同时有多位导师，如果你能够意识到这一点，也许可以帮助消除压力。或许一个人可以指导你如何处理工作生活平衡问题，另一个人则可能给你介绍重要的潜在客户。

    查克瑞说：“人一生不可能只有一位导师。”（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓