Last month Penelope Trunk, writer for the Boston Globe and the Brazen Careerest blog, wrote about her relationship with her favorite mentor, Chris Yeh. It’s a great read (here) about the importance and cultivation of mentoring relationships. When Penelope started her company, she asked Chris to be an advisor. He agreed and told her the best way to use advisors:
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Call at times you know are easy for them to talk,
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Keep them up to date, and
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Ask them what you should be asking them about.
Read that last one again. Chris understands something about leadership, productivity, and guiding people toward personal and professional excellence: Exceptional leaders aren’t the ones with all the right answers; they’re the ones who ask the right questions.
Want an interesting study? Check out the lives of great leaders, past and present. Find their guiding questions. Go beyond what Churchill, Ghandi, Dr. King, Golda Meir, Jack Welch, Lincoln, Margaret Thatcher, Colonel Sanders, or General Patton said or did. (How’s that for an eclectic bunch?) Look at the questions they asked.
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