I bet you can think of a time someone said something to you that just shifted
your view of yourself and what you could achieve and I reckon that might feel powerful to you
even today See that's what good mentorship feels like it opens doors it helps you understand the
world and your place in it and it can inspire you Mentorship or simply one-to-one relationships that
are supportive is I believe one of the most powerful things you can do for your career
In this episode I speak to five incredible UCL alumni about what mentorship has done for them
from professionals at Google to engineers to drug discovery experts to world beating entrepreneurial
prize-winning superstars I can't wait to get into this episode I first asked Jasmin and then Rodney
about what mentorship has done for them Having a mentor really that motivates me and drives me
to the possibilities that I didn't even know existed they've been great in helping
me connect with people building my network Spending time with them hearing their story
hearing their experiences hearing their challenges and how they've overcome them
has been a massive way of just motivating myself and and inspiring Feeling inspired came up so many
times in these conversations and connected to this the idea of self-belief it's an idea picked up on
in my conversation with Lincoln. Lincoln and I were chatting about a competition that he and
his team eventually went on to win here's Lincoln collecting that winning prize from Bill Clinton
along with Kisum who we'll hear from later here's what Lincoln said when I asked him how mentorship
helped him through that competition the audio is a little scratchy but I promise you it's worth it
I remember one of our mentors would put in a lot of time and effort with us
she said some throwaway line it wasn't even something that she meant to say like
Oh yeah so you guys could win the whole thing
and I remember feeling like shocked I was like "what you think we can win the whole thing?"
and then she said something like well "like why do you think like everyone's investing so
much time and effort to help you guys?" It was from that point on like it sparked something in my mind
basically I think what that taught me was that it's honestly that power of belief
and sometimes all it takes is something to like unlock belief in your mind I love how
Lincoln describes belief coming from another person sharing their perspective with you
because for whatever reason we might not always allow ourselves to see the fullness of what we
could become and having a trusted person reflect back what they're seeing in us can be incredibly
powerful Lincoln also hints at the role of mentors in helping us learn potentially through their
experiences and it's an idea picked up on by Kisum next a fellow prize winner and co-founder
of Rice Inc. and then we'll hear from Aisha... Being able to leverage off of other people's
experiences and learnings can literally catapult you to enormous levels of success
basically show you a map of what not to do and what to do... We learn
through the experiences of others
I guess we make new mistakes but at least we don't repeat them and then that's a bit like research
that you build upon what people have done before you you don't go back to discovering what the
model of an atom is a bit like passing the baton on and hoping that the next people that are coming
up can go further... Kisum and Aisha brilliantly articulate that learning from our own experiences
gets us access to linear improvement but learning from other people's experience
too well that can mean exponential improvement especially if you have more than one mentor...
I definitely recommend that you get more than one mentor the more the merrier and there's no harm in
having more than one different opinion... And it's not just like in the perspective of a career you
can have mentors for other aspects of your life as well general personal development whether it's to
pursue a your hobby photography right So before I shift the focus on how to get a mentor first
a little self-disclosure I think I didn't fully take advantage of what mentorship could do for
me personally because I always had this nagging feeling that pursuing a mentorship relationship
might mean a somewhat one-sided relationship where I take a lot of value and don't necessarily give
it and this is something I spoke to Jasmin about I totally know what you mean because I feel exactly
the same and I feel really guilty that I'm just taking all this value from them and I'm not
giving anything but the answer to that question is that it's so fulfilling it was so fulfilling
to myself because I really like my mentee and I really wanted to help him out... I really like
seeing change positive change I've been lucky enough to have mentors help me with my progression
and that's just made me want to pay it forward Paying it forward is exactly what it's about and
this was a consistent thread running through all of these conversations that I had So how might
you pursue a mentorship relationship from today well there are lots of ways but I'm going to focus
on two; firstly consider the people around you including any new people you meet whether online
or in person do you feel drawn to them and their words you can absolutely ask those individuals if
they'd consider acting as a mentor to you the very worst thing that can happen is that they say no
but then you've just helped make that person's day because of the massive compliment you've
given them Secondly you can approach people online LinkedIn works but UCL's alumni community network
works even better where thousands of UCL grads have uploaded profiles self-identifying when
they are happy to act as mentors and you can message them today honestly I wish I had this
resource when I was at uni Whatever path you choose to pursuing mentorship relationships
you can start building those today and it's a real and tangible way of investing in your future
and I'll leave you with this quote which represents what mentorship means to me;
"if you want to go fast go alone, but if you want to go far go together" So hook your chariot up to
people you admire and be sure to pay it forward when you undoubtedly reap the benefits from this
in years and decades to come That's it from me for this week I'll see you next time!