How to make the most of your friends: Establish a mutual mentor relationship with your mates
Ten years ago, I suggested to one of my close musician friends that we should mentor each other.
We began meeting once every few months to talk through our ideas and problems, offer feedback and proofread work, and just generally support each other through our creative and career development.
We don’t meet in such a formal manner anymore, but we still email when we need advice or feedback. And it has been one of the most rewarding and helpful relationships of my music career.
When we think about mentoring, we often think of a relationship between two people at different stages of their career, such as a teacher and student, or a formalised mentorship available through arts organisations and grants. A mentorship can also exist between two people at similar stages in their careers, and can be just as valuable as working with a more established mentor. Each participant brings different strengths and ideas to the table, and when managed well the relationship can be a source of support, accountability, and inspiration.
So what are the benefits of a mutual mentorship?
Someone to keep you accountable and on track with your creative work, particularly after you finish your studies and no longer have lessons with a private teacher (or assignments and assessments to work toward).
Someone who can help you workshop ideas and problems, offer a second opinion, and proofread any writing you do.
The opportunity to learn from each other’s successes and mistakes.
A chance to share useful contacts.
And when it all comes down to it: someone to be your cheerleader, and a shoulder to cry on.
Making a mutual mentorship work
Many of us will already have friends and colleagues to whom we turn for advice and support, and formalising these relationships can help us get the most out of them. Treat the relationship the way you would private lessons: with regular, timed mentoring sessions that you both prepare for beforehand. Here are a few tips to help you along the way.
1. Establish the relationship
Find a partner! This can be someone at any stage of their career, but the important thing is that you are both equally invested in your career and creative development.
Decide on a schedule for the mentoring (fortnightly, monthly, quarterly).
Decide on a length for each mentoring session (1-2 hours works well).
Book in dates and times for face-to-face or video sessions.
2. Prepare for each session
List your current goals, projects, problems, and ideas you want to workshop. Prioritise them, as you probably won’t get to all of them in the session.
Bring anything you want your partner to listen to or read for feedback. You might also send these in advance if they are long, but be mindful that your partner has limited time (and you don’t want to pressure them into spending it outside the designated mentoring session).
3. Keep your session on track
Start your session by getting straight to your mentoring agenda, and leave the social chat for after.
Take turns presenting your items for the session. Balance the time equally, and take joint responsibility for keeping the session on track and running to time.
Allow 10 minutes at the end of your mentoring session to action any items, such as doing email introductions or sending over links and documents. This means you aren’t required to do extra work outside the mentoring session.
4. Between your sessions
Keep a list of questions, ideas and things you want feedback on. It can be tempting to send your partner an email every time you want a piece of advice, but this can quickly exhaust the relationship. You will find you can solve many of your small problems on your own, saving your partner’s energy for the big ones.
Send your partner interesting and relevant articles and links as you find them as NNTR (‘no need to reply’) emails.
Ideas and exercises to try in your mentoring sessions
While talking about your creative ideas and problems is helpful, here are some other ideas for getting the most out of the mutual mentorship.
Try some timed free-writing, composition, or idea-generation exercises together. Pick a starting idea, or a problem you want to workshop, set a timer for 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes, and go wild. Share your output, and get inspired by each other’s work.
Create mindmaps together for anything you need to brainstorm.
Try a walking meeting, particularly if you want to bounce creative ideas back and forth.
Try a philosopher’s walk: you walk for 10 minutes, with only one person speaking, and the other simply listening, and then you each write a 10-minute reflection at the end of the walk. Swap roles and go for a second 10-minute walk.
Write a bio for each other, including any ‘sounds like’ references – it’s often much easier to write about someone else than about yourself.
Work on career goals, planning together.
Next steps
Find a partner, and book in your first mentoring session together!