National Mentoring Month is rounding out, and I thought there was no better way to end the month than with a conversation on mentoring — how to find trusted, mutually beneficial relationships, and how to avoid mediocre mentoring.

Who qualifies to be a mentor? If a mentor is defined as an experienced and trusted adviser, or a person entrusted with the teaching and education of another, it stands to reason that “anyone” can be a mentor, as long as they have enough experience in the areas we want to be taught about, and, most importantly, can be trusted to do the teaching. So you can have a mentor who is much younger. You can have a peer as a mentor, or you can have an older, wiser person as your mentor. Once you understand the premise of the mentoring concept, you realize mentors abound everywhere. You just need to know where and how to look for them, and how to find them.

Let’s talk about the trust factor. Much as you would see a chair and trust that it would not disintegrate if and when you sat on it, the mentee-mentor relationship requires trust. As a mentee, you trust that you would get what you need from the mentor. And the mentor should trust that you, as the mentee, are pliable and willing and able to learn.

Although I say that anyone can be a mentor, most of us tend to look up to seasoned and more experienced people to mentor us. This is okay, and should be a reasonable part of our career and life relationships toolkit. The question, though, is knowing if such a relationship will work out. While there is no magic potion or genie for knowing this, there are certain criteria I believe a mentee looking for a seasoned mentor should bear in mind:

1. Can they help you? This is the first question to ask. I use “can” in the sense of general ability. As the mentee, you should know if the person you intend to initiate a relationship with has the general ability to offer the type of “education” you need. If you are looking for help within the auto industry, a doctor might not be the best person to mentor you. Again, this is in the sense of general ability — you could have a doctor whose passion and lobbying is in fine autos, and as such they might be able to help you. Another example would be trying to take career-transitioning advice from someone who has been in the same role for 28 years. I think not.

2. Are they able to help you? This is in terms of specific ability — the kind of ability where someone says they want to help and then actually does. This is usually a somewhat tricky one, simply because some people are married to their identity as a person who mentors others (on paper), but when the chips are down, you don’t get any traction from them. In other words, they say they can, but when the time comes, they “ghost” you. This is what a coach friend calls the networking aftereffect. These are the mentor figures who may have fit criterion one above, and they connect with you and ask you to call them for a follow-up conversation. That conversation never happens, not for want of trying by the likely mentee. In this case, they can, but they are presently not able. It may turn out that a future coincidence can bring your paths together again, and this time it works out better.

3. Are they willing to help you? The third criterion is when a person can, and is able to, help — but is not willing to, for whatever reason. I find this last criterion to be the easiest, because as a mentee you know exactly what you are dealing with, and you can dust the sand off your feet, as the proverbial saying goes, and continue the search. People find this direct type of unwillingness harder, probably because of the sting of rejection. But I tell people: would you not rather know a door is closed, so you can go find a truly open door, than sit and wait in the hope that someone said they could open a door for you, and yet never do?

How to use the criteria: as a mentee on the search, be mindful that some mentors can, but are not able, to help, while others might be able, but are not willing, to help. I always say to appreciate anyone who fits criterion three, because they’ve made the search easier. The quicker the “no,” the earlier you can go back to looking for a mutually beneficial relationship with those who are willing and able to educate and/or teach you.

I speak from experience trying to make both in-person and virtual connections. For every ten connections I have reached out to, there have been one or two who very bluntly tell you they have and want nothing to do with you. Recognize that it’s not about you at all. Remember, you are simply in the early stages of trying to initiate a relationship. Nothing guarantees that it would work out every time. If you keep at it long enough, you find the tide begins to turn, and quickly. For one, you can become a mentor for someone else even as you are searching for your own new mentors. You start to realize pretty quickly that there are more people willing and able to help you than are not.

Lastly, expand your own definition of mentoring. You can learn and be mentored through other people’s experiences — through books, workshops, and coaching.

If you are looking for a community with trusted mentors, we run the Intentional Leader Academy for early- to mid-career professionals needing high-quality mentoring in a safe space that enables experiential growth.