Speaker: 00:00:28

Today on "Poder aprender" I'm joined by Deborah Heisser, an applied development

psychologist who's changing the way we think about midlife, aging, and mentorship.

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She's a TEDx speaker, professor, researcher, and founder of The Mentor Project, a

nonprofit that connects some of the world's most accomplished experts with people of all

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ages who are eager to learn and grow.

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Last year, she published the book, The Mentorship Edge.

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Deborah brings a powerful and hopeful message: that our later years are not a time of

decline, but a time of generativity, purpose, and contribution.

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We'll explore what makes a great mentor, how mentorship differs from coaching, and how

each of us at any stage can step into a role of guidance, service, and legacy.

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Whether you are in your thirties, fifties or beyond, this conversation is an invitation to

reimagine what's possible in the second half of life.

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Welcome Deborah.

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It's wonderful having you here.

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Thank you, I'm delighted to be here.

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I would like to start with a very broad and general question.

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Could you define for us what is mentorship?

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Sure.

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And I'm so glad you asked that because mentorship is so widely used the word mentor, that

most people aren't quite sure what it means.

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So it gets mixed in with other things.

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So mentorship is really comprised of five different things.

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It's like a recipe, just like if you were to make cookies or brownies or a cake, and you

left out one ingredient like sugar might look like it, but it won't taste like it.

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Mentorship is made up of the first thing

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Generativity, a person has to want to give their information, their skills or their

expertise to someone else.

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We usually think of the mentee as the person who's sort of saying, hey, can I have your

expertise, sort of a grab from someone, but it really initiates from the mentor.

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The mentor has to want to give their information, skills or values.

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The second thing is it has to be intrinsically motivated.

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That is that a person has to want to do it.

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They would do it for no pay.

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So if you are someone who says, I'm a mentor, but you're getting paid, you are not a

mentor, because mentors do it for no money.

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They do it when there isn't any kind of extrinsic reward.

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And I'll give you an example.

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If I were to say to you, Walter, would you like to volunteer your time at a soup kitchen,

giving out food and beverages to hungry, thirsty people?

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You might say, sure.

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I'd like to use my time that way, makes me feel good.

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But if while you're on your way there, I said to you, hey, instead of going there, just

turn left and volunteer your time at Starbucks, that has a very different feel to it, even

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though you're giving out food and beverage to hungry, thirsty people.

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So it needs those two, plus a meaningful connection.

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You have to like the person that you're connected with and feel meaningfully connected.

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If you're dreading,

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every time you're getting together with someone.

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Or if someone says, I have a mentor, but they're toxic.

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There's no such thing as a toxic mentor or a bad mentor.

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They're not a mentor.

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You also need to trust the person.

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If you feel like I can't go to this person and tell them my vulnerabilities, then you're

not having a real relationship.

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Likewise, if the mentor feels like their mentee is going to steal their ideas,

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If they share their expertise, you also don't have mentorship.

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And finally, there needs to be a goal.

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So that could be a one-off goal.

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Hey, show me the lay of the land of your company.

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Or it could be that somebody says, I have one goal now, but it's going to change over

time.

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And a person could have a multi-year mentoring relationship.

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So mentorship is very specific, but it requires all five of those in order to be

mentorship.

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Thank you for sharing that clear definition.

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And I wonder what is the biggest misunderstanding people have about mentorship?

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People think that you just need one mentor.

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They think that I will go find someone and that person is going to change the trajectory

of my life.

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And that's really not how we should be looking at it because it's then looking at, I'm

gonna find some nameless, faceless individual and I'm going to pull some information from

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them and there's no value that you think that you're giving to that person.

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Mentorship is a two-way street.

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So we really need to think of mentorship as a relationship.

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And the mentee holds just as much value to the mentor as the mentor holds to the mentee.

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So a mentor gets to feel they have a legacy, they get to feel that they are relevant, they

get to feel that they have purpose or value.

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And that's what the mentee provides for the mentor.

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So both people need to be thinking about the relationship.

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That makes a lot of sense.

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I'm curious also about this idea of generative, generativity.

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And you said something that caught my attention before and is that it starts with the

mentor.

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So it's not about like the mentee is asking or requiring a person.

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It starts from their end.

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And I would like to hear more about that and how it all, it all starts.

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So we're built to be generative individuals.

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We are built to wanna give back by the time we hit midlife.

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It's a developmental milestone.

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That's an emotional milestone.

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That's just as important to us as walking and talking, which are physical milestones.

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So when we hit midlife, we've already checked the boxes.

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We've said, okay, I've done school.

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I've got my job.

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I'm in a relationship.

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Hopefully, all of these things that are in our lives

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that we have been checking off.

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And we finally say, hmm, how do these add up for me?

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And how do I matter in the world?

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Do I have a footprint in the world?

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And is it deep?

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It's not necessarily that we're thinking of legacy in terms of what will future

generations think of me.

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It's more, how do I matter right now?

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And most people will say that when they think of generativity, it's feeling relevant.

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It's feeling like they matter, that they're useful, that they feel that they're important

to people.

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These are all really important to us once we hit midlife.

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So generativity is where we're trying to generate a little bit of ourselves into someone

else.

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And we do that in three ways, mentorship, volunteering, and philanthropy.

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So I choose to look at mentorship because we can take a little piece of our own expertise

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and put it into somebody else.

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And this differs from say generosity.

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People will think it's being generous, giving away something, but it's not.

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Generativity is when you are, it continues to live on past you, you're generating it.

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Generosity is if I give you two scoops of ice cream instead of one, once you eat it, it's

gone.

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If I give you something that's generated from myself, a skill, a value,

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or a new piece of information that I can incorporate in what I already know, that lives on

in me, and that's generativity.

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That sounds wonderful.

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And that's something that continues to live in the other person.

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Something that we pass to the other person.

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You talk also about like generational, there's something in terms of generations.

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Is that included in the generative?

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Yes, it is.

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It can be.

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But we don't have to have it be hierarchical.

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But if you think about religion, if you think about culture, values, all of those are

mentors.

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You know, we didn't just every time we start a family, we don't say, here's a new

religion.

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We're usually passing one down that's been around for centuries.

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So our grandmas and our grandpas are super powerful mentors that are just, you know, we

don't think about it as mentorship, but it is.

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All of those traditions, every time you have a holiday and you enter a person's home or

you do the rituals that surround that holiday, those are all mentored.

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We pass those down.

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We choose which ones we will.

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So is that generational?

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Absolutely.

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Is it thought of the same way as we think of it as work?

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No.

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Mentorship was sort of hijacked by the corporate work life, but it's been around for

centuries.

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Work is just one small part of what mentorship is.

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We will never remember Bob the accountant in 300 years, but we will remember our religion,

our values, and those sorts of things that happen outside the workplace.

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And now that you speak about that, like in terms of a structure and something that many

people can relate to, like in the family or cultural traditions, it sounds to me like this

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is something that's more available than we think.

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And it sounds like this is something that most people could take.

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And my question here is what advice would you give to people who want to start mentoring

and feel like they are not expert enough or they don't have

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anything valuable to share.

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I'm so glad you asked that because we're all mentors.

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We're all mentoring all the time.

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You're mentoring right now.

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You have a podcast.

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That's a modern form of mentorship.

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People who blog are modern mentors.

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We didn't have this when the term mentor was brought about, but we now have new modern

ways of sharing our expertise with others.

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So,

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everyone has an expertise.

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And if you think about it, you know, it's usually the people who are doing the most

mentoring.

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It's the grandmas and the grandpas who are saying, I don't have an expertise, but they're

the ones that are holding all of that rich family heritage that keeps the family

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traditions and values and the culture moving forward.

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And that's what's usually most important to people.

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But I'll tell you something very specific.

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Everyone knows how to do something a little bit better or differently than somebody else.

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And we can all tap into lateral mentoring.

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It's a term that I coined and it talks about mentorship in terms of looking to your left

and looking to your right.

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And I talk about this in the book, The Mentorship Edge, and most of our really impactful

mentorship happens this way.

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So when you think about it, have you ever had a problem

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that you needed to solve and you said, Oh my goodness, I don't know how I'm gonna solve

this.

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Do you go to your boss?

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Most people don't because they think, my boss is gonna know I don't know a lot of stuff.

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They feel vulnerable and you don't feel like you wanna, you know, unload all your

insecurities and vulnerabilities on the person that gives you your paycheck.

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So most people will look to somebody that they know and trust.

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So if I think of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak,

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Steve Jobs was at Atari in his job working for Al Alcorn and was tasked with creating

Breakout, the first video game.

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So Al came to him and he said, hey, how are you doing with this project, Steve?

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And Steve said, it's great.

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I'm fine.

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He wasn't fine.

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He called Steve Wozniak and he said, can you help me?

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I don't know what I'm doing here.

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And Steve Wozniak

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came after work to help him.

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Now that created breakout.

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Steve Wozniak, no one even knew he was going there at night, but he was helping his

friend.

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We all do this.

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We help a friend who asks us, that's a lateral mentor.

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Most people know people who know things that they don't, and you call upon them to help

you.

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How many times have you asked somebody for help?

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We do that in school, we do that in work, we do that in home life.

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All of that is mentorship.

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And that's what fuels new companies, new ways of doing things, all sorts of things that

really change the world.

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Yeah.

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So it's more readily available than we think.

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We are already doing it in so many different forms.

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Yes, everyone is doing it.

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We don't give ourselves credit for it.

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If you were to go every back in your mind

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and I said, wow, I mentored that person.

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If you were to say right now, gee, I just did my 90th episode with my podcast.

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I just mentored 90 times.

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If you start to really think about it, you are way more powerful and impactful than you

would ever know.

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Hmm.

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Yeah.

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What's the difference between being a mentor and being a coach?

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Coach is paid.

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You want to have multiple mentors.

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You never want to have one.

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You want to have a spider web of mentors all around you.

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Because when you have an issue, you want to turn to somebody that you can get new

information from, new expertise from.

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When you are a coach, you're helping someone with a specific goal usually related to a job

or a sport.

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It's not related to your personal development.

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It's related to developing to get to a goal.

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So you usually don't want more than one coach that would become completely overwhelming.

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You want one.

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So when I talk to coaches and they say, well, I mentor and I coach, I tell them, no,

you're a good coach if you feel that you're also mentoring.

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You're doing what you're supposed to be doing.

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Just like an advisor in a university, when I advise students,

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they'll say, well, you're mentoring me.

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And I say, no, I'm getting paid to do this.

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Talk to me outside of school when you're done, and then I'll be your mentor.

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But right now, I'm your advisor.

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I do a good job because I care.

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I should.

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That's me doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

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And that's the difference between someone in a paid capacity versus somebody who's doing

it for their own intrinsic value.

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So there's a different form of pay, so to speak.

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The mentor is getting value, even though in what I'm hearing is that there's no money

involved and it's growing from this relationship.

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It's not that the mentee is the only one getting something or gaining something.

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The mentor actually gets more than the mentee because when I, you know, I founded The

Mentor Project along with about seven other people.

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And when we, when I was first deciding to start The Mentor Project, was because I

interviewed about 45 people who identified as mentors and they were almost distraught in

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many cases because they didn't have access to mentees.

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They would say,

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I'm getting ready to retire.

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I'm going to go live on a farm.

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I don't have access to students to be able to mentor.

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They felt irrelevant.

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They felt useless.

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Here are people who changed the world and had some level of fame to what they had been

doing.

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And they felt unseen, unheard, that all they worked for was for nothing.

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The amazing thing the mentee does for the mentor

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is they are a receptacle that takes that information and lives in them.

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And then the mentor gets to see their value through others.

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And it's the value that if you've ever given a gift to a little kid and they open up

something that they wanted and you get to feel so amazing, that's one of the feelings.

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But it's also that the mentors say that they get to feel like

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their life goal matters.

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And I'll give you an example of that.

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There is a Nobel Prize winner from 2013.

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He, Bob Lefkowitz, he said, gee, how did I become the Nobel Prize winner?

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I'm just a regular guy.

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And what he did was he decided to make up what he called a legacy tree.

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He mapped out all the mentors above him, all the mentors beside him

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and his mentees below him.

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And he published it in a journal and he went to a conference a couple of weeks after it

was published.

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And when he got there, somebody said, Hey Bob, I'm six degrees Lefkowitz.

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And Bob said, what do you mean?

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And he said, well, there are five people who've worked between you and me.

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And Bob said, well, what are you working on?

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And the guy told him and Bob heard his own words and he heard his own work in what this

person was doing.

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And Bob said, it was like a mic drop moment.

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He said, other than having his children or getting married, there was no other big moment

in his life that matched that because he knew he had value in the world.

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He knew he made a difference.

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And that's what a mentor is looking for because, you know, when we go through our lives,

nobody wants to think, okay, I just checked another box.

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We want to think that we mattered or we meant something.

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And every mentor gets that feeling

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when they know that they've successfully mentored someone.

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Now I get why that doesn't have a price.

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That's priceless for sure.

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Yeah.

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You know, no one lives their life, worked for a long time with people at the end of life.

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No one cared about their money.

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They didn't care about their possessions.

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They only cared about their family and if they made a difference in the world.

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And those are things you can't buy.

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Yeah.

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And you also talked about legacy in a different form that what most people is used to hear

about.

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We think of legacy in terms of wealth, money, our legacy, and there are other meanings

legacy.

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And I would like to hear your thoughts on the type of legacy that a mentor is leaving in

the world.

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Well, a mentor gets to choose who they leave their legacy to.

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There's a lot of power in that.

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They get to say who they're going to give their expertise, their value, their wisdom to,

and the way in which they're going to do it.

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So you're doing a podcast.

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You've decided a platform in a way in which you're going to give out the kind of

information you wanna give out to others.

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And...

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there's a way that you could see how that could matter to people.

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How you could say, I'm gonna put this information out in the world.

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It's gonna make the world better.

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People will take this information in and they will see themselves in a new way or see a

new door that opens for them.

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These are the sorts of things that we can do that leave a legacy that we may not think

about.

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Most people don't think about a blogger, a writer, or a podcast host as being a mentor

with a legacy, but indeed,

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there's a big powerful legacy with that.

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So that's one form of legacy.

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Every person that is subscribing and actually downloads and takes something in and

internalize it into themselves is carrying a little bit of you in them.

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So in terms of legacy with mentorship, it is the mentors choosing, maybe they choose to

have one protege, one person who follows them and they

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really try to get that person to absorb as much as they can.

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And that's a one-on-one mentor-mentee relationship.

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Most of us think of that as what mentorship is, but that's only one form.

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We could say to ourselves, I want to donate my time to teach kids about a religion that

matters to me.

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And I'll go do a Saturday or Sunday school at my religious

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institution.

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That's a form of mentorship.

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You're not getting paid for that, but you're passing that on.

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That legacy can allow a person to feel like they are putting one of those things that's

most important to them out into the world.

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You could be a rotarian, someone who gives their time back to the community and you can

see the community change based on your volunteer efforts in that area.

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So this form of

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legacy is one that we can see, it's often tangible, and we get to choose it.

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And that's what's most powerful to us.

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It's a different form of legacy than when we think of putting our name on a building or

something like that, which could be taken down later.

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Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that dimension.

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That's something that the mentor gets to choose.

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Whom I'm supporting and mentoring and the relationship with my protégé.

287

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And I wonder about how this plays out in different generations when there's a

relationship, a mentorship relationship, and there's a generational gap.

288

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How can they support each other more effectively?

289

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You know, we see this gap in generations all the time in mentorship.

290

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And the support is really natural.

291

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A lot of people think that there's just a one way street of information going.

292

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But let's take an example of someone who's older, who has a younger protege.

293

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The mentor is always learning based on the younger generation's point of view.

294

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Let's say I work in advertising and I have, and I'm giving my knowledge and expertise to

you on how advertising works and you're in your twenties.

295

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So I'm 57, let's just say you're 27 and I'm giving my information.

296

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Well, I'm gonna be mentored at the same time because if I don't take in the 27 year old

viewpoint of the world, whatever I'm trying to advertise is not gonna get sold.

297

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And that is what's really important.

298

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So we see this happening where that intergenerational mentorship really helps both the

mentor and the mentee get a different viewpoint in the world and a different view on how

299

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people think and feel in the world.

300

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And that helps people to really think differently about others.

301

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I'll give an example.

302

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I've never given this example before, but it's one where

303

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I remember a focus group for an advertising group that was working and my husband does

different work than I do.

304

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We were in our offices, we were sharing a same space in a room and my husband was working

and I overheard him working with a bunch of men on feminine products.

305

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And I remember listening and thinking completely wrong.

306

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Like it's a whole bunch of men talking about something they know nothing about.

307

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And I finally got up and I was not part of this group, not part of the work.

308

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I came over and I said, you need to get some women on this group.

309

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And that is what happens with mentorship is once you have someone that's outside of your

little generational demographic, you can get a different viewpoint that makes it so that

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things can really make impact in the world.

311

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If you have a closed group that's talking, you're not gonna make change.

312

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You're not gonna make something valuable to others.

313

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And so this was something that just happened to be, I thought it was hilarious at the time

because no one stopped to think that they needed a different viewpoint and mentorship that

314

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just naturally happens.

315

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I love that.

316

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It sounds like the mentor let himself, herself be changed by that relationship.

317

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They're willing to be changed and transformed in that relationship.

318

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And that makes me think a little bit of what happens with parents of teenagers, and then

young adults that sometimes they say, I don't have a personal experience on that.

319

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And what I hear is that can be hard to relate to them,

320

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to the teenagers and then when they go on to grow and they are young adults.

321

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And at the same time, there's an opportunity there.

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There's an opportunity to get a different perspective, to experience life from that

younger lens.

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I appreciate

324

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that. And talking

325

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learning and transforming ourselves after we are 40.

326

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I'm curious, what do most people get wrong about aging after 40?

327

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So much.

328

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So most people don't realize that as we age, we actually have a lot to look forward to.

329

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Some of hardest years of our lives are the ones that people will say, those are the best

years of our lives, like teen years to early twenties.

330

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But we forget that those are the years when we're finding ourselves.

331

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And there's a lot of stress with that.

332

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You know, am I going to get the job I want?

333

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Am I going to find the right partner?

334

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Am I going to, am I going to, am I going to?

335

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That's the whole time there.

336

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Once you hit midlife, you've done that.

337

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You're comfortable with yourself.

338

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You already know what you know.

339

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You are at a point where you say, I've checked a lot of boxes.

340

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And this is a time when we're able to do the things.

341

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We now have room to do the things that maybe we didn't get to do earlier.

342

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So it took me until I was

343

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about 50 to start The Mentor Project.

344

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My kids were old enough at that point.

345

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I had the bandwidth to be able to do it.

346

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I couldn't when they were younger because I felt like I needed to do a lot with the

family.

347

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And that's not unusual.

348

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A lot of people feel that.

349

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Then a door opened and I said, I'm going to walk through it.

350

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And so it's a lot of time that you get to spend on your own personal stuff, not, I better

make money so my family can, you know, get what they need.

351

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It's what am I going to do that makes me happy?

352

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And so that's what most people don't realize is that it's not as much about the money.

353

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It's about following your passions.

354

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So people will say, wow, once empty nest hits and the kids are gone in later midlife,

people will start to say, wow, I now have an opportunity to paint or to do some of the

355

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things I wanted to do.

356

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Maybe I wanted to volunteer.

357

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Maybe I wanted to do something else.

358

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I can now do that.

359

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And that's what we have to look forward to in midlife.

360

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Most people don't realize that as you get older, your happiness goes up and up and up and

it never declines.

361

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So I always tell my students, I'm in my 50s, you're 20, you can outrun me, but I'm happier

than you.

362

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And that's what we should be thinking about midlife.

363

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That's such a different perspective from what I typically am used to hear around people

complaining as sometimes as they get older and not recognizing what's the good side and

364

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what are the opportunities.

365

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Of course, there's a reality in terms of our body.

366

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There's aging in the process and there's sickness.

367

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And there's something that it tends to occur more in our older years in life.

368

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At the same time, it's what we are making of our life, especially when we, after the

children are out of the house and we are starting to live that post-career life and what

369

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goes in there.

370

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What do you see in the people you work with and your circles in terms of what might a

fulfilling post-career life look like in retirement?

371

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It can look like anything you want it to look like.

372

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I'll give you some examples.

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I often work with people who are in transition, leaving a job and going out to regular

life, or they're downsizing their home, or there's some kind of transition in their life.

374

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And I went into somebody's house and she was really upset.

375

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She was downsizing and moving and she just retired.

376

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She had been a teacher all of her life.

377

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And she said, I don't have an identity anymore.

378

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And that's because most people who work, their identity is their business card.

379

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I call it their identity card.

380

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And so she said, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

381

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And I said, oh wow.

382

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And she was talking about all this stuff in her house and she was upset because none of

her kids wanted her stuff.

383

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And I said, it's okay.

384

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That's pretty typical.

385

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People tend not to want that.

386

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That's a generational thing now that they don't want your China and your

387

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you silver that you had.

388

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So we're talking and I said, wow, you have all these beautiful paintings around your

house.

389

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What about those?

390

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And she said, no, I'm taking those with me.

391

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Some of my kids do want those.

392

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but I definitely am going to take those.

393

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I said, they're, they're just stunning.

394

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And she said, I did them.

395

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And I said, really?

396

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You didn't tell me that you're a painter.

397

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She said, I am not.

398

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I was a teacher.

399

00:26:52,886 --> 00:26:54,057

And so I

400

00:26:54,057 --> 00:26:57,450

helped her to see that part of her identity was a painter.

401

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So when she moved, she opened up a studio and she became a painter and she sold her art.

402

00:27:03,126 --> 00:27:09,740

And it's really, it was just a shift in her realizing that, I mean, it was everywhere in

her house, but she didn't identify with it.

403

00:27:09,740 --> 00:27:11,521

So people do this all the time.

404

00:27:11,521 --> 00:27:19,298

They have other things that they're super passionate about, but they don't put it together

that they're actually, that that's part of their identity.

405

00:27:19,298 --> 00:27:20,779

Another person was an artist.

406

00:27:20,779 --> 00:27:22,260

This is like the opposite.

407

00:27:22,260 --> 00:27:27,843

This person was an artist and he loved college sports.

408

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And so he became the bus driver of a college team so that he could get himself down on the

field with the college football team and get to watch the sports.

409

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Cause you don't get to otherwise unless you're the bus driver.

410

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So I thought that was pretty clever.

411

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He didn't do it for the money.

412

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He did it so that he could get the best seats in the house.

413

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Get to sit with the players and do all of this fascinating stuff.

414

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So those are just two examples of how we can see the second half of our life as

opportunities, not challenges.

415

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And I'll tell you one other thing.

416

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Nobody cares about reading glasses, those little things that pop up in midlife that people

are scared of.

417

00:28:05,824 --> 00:28:08,966

When they're younger, it's something that, you know, people...

418

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just glide into and it's no problem at all.

419

00:28:11,386 --> 00:28:12,976

Yeah, that's so true.

420

00:28:12,976 --> 00:28:22,503

And given this is a podcast on learning and we talk a lot about skill building, learning

languages, and it's about personal development.

421

00:28:22,503 --> 00:28:30,395

I wonder, what are your thoughts on how we can keep learning and evolving throughout our

fifties and sixties and beyond?

422

00:28:30,395 --> 00:28:32,762

Yes, are two ways we do that.

423

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One is that we are always learning no matter what.

424

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And if you are seeking, learning new opportunities, or seeing that there are opportunities

in front of you to do new things, more people in midlife start companies than any other

425

00:28:45,466 --> 00:28:48,280

generation, so than any other age group.

426

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So that's one thing to learn, that's new.

427

00:28:50,722 --> 00:28:53,164

But the other thing is you're always gonna learn from your mentees.

428

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They're always learning from your mentees.

429

00:28:54,985 --> 00:28:56,667

Everyone will always say that.

430

00:28:56,667 --> 00:28:58,448

You're learning a new perspective.

431

00:28:58,448 --> 00:28:59,448

They'll say new things.

432

00:28:59,448 --> 00:29:03,161

You get to learn all the new terminology that's used by younger people.

433

00:29:03,161 --> 00:29:09,635

You get to know something new and usually that perspective helps to change your own

perspective.

434

00:29:09,635 --> 00:29:16,704

It's more of a psychological learning that you're getting that is really much more

enriching than any other kind of learning.

435

00:29:16,704 --> 00:29:30,040

So becoming a mentor would be a good way to staying on the learning because you are,

you're going to learn by being in that relationship with a, with a mentee.

436

00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:31,113

It's going to happen.

437

00:29:31,113 --> 00:29:35,166

Yeah, you know, just to clarify that also, yes, you are learning from them.

438

00:29:35,166 --> 00:29:44,463

But also have you ever, know, whenever you've taught somebody something, you have to learn

how to phrase it or frame it to match that person's needs.

439

00:29:44,463 --> 00:29:49,847

You don't just spill out information, otherwise Google would meet all of our needs.

440

00:29:49,847 --> 00:29:57,303

So we have to learn new ways of thinking about the things that we already know and those

things that we already think about that we have internalized.

441

00:29:57,303 --> 00:30:04,497

So when we're taking our expertise and we're giving that out to somebody else or our

values or our culture, whatever it is, and we're mentoring somebody, we have to learn

442

00:30:04,497 --> 00:30:09,550

something new about what we already know so that we can get that out to them in a new way.

443

00:30:09,550 --> 00:30:19,709

And oftentimes it means reincorporating or incorporating new stuff that comes back that we

say, okay, let me now reframe that and think about it in a new way and now put it back to

444

00:30:19,709 --> 00:30:19,859

you.

445

00:30:19,859 --> 00:30:22,772

So we are always building on what we already know

446

00:30:22,772 --> 00:30:24,654

as we give it back to others.

447

00:30:24,654 --> 00:30:26,496

That sounds great.

448

00:30:26,496 --> 00:30:32,972

also in terms of the work you do at The Mentor Project, you are the founder of The Mentor

Project.

449

00:30:32,972 --> 00:30:39,947

Can you tell us a little bit more about what happens in The Mentor Project and how can

people participate in different forms there?

450

00:30:39,947 --> 00:30:50,958

Sure, so The Mentor Project is an organization where we have the top 1 % in their fields

who mentor students around the world for free.

451

00:30:50,958 --> 00:31:01,609

So what we have is a platform that allows mentors and mentees to get together at their

convenience to come on and meet up one-on-one.

452

00:31:01,609 --> 00:31:03,809

Most of our mentorship is not one-on-one.

453

00:31:03,809 --> 00:31:08,320

Most people are not looking for we're finding that one-on-one

454

00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:11,111

you know, they don't have enough questions that go on and on.

455

00:31:11,111 --> 00:31:16,143

We do have plenty of those, but most people wanna sort of get some insights from people.

456

00:31:16,143 --> 00:31:27,798

So we have a lot of panels and other ways that people can meet up and get information from

individuals, say if they're interested in AI, a whole group of professionals on that.

457

00:31:27,798 --> 00:31:32,641

And then they can meet up with those people individually afterwards or in the breakout

session.

458

00:31:32,641 --> 00:31:33,593

So we have those.

459

00:31:33,593 --> 00:31:35,935

We do send people places.

460

00:31:35,935 --> 00:31:39,567

So we've sent an artist to Tanzania two years in a row.

461

00:31:39,567 --> 00:31:46,583

And then we sent him to Flatbush Brooklyn in New York so that he could teach middle

schoolers how to cartoon.

462

00:31:46,583 --> 00:31:56,610

So we try to offer mentorship in as many different ways that our mentees seem to want it

and the ways in which the mentors want to give it.

463

00:31:56,610 --> 00:31:59,070

So we are a mentor focused organization.

464

00:31:59,070 --> 00:32:06,641

The mentors give what they want to give and the mentees can say, I'd like what you're

giving and then meet up with them.

465

00:32:06,641 --> 00:32:15,372

So last year we were fortunate enough to give three and a half million dollars worth of

mentorship hours to students in five countries.

466

00:32:15,372 --> 00:32:24,072

So we're really, really excited by the response that we've had to The Mentor Project and

we're starting to expand it now.

467

00:32:24,072 --> 00:32:24,683

We've found that

468

00:32:24,683 --> 00:32:37,073

people who are just leaving college and who are entering the workforce really want and

need mentors and the people who leave one job and are looking for another often in need of

469

00:32:37,073 --> 00:32:37,454

mentors.

470

00:32:37,454 --> 00:32:40,041

So we're starting a subscription group for those.

471

00:32:40,041 --> 00:32:48,559

So we'll always offer mentorship for free to students, but we'll start a subscription plan

for people who are in the workforce.

472

00:32:48,559 --> 00:32:49,991

Mentorship we've found is

473

00:32:49,991 --> 00:32:57,950

not easy for mentors and mentees to find each other, but we've offered that and have found

that it's really been warmly received.

474

00:32:57,950 --> 00:32:59,073

That's amazing.

475

00:32:59,073 --> 00:33:04,136

you are providing that network and that connective tissue for them to get together.

476

00:33:04,136 --> 00:33:06,132

That's amazing.

477

00:33:06,132 --> 00:33:07,145

Thank you for that.

478

00:33:07,145 --> 00:33:07,977

My pleasure.

479

00:33:07,977 --> 00:33:16,414

And before completing this conversation, is there anything else you'd like to talk about

that we haven't mentioned so far?

480

00:33:16,414 --> 00:33:20,334

I'd love to talk about the book, The Mentorship Edge.

481

00:33:20,334 --> 00:33:22,665

It came about because of The Mentor Project.

482

00:33:22,665 --> 00:33:33,236

The Mentor Project really showed how we developmentally have an urge to give back because

all of our mentors have contacted The Mentor Project and they've said, I want a mentor.

483

00:33:33,236 --> 00:33:38,569

And we have people like astronauts, astrophysicists, artists, and everything in between.

484

00:33:38,569 --> 00:33:42,400

We've got more than 100 people who've come to say, I want to give back.

485

00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:54,642

And so The Mentorship Edge came about to show how we're built to mentor and how it looks

in real life and how you can really engage with mentors and mentees in your own life in

486

00:33:54,642 --> 00:33:56,603

the workplace and outside of work.

487

00:33:56,603 --> 00:34:00,752

So I hope that people who are interested in mentorship will check out The Mentorship Edge.

488

00:34:00,752 --> 00:34:02,031

Where can they find it?

489

00:34:02,031 --> 00:34:03,573

Anywhere you buy books.

490

00:34:03,573 --> 00:34:14,424

If you have Amazon or Barnes and Noble or any of the other platforms, you can look on my

website, deborahheiser.com or mentorproject.org and you'll find links to get the book

491

00:34:14,424 --> 00:34:15,035

there too.

492

00:34:15,035 --> 00:34:15,726

Thank you.

493

00:34:15,726 --> 00:34:19,427

I have to say I was very inspired by all that you shared today.

494

00:34:19,427 --> 00:34:26,064

I learned a lot about mentorship and I thought that I knew already what mentorship was

about.

495

00:34:26,064 --> 00:34:35,979

And today I expanded my definition of mentorship, what it means to be a mentor, what it

means to be a mentee and what's in it for each of the parties.

496

00:34:35,979 --> 00:34:40,163

So thank you so much for sharing that with me and with our audience.

497

00:34:40,163 --> 00:34:42,319

I appreciate your presence today here.

498

00:34:42,319 --> 00:34:43,272

Thank you for having me.

499

00:34:43,272 --> 00:34:44,749

It was a delight to be on your show.

500

00:34:44,749 --> 00:34:46,675

And thank you for being a modern mentor.

501

00:34:46,675 --> 00:34:47,577

Thank you.