 Hi, everyone. It is so good to be here. I would like to start by thanking Product School Life for giving me this great opportunity. A little about me. I'm a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft in M365 Customer Support Engineering Team. Things we will cover in today's session. Who is a mentor? What are you looking for from a mentorship program? How can you find and approach potential mentors? How can mentors help in shaping your career? Who is a mentor? A mentor is more experienced, a knowledgeable person who helps in nurturing and development of a less experienced person. Mentor is like a guide. A mentor is someone who is willing to walk with you, help you by moving beside you in the path, and support encourage you along the way. Someone who can guide you to leverage your core strengths, someone who will boost your confidence and will make you believe in yourself. Mentor is someone who is curious. The mentor should allow the mentees to set the agenda. As mentees should own and drive the discussion, it gives them a sense of power. It makes them feel more autonomous on what they want to discuss and bring it to the table. At the end of the day, it is the responsibility of mentee to bring the agenda, as they are the ones who are seeking for guidance to shape up their career from the mentors. A common question that I have heard is what is the difference between a coach, a mentor and sponsor? Before I move ahead and talk about what are the differences between coach, mentor and sponsor, I would like to say that they all share the same common code. They all intend the best for you. They want you to flourish and be successful in your career. Now let's look at the differences between coach, mentor and sponsor. Who is a coach? Coach can be anybody, as it's very formal, semi-informal setting. A coach is someone who stays curious for a longer time. Your manager can be your coach, your colleague can be your coach, your friend can be your coach. Coach is someone you are looking for guidance for any moment or any time in your life. Who is a mentor? Mentor falls into a more formal setting. A mentor is someone who has walked a very, very similar path to their mentees. Mentors are a combination of a guide and someone who needs to be curious, something what I've already covered in one of my previous slides. Mentors are someone who will have very similar experiences and stories to share with their mentees from their past experiences. Who is a sponsor? Sponsor is someone who advocates and champion with champion people as they are more externally focused. Sponsor is something that you earn over the course of time. It's not in a day that you build up that relationship with your hard work, with your dedication, with your commitment towards your work. That's how when you start showcasing those skills to your mentors, that's when they transition to become your sponsor or your allies. Now the key question that comes in is, why do you need a mentor? Mentor is someone who can help you to boost up your career success. Mentors can profoundly support you, guide you and help you in growing your career. Based on the survey conducted by Olivetti University back in 2019, they found out that there are about 37% of people who have mentors. Mentors are someone who can guide you in your journey. They can share their own learnings, their experiences from the past and help you to move forward and march forward in your career. Mentors are someone who help you in keeping content in your job. Based on some of the surveys, it has been found out that people who have mentors are more happy and content in their job as they get the right clarity and support to address the problems that they face in their career as they move along. Now, what are you looking for a mentorship program? The first thing is to develop yourself awareness. Reflect and see how other people see you and your strengths and weaknesses. I'll share an example from a personal experience. One of the type of feedback I got from one of my previous managers at Microsoft was that I need to work on my documentation skills. I need to learn how to level up the docs when presenting to higher leadership. This was definitely an area for improvement for me, but I was really slacking behind. I ensured to take up that as a challenge. I went ahead and tried looking for a mentor within the organization who could help me to come through this challenge. I went ahead and found a mentor who had immense experience of presenting to the higher leadership, someone who was able to give me the right tools and guidance and suggestions on how I could level up my documentation. And that really helped me to move along in my career as well. The second key thing that you need to make sure is define your goals, your short term one to two years goal and then your long term goals five years and above. Defining your career goals will really help you to get clarity on what kind of a mentor do you need. I'll again share an example that is something I'm really working towards. I'm looking for a long term career goal as a people manager. I have ensured that my mentors are someone who are in the people manager role. They are the ones who have been in my position back a couple of years. Someone who was a very strong individual contributor and now has been a very successful people manager. They are the ones who are guiding me with the right tools, right skills that a leadership really needs to build upon. Someone who is guiding me to help move forward in my career journey. And last but not the least is define the skills you're looking for in a mentor. Are you looking for a mentor with strong leadership skills? Are you looking for a very analytical mentor if you are really analytical in taking all the approaches in your career? Or are you looking for someone with immense experience working in different industries and domains? How can you find and approach potential mentors? I'm gonna split this into two halves. The first is how can you find potential mentors? It's obviously the first key thing is know and believe in yourself. You must know who you are and what you want out of the mentorship program. Be courageous, don't be scared. Try to expand on your network. And the other thing that you need to think about is what are you bringing to the table for your mentor? Couple of things that you think of that you can add to the value of learnings of your mentor is maybe you are helping them in expanding their network. You are sharing the insights of different streets of businesses that are being worked across in an organization. And last but not the least is the appreciation and acknowledgement of all the effort that they are putting out for your career success. Second is people in your network. Reflect back, see who you admire the most. Who do you think you want to aspire to become one day? Someone who is really successful in their career journey and growth. And don't be hesitant or intimidated by their title. We as humans normally are very, very skeptical about reaching out to people at high position thinking, will they have enough bandwidth to entertain people like us? The answer is, of course, yes. They are more than willing to support you and guide you to be successful in your career. Now, how can you approach your mentors? First, you really need to do a good job in researching about your potential mentors. That is really like an icebreaker because you would have a sense of what your mentor is all about. A very good tool to start with is LinkedIn. You can go to the LinkedIn profile, see their past experiences, their qualification, their education, their skill set. And then you can see, are those the things that align with what you are looking for your mentor? And then start the conversation by sending out an email. Make sure you are very, very formal in the language of the email that you are sending out to them. You need to make sure that you are giving some background and context onto why you are approaching them, why are you reaching out to them. And also communicate how the mentorship program is gonna be beneficial for them as well. It's not just always about a mentee, it is also about how are you adding value to your mentor? And then request for an introductory meeting and make sure you are asking them what schedule and time works for them. Because especially for people at higher positions, it gets very tricky and you need to be really respectful of their time. How can mentors help in shaping your career? Mentors can help in accelerating your career by giving your guidance and right tools to move forward. Clarity, when you are stuck in a situation, mentors, guidance and advice really comes in handy as they are sharing their own experiences from the past, from their own learnings. And those are the guidance that come in really, really handy and give you more clarity on how you should unblock yourself if you are running into any challenges. Mentors play a crucial role in building out a broader community of courage. Example, my mentors have guided me and supported me whenever I have thought of moving ahead or changing my career or changing my domain within the organization. I've got immense support from them. They have acted as my ally and have helped me in giving some great recommendations to the hiring managers. The key thing I want to call out here is when you enter to a mentorship program, please don't enter with this expectation that a mentor is someone who's gonna help you in getting you a job or is someone who's gonna help you in getting referred. This is something you earn over the period of time and that's like once you start investing into the program, once the mentor starts looking at your hard work, your commitment, you're honesty towards the work you are doing and when they see you are dedicated and invested in the mentorship program, that's when they gradually move from being a mentor to a sponsor or an ally. But having been said, never start the mentorship program with this intention that, oh, mentor is someone who is gonna right away help me in getting a job. That is not the right intent or the program calls out for. Now let's summarize with some of the key takeaways that we take from today's session. First, define your goals, create a list of things, what you would like to learn from your mentors, expand your network, be courageous, go to as many networking events as possible. You never know who is the next person who can be your mentor, who can be your potential mentor to guide you and shape up your career. And become a mentor. You learn a lot when you teach others. Do your bit by mentoring others, pass on all the learnings and great wisdom that you are gonna get from your mentors. I'm doing my bit, are you? Mentorship can come in many forms at the end of the day. It is structured in a way of a mutually beneficial, supportive relationship where two people help each other to be successful in their career. Thank you.