HumanBeingManual: Always look for teachers, mentors, people who inspire, role models. Life will never get boring or hopeless — joemd
Looking at my Twitter feed last week, and the above entry from joemd, a physician I follow, was at the top of the list. What a great sentiment.
It probably jumped out at me even more because I recently spent two incredible days at the Griffiths Leadership Society for Women’s fall conference. The Griffiths Society was established at the University of Missouri, my alma mater, in 2005. The Society uses mentoring relationships and workshops to enhance members’ leadership skills and promote personal and professional development.
The theme of mentoring was evident throughout the conference, starting with an opening address by Dr. Anne Deaton, adjunct faculty member at the University. Dr. Deaton talked about the importance of mentoring throughout our personal and professional lives. She talked about four types of mentors:
- Formal Mentors – those people with whom we are officially paired, often through a workplace or organization
- Informal Mentors – people with whom we develop less “official” relationships yet we often turn to them for advice or benefit from using them as a sounding board.
- Anonymous Mentors – people we observe from afar. We may never meet them in person, but nonetheless we learn from watching their actions.
- “Book Bound Mentors” – Dr. Deaton introduced the idea of choosing someone to read about for an entire year, immersing yourself in the person’s life and learning from his or her journey.
It occurs to me that while mentoring is important to each of us on an individual level, it also has great application in our collective lives as cardiovascular marketers. I have had many mentors over the years – colleagues, clients, physicians – the list goes on.
There are so many things we can learn from each other that can benefit each of us in a non-competitive way. To that end, I have started a new group on LinkedIn that is called Cardiovascular Marketing. It is designed to become a forum for questions and discussion of various issues that we face as cardiovascular marketers. My hope is that valuable mentoring can occur among the members of this group as we all strive to enhance our respective organizations.
Please join us. Just go to LinkedIn and search for Cardiovascular Marketing in the Groups section or click on the link above. If you have any specific questions, please contact me either through this blog or by e-mail at jrobinson@kuhnwitt.com
