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Introduction – The Mentor-Protégé Relationship

What is Mentoring?

There are few experiences more rewarding than teaching what you know to someone else. The mentor-protégé relationship is perhaps the ultimate teaching experience: a one-on-one transfer of accumulated knowledge and wisdom designed to benefit both parties involved.

Protégés are a common occurrence in the business world today. Experienced people in every industry often decide to "adopt" a protégé—whether the arrangement is through a formal mentoring program, or an informal mutual decision to take a new employee "under your wing" and show him the ropes. The reasons to enter a mentor-protégé relationship are many, but the most common is when the protégé candidate shows promise from the start.

Mentor-protégé relationships can be either formal or informal. Informal mentoring relationships often develop on their own, with the more experienced person offering advice and assistance and the newcomer taking that advice to heart. Many organizations have formal mentoring programs, which can be either within the company or within the industry. For example, the Small Business Administration runs a mentoring program where retired business executives dedicate their time to developing protégés.

College interns also figure into the equation. Though protégés are not always interns, the relationships are virtually the same, while the reasoning may be different. But whether you work with a protégé or a college intern, becoming a mentor can be one of the most rewarding experiences of your professional life.

A Brief History of Mentoring

The actual origins of the mentoring process are unknown. However, the word "mentor" is derived from Homer's Odyssey. The original "Mentor" was an older man who served as an advisor to the king. Unfortunately, Mentor was rather ineffectual in his advice. However, the term in this context refers to the goddess Athena, who took on the form of Mentor to advise a younger man in the art of war.

Figure 1 – Telemachus and Mentor

There have been many famous mentor-protégé pairs throughout history. One of the earliest and most well-known was Paul of Tarsus and Timothy, a first-century Christian bishop. Minister, activist, and Morehouse college president Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays served as a mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr.; and the poet Ezra Pound guided a fledgling T.S. Eliot through his literary career.

Most recently, the protégé concept has been illustrated through billionaire Donald Trump's reality television show The Apprentice, where young men and women compete for the opportunity to claim Trump as their business mentor. Learning a trade or an industry from someone with more experience has been a consistent occurrence throughout history, and it is still a viable and successful approach.

This book explains how to find and develop a protégé in the modern business world. You will discover the benefits of taking on a protégé, both to yourself and your apprentice; where to look for one, how to cultivate a relationship, and how to know when it's time for your protégé to spread his wings and fly solo.

You don't have to be Ezra Pound or Donald Trump to offer something worthwhile to a protégé. If you've had experience in a business or industry, you can benefit someone new to your field and have the pleasure of watching a new talent unfold.

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
--Mother Teresa

Chapter 1 – Benefits of a Protégé

It's a Two-Way Street

Most people understand that having a mentor is beneficial; the advantages are obvious. However, there are quite a few kickbacks mentors receive from participating in the process—some more apparent than others.

What's behind your desire to become a mentor? Perhaps you work for a company with a mentoring program, and you feel ready to lend your expertise. Or maybe you've noticed someone who has that same spark of motivation and drive you possessed when you first entered your career. Whatever your reason, you will find that mentoring gives as much as it takes.

Here are just a few of the benefits you will receive by taking on a protégé.

Sharper skills

As a mentor, you may already be in a management position—and you may not. Regardless of your current career designation, working with a protégé will help you develop those skills that are essential to leading others, which could in turn lead you to a promotion.

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When you change your attitude through your mindset you can completely change your life. If you want to be a winner rather than live a life of mediocrity then you need to change your attitude to life. Successful people in all walks of life all have a winning attitude that drives them forward every day. You are not born with a winning attitude. It is something that you cultivate throughout your life. Only a small percentage of the population has a true winning attitude because it takes time and effort. Most people prefer an easy life – but then complain about how things are not the way that they want them to be.

If you want to be successful in life then the best way to do it is to model someone that has experienced the same or similar success. Most people do not do this and tend to take advice from people that have not achieved what they want to achieve.

In this powerful report we will show you 9 ways that you can develop a winning attitude in the fastest possible time. If you are looking for some overnight miracle then you will be very disappointed as this doesn’t exist. But if you are willing to use the techniques in this report on a consistent basis then you will get the results that you desire.

Our world is full of negativity. Turn on the news on TV and it is there. A lot of people spend their life complaining about what a raw deal they have. Of course this is never their fault it is always someone else’s.

The truth is that the way you choose to see life and your future is totally down to you. If you see it in a negative light like so many people do then you are not going to achieve much. But if you make the switch to a positive outlook then everything seems possible.

All of use experience negative thoughts in our heads no matter how successful we are. It is how you deal with these negative thoughts that makes all of the difference. We are also surrounded by negativity from the media, our friends and family and other sources. Again how you handle this negativity is very important.

The bottom line is that you can ensure that you only allow positive thoughts to permeate your mind. It takes a bit of practice but you can certainly do it. If a negative thought enters your head such as “you will never be able to do that” then you can neutralize this with a positive thought such as “I can do anything”. It is going to take some effort and time to perfect this process but it will work and will certainly be worth it for you. You have a conscious mind and a subconscious mind. Your conscious mind deals with the things that you interact with in this world including the thoughts in your head.

Your subconscious mind is a lot more powerful and stores beliefs and habits that you have accumulated over the years. The reason that you experience negative thoughts in the first place is due to your subconscious mind. Maybe you failed at something in the past and your subconscious has stored this and will remind you of this. The good news is that you can changed what is stored in your subconscious mind. And you need to do that if you want to develop a winning attitude. Your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between a negative or positive thought. It will allow anything in if your conscious mind allows it.

Your conscious mind is the gatekeeper to your subconscious. If you allow yourself to be dominated by negative thoughts then this will have a significant impact on your subconscious. The same is true if you let positive thoughts dominate your mind.

When you neutralize negative thoughts with positive ones you prevent the negativity reaching your subconscious. There are other things that you can do to train your subconscious to provide you with a positive outlook such as visualization and positive affirmations.

Please answer this question:

Do you believe that you can achieve anything? If you do then you already have a winning attitude and mindset. If you don’t then you have work to do.

What do you want from your life? Where do you see yourself in the next five years? How would you answer these questions? Most people will tell you that they don’t know or they have never thought about it. It’s pretty sad that so many people never take the time to think about what they want from their lives.

For a lot of people, deciding what to have for dinner is a major issue for them. You do not want to be in this situation. You need to be totally clear on what changes you want to make in your life and have some goals to pursue.

The reason why most people do not know what they want is because it takes effort to think about it and make the decision. We live in a world that is full of distractions so it is much easier to waste your time with social media than it is to think about your future.

People with a winning attitude know exactly what they want from life and when they intend to get it. They set themselves challenging goals and achieve them due to their winning mindset. They don’t sit still and wallow in contentment. Instead they push themselves to achieve even more in life. So you owe it to yourself to identify what you want in life. Get a pen and paper and go somewhere quiet where you won’t be disturbed. Think about the different areas in your life such as your career or business, your finances, your relationships, your health, your skills and so on.

Ask yourself questions to determine what you want. So for career or business you could ask “what kind of career or business do I really want?” For health you could ask “what can I do to improve my health?” Write down the answers that you get from your subconscious mind (yes your subconscious will provide you with answers).

Write your answers in the positive. So if your subconscious tells you that you need to start an online business to earn extra income then write “I will start a successful online business” or something similar.

Spend as much time as necessary repeating this process for the different aspects of your life. At the end of the exercise you should have a fairly long list of things that you want to achieve. An important piece of advice here is that you do not want to take on too many things so you need to prioritize what you will do.

The best way to decide which of your “desires” is the most important to you is to read each statement and then imagine that you have already achieved them. Note how you feel when you imagine this. If the feelings are very strong within you then these are the things that you really want and you need to prioritize them.

Being comfortable with what you have is not something that people with a winning attitude ever settle for. They do not set goals for themselves that are easy for them to achieve. This is a total waste of time.

The reason that most people do not have a winning attitude is because they like the safety of their comfort zone. They went to school and learned all that they could and then did the same in their career. Now they are comfortable and don’t need to do much learning any more. Winners never stop learning. They never stop pushing the boundaries of their comfort zone either. Human beings have all of the tools at their disposal to grow. With the right attitude they will do things that they have never done before and break out of their current comfort zone. But few people will do this.

Their current comfort zone is safe and warm and the thought of moving outside it fills them with horror. If you want to develop a winning mindset then you need to be prepared to be constantly challenging the boundaries of your comfort zone.

This is not an easy thing to do but completely necessary if you want to develop a winning attitude. Don’t set yourself goals that you can do standing on your head. Make your goals challenging so that they will push you to enter unchartered waters. You will need to do things that you never did before. Today with the Internet you can learn about almost anything very easily. If you don’t know how to do something then there will be web pages or videos that will show you how. There really is no excuse. So take the bull by the horns and push the boundaries of your comfort zone so that you can continually grow.