How to Build a Personal Board of Directors for Career Success
You don’t need to own the next cool startup to invest in a Personal Board of Directors (BOD).
After drinking lattes, investing time into developing in my personal BOD has been one of the best decisions I have made for my career.
1. What is a personal board of directors?
A personal board of directors takes mentoring a step further. Instead of having a single mentor, you are creating a tribe of mentors who are deeply committed to investing their time, energy and effort into your success. Your BOD is both there for you when you have your biggest victories and when you’re unsure of what your next step should be.
While a BOD for a company or nonprofit meets once per month or quarter in a formal setting, your personal BOD is available on an as-needed basis. Your relationship with each mentor will likely also differ. I meet in-person with one of my mentors nearly every day, while I only exchange emails every few weeks with another mentor.
2. Why you need a personal board of directors
“Kyle, I already have a mentor, why do I need a whole board of mentors?”
Having a mentor is awesome. Go you! But one mentor only provides you with one perspective. Having a board of mentors provides you with numerous perspectives to view yourself and your career. Each of your mentors will also be able to connect you with new people and opportunities. Each new mentor is helping you grow — exponentially!
This is exactly why companies don’t just have a CEO at the top of the company and then no one else to support them. They have an entire executive team plus a Board of Directors to help them achieve success. You need to do the same for your career.
3. Who you need on your personal board of directors
As MaryBeth shares in this article, your mentors’ values should align with yours. They should also have lifestyles you emulate and possess skills or experiences in areas you want to gain insight from.
A few of the types of people I encourage you to have on your board include:
- A person from within your industry. Look for someone who is several steps ahead of you in their career as they can share how they got there and the roadblocks they faced along their journey.
- A person from outside your industry. People often only look for mentors with a similar title as to one they aspire to. I encourage you to find a mentor who is outside your industry as they will provide you with an additional and distinct point of view.
- A person good with the emotional and relationship stuff. Find a mentor who is able to support you when the going gets tough as it’s helpful to have an outside lens who is not a colleague, family member or friend. Objectivity is your friend.
- A person good with numbers and finances. When first writing this article, I thought about cutting this bullet point since I thought it was self-serving (I am bad with numbers and seriously messed up my taxes, twice). But then I did some research and found article after article sharing that our generation as a whole tends to struggle with financial literacy. Even if you’re better than me at numbers, it can’t hurt to have another person provide a second opinion on your financial decisions.
Don’t feel like you have to add all of these people to your board at once. Relationships take time.
4. Where to find your board
You don’t want to force people to be on your board. That’s like being voluntold for that one committee nobody wants to be on at work. Not fun.
Instead, you want people to be attracted to your board. It’s okay to ask them to volunteer, but there should definitely be mutual interest. This will happen over time and by actively marketing that you are ‘accepting applications’ for mentors.
My board developed naturally over time by coming across people I admired and asking them for career help. Some of them were coworkers, others were industry leaders and several were LinkedIn connections.
A few of my most favorite mentor/mentee relationships happened by reaching out to people I admire and asking them career-related questions. Over time, the questions turned into conversations and phone calls and coffees and eventually mentor-mentee relationships.
Kyle Elliott, MPA, CHES runs CaffeinatedKyle.com. His goal is simple – to help people find jobs they LOVE (or at least tolerate). This help takes many forms, from Career and Life Coaching to resumes and cover letters to interview prep and salary negotiation. Kyle loves coffee (if you couldn’t tell), writing and eating the same thing at different restaurants. Connect with him on LinkedIn where you’ll often find him talking about work, life, and Starbucks.
