One the fastest ways to accelerate your growth, personal or professional, is to seek out and ask for guidance from mentors. People who’ve been where you’re looking to go and are open to sharing their stumbles, wins and wisdom.
But, there’s something that often happens when a mentor gives feedback that does not validate or, even worse, straight-up shoots down what you want to do. You fight the feedback, and often, the mentor.
When I’m in the playing the role of mentor and this happens, it’s not unusual for me to ask a mentee who is refusing to open to a new possibility or give up a position or decision that’s being proven increasingly wrong…
“how’s that working out for you?”
Why this refusal to open to the input of those we seek to guide us is pretty interesting. Because you were looking for the wrong thing. You wanted validation, but the mentor’s job is to speak truth, at least their truth.
Because, when you’re trying to create something great…
You don’t need validation, you need truth.
We talk about this phenomenon and what to do when it happens in this week’s short and sweet Good Life Riff.