One Minute Mentoring: How to Find and Work with a Mentor—And Why You'll Benefit from Being One

“Ken and Claire have given us a fresh take on mentoring in their inspiring new book, One Minute Mentoring—and I am grateful.”
—Francis Hesselbein, President and CEO of the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute and former CEO for the Girl Scouts of America 

"If I could go back and tell the 20-year-old version of me one thing it would be, 'Get a mentor.' I think it's one of the most important things you can do and I'm so glad Claire and Ken are shining light on the process."
—Jon Acuff, New York Times bestselling author of Do Over

In One Minute Mentoring, legendary management guru Ken Blanchard and Claire Diaz-Ortiz, a former Twitter executive and early employee, have teamed up to illustrate why mentoring is the secret ingredient to professional and personal success. Using their own mentor/mentee relationship insights, One Minute Mentoring provides great insight into the power and influence of mentoring and encourages readers to pursue their own mentoring relationships.

Some takeaways of the book:

• There are six, easily understood action steps in creating successful mentoring relationships: Mission | Engagement | Network | Trust | Opportunity | Review & Renewal
• There are several types of mentoring partnerships including peer to peer, adult to adolescent, apprentice to master, cross-generational and mentoring within a company.
• Potential mentors are all around you once you start looking for them. People who can help you see the big picture don’t necessarily have to be in your field.
• There’s a distinction to be made between mentoring and coaching: a mentor helps you focus on longer-term issues (e.g. work-life balance and big-picture career development). A coach helps focus on performance and skill development.
• The leadership skills you learn as a mentor can make you more valuable to your employer. Mentoring educates and revitalizes people with an organization.

One Minute Mentoring would fit perfectly in any business environment and mentoring situation, whether it's mentoring among women in business (Claire is a huge advocate for this), the untapped potential of cross-generational mentoring, using traditional and non-traditional skill sets for professional success, etc. It’s also great graduation gift suggestion—for the new generation of the workforce trying to navigate uncharted waters—and overall, is great jumping off point to illustrate the positive impact of mentorship.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

KEN BLANCHARD, Ph.D., is the Chief Spiritual Officer of the Ken Blanchard Companies and a highly sought-after author, speaker, and business consultant. His perennial international bestsellers include The New One Minute Manager, Raving Fans, Gung Ho!, and Whale Done!. He lives in California.

CLAIRE DIAZ-ORTIZ is an author, speaker, and businesswoman who was one of the first employees of Twitter. She was named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company, has 300K+ followers on Twitter, and her business blog boasts 100K+ monthly readers.