See my guest post below from today’s Harvard Business Review Blog:  How To Get More From Your Mentor

A senior publishing executive at William Morris once told me how baffled she was when an aspiring literary agent asked her to be a mentor. She looked at me and said, “She’s got to make me want to be her mentor. Isn’t she supposed to do something for me?” The answer is a definitive yes.

A mentor can prove invaluable when it comes to providing insight into your organization, inside information about the politics of the place, or just some over-the-shoulder advice about who to work with and who to stay away from. Mentorship, however, is a two-way street — and you’ve got to figure out how to repay the favor and make the relationship work for both of you.

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You know how when you’ve never heard of something, a brand or a concept for instance, and someone mentions it and all of a sudden it’s everywhere?  And you then wonder how you could have been so out of the loop for so long?  I had that happen with the word “sommelier” recently.  At a shi-shi dinner with friends in Tribeca a few weeks back, the discussion turned to my friend’s friend, a sommelier, who was very well dressed and had an “in” to all the good restaurants.  I didn’t understand why being from Somalia made him so hip.  We all had a good laugh at my expense when I blurted out my ignorance and found out he was a wine connoisseur from Connecticut, not just a cool guy from Africa.  Now of course everywhere I turn, someone’s talking about a sommelier.

I had the same feeling this weekend reading the New York Times, although instead of not being “in the know” this time, I was right where I wanted to be.  I had just last week written a blog post when I read the NYT Corner Office interview with Maigread Eichten, president and chief executive of FRS, a maker of energy drinks.  Maigread was asked about how she gives feedback. Here’s what she said:

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1. Take it “off-line” immediately. Negative feedback should never be given in front of anyone else not directly related to the situation.  It should always be given one-on-one, behind closed doors and in the moment (so it doesn’t become something bigger than it really is).  The goal is not to humiliate the recipient nor make him/her defensive.  The goal is to get the good/right behavior/work product next time around.

2. Share the good before the bad-always try to find something good about the work someone has done-even if the deliverable or work product is a total failure, you can and should try to at least acknowledge someone’s effort or their time, a good attitude or intentions, or someone’s willingness to attempt the task. * this is not always possible, see below for exception to the rule.

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There’s not a lot of attention being paid these days to the high-end luxury market-yachts, French villas, the Mercedes S Class-it all seems to be in poor taste on some level.  It’s as if the whole country has hunkered down, clipping coupons, eating Ramen and adopting a “wait and see” mentality on everything from visiting the dentist to buying a new home.

So you can imagine my surprise at a WSJ article on, of all things, “How to Sell a $35,000 Watch in a Recession.”  The eternal optimist and a “true patriot” as my husband says, I am not the most frugal of consumers, and yet nonetheless it struck me as hugely surprising that anyone could sell a timepiece for the price of a BMW in today’s wilting economy.

Jean-Marie Brücker, the salesman in question (of course that’s his name) and chief executive of Pôle Luxe, a Paris-based luxury-sales consulting group, (Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels are clients) says business is booming in the recession.  He is opening new offices in New York, Hong Kong and Shanghai. He drives a Ferrari and has 61 luxury watches of his own.

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If you’re a small business and you get slammed online for surly wait staff, crappy pizza or poor service, there’s only so much you can do to fight back to your critics on Yelp.  According to a great article in Inc. Magazine, Craig Stoll, co-owner of Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco handles the negative feedback in a more creative way-he flaunts it-on t-shirts for his staff.  In Delfina’s opinion, fighting back on-line is a lose-lose situation, you either come off “defensive or accusatory” he says.

But others disagree with Stoll and say online feedback, no matter how brutal, can be a good opportunity for identifying areas of opportunity and improvement.  Boutique bookstore owner Eric Kirsammer of Quimby’s Bookstore in Chicago uses Yelp to regularly check for tips of what he could be doing better.  Quimby’s got rave reviews for the store’s selection but poor remarks for a perceived unwelcoming staff.  The solution? Kirsammer revamped his customer service approach and now makes a point of being extra welcoming, especially to new customers.

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Hi everyone,

I hope you’re all having a great summer. Last month, I was excited to share the news that Great on the Job had launched its blog. This month, I’m even more exited (thrilled, quite frankly) to report that Great on the Job is making it to prime time—I’ve got myself a book deal! That’s right, for everyone who has participated in a Great on the Job training program and asked, “Where can I get more?” I’ve now got the answer for you. St Martin’s Press will be publishing Great on the Job’s greatest hits (no, that’s not the title, obviously) in the spring of 2011. It’s a long way off, I know, but I promise you all it will be worth the wait.To my agent, Todd Shuster of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth, a million and one thank yous!

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Reaching out, touching base, grabbing coffee, schmoozing, stalking, tweeting, friending, or even an old-fashioned “let’s do lunch”- the list of networking possibilities is exhausting even to just contemplate.

But staying in touch isn’t always in person and it definitely doesn’t have to be hard.  Keith Ferrazzi, networker extraordinaire and author of Who’s Got Your Back? posted his “pinging primer“ on his website and gave some great advice on how to think about pinging your contacts (I loved the way he organized his speed dial).

Great on the Job takes it one step further.  I use TOUs, or thinking of yous, to encourage people to reach out to others in their network.  TOUs are short emails and whereas an IOU makes you indebted to someone, TOUs instead create goodwill.  Thinking of yous are inherently generous and the goal is to maintain relevance with someone by sharing information or passing along well wishes, with the side benefit of keeping someone on your radar or staying on theirs.

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I was watching “Remembering Walter Cronkite” on TV last night and I was blown away by the following story: Cronkite was on the air doing the nightly news and received a call during a commercial break from Tom Johnson, Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary, to inform Mr. Cronkite that Lyndon Johnson had just passed away.

At the end of the commercial break, Cronkite was still on the phone getting the full story. Producers and newsman were apparently rushing to get him off the phone as the show resumed.  Instead, Cronkite looked straight into the camera, raised a finger as if to say “hold on a second here” and continued the call in front of the American public with the cameras rolling.

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My good friend Lauren, a successful art advisor, recently told me that she gets stressed out when a client or art gallery calls and she’s not officially “working” i.e. she’s spending an afternoon with her son, taking care of personal business, or just checked out mentally or physically for an hour or two.

Lauren is like a lot of successful entrepreneurs I know, especially women.   She’s a multi-tasker in every sense of the word. She runs a successful business, but she does it part time.  Or better said, she runs it on her own time.  There is an important distinction there.

When Lauren sees a call come in from someone she’s not equipped to speak with at that very moment, I advise against taking the call.  It really doesn’t do you any favors to pick up a call when you’re at the playground or in the grocery store-the kids shouting, the deli counter repeating back your order or the fire trucks going by-none of that messages professionalism.

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A beautiful and talented girlfriend of mine, let’s call her Anna, was dating a guy, let’s call him Mr. Right, whom she adored.  It was one of those “smitten at first sight” type things where they totally connected when they first met and he swept her off her feet.  She hadn’t felt this way about anyone in a long time and all signs pointed to the fact that the feeling was mutual.

And then, as so often happens when boy meets girl-girl gets attached, boy disappears and girl’s friends do their best to tell her he wasn’t all that anyway.  As one of those friends, I tried to comfort and reassure Anna after Mr. Right went MIA.

Fortunately or unfortunately, as Anna was rehashing all of Mr. Right’s sudden and inexplicable transgressions, I inadvertently reverted into my GOTJ lens.  I was immediately struck by Mr. Right’s lack of generosity (three word text after a week of radio silence?) and inertia (no mention of future plans).  I couldn’t contain myself.  I said, Anna, I’m sorry to go here, but I have to tell you, Mr. Right is all wrong.

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