Benefits of Creating Your Career Network

Eleanor Roosevelt recognized the power of finding mentors and credited her mentors for helping her make history. She believed you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by seeking the advice of someone you respect and endeavoring to establish relationships with the best mentor for your needs at any given time.

Fast forward almost 100 years and Eleanor Roosevelt’s recommendation could not be truer. Given the trends in the job market today (job mobility, globalization, pace of change, etc.), creating a circle of mentors, sponsors, and peers you can learn from and with is an essential success strategy.

"At ClearRock, we help people navigate their career transitions by identifying their strengths, skills, and values, and creating a plan to achieve their goal," said Ellie Eckhoff, Vice President, ClearRock. "An essential strategy is to develop an advisory team to support, challenge, and help people learn and grow. Creating your circle of mentors, sponsors, and peers for success is important during times of transition and essential throughout your career."

In her book, Strategic Relationships at Work, Wendy Murphy, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Management at Babson College, shares "one of the most important findings from extensive academic literature is that informal mentoring relationships are more effective than formal ones." Her research demonstrates that the mentees and their mentor not only have higher salaries and climb the ladder faster, they end up more satisfied overall with their careers.

According to Professor Murphy, developmental relationships are informal relationships you create whose primary purpose is learning - both task-related and personal learning - that enable career growth and advancement.

The benefits of developmental relationships for the Mentee, Mentor, and Organization founded by Professor Murphy’s research include:

ClearRock, Inc., headquartered in Boston, is a leadership development, executive coaching, and outplacement firm, recognized for bringing best-in-class offerings to the coaching process since 2000. With offices in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, ClearRock offers developmental coaching for high-potential managers and executives; new-leader coaching for newly hired or recently promoted managers and leaders; performance coaching to help managers and executives become more effective; and outplacement coaching through a combination of a "high touch" career transition assistance and comprehensive "high tech" resources.For more information, visit www.clearrock.com.