This month, Lee Xieli teaches you how to ask a high-ranking person for career advice without appearing like a fool or a desperate stalker.

There is no glorified ceremony needed. No prayers required beforehand. There’s no confidentiality contract to sign either and yet it can be quite intimidating to approach someone perched higher up the corporate tree than you for help.

There is nothing wrong with being a little manipulative to get someone to nudge you along the right path. The problem is getting the mentor to say yes.

Let me impart my great great grandmother’s uncle’s friend Sun Tza’s art of non-creepy mentor-hunting. First, you have to be worthy enough for some high-ranking chum to consider taking precious time to dish out advice.

Next, identify a few people you think you could learn from. They may not necessarily be in the same job function or even in the same industry. It doesn’t matter as long as you are comfortable accepting advice from them. Ask yourself if this person would be a good role model and if his or her opinion matters to you.

Once you narrow down your targets, it’s not a good idea to just turn up at that person’s office and start demanding useful career advice. Even worse is arrogantly insisting that it’s worth your target mentor investing their time in you because you are certain you will be the next CEO.

Do that and if you and your self-elected mentor work in the same company, you may find yourself eating in that weird lonely spot in the corner of the cafeteria very soon.

Unless of course you are F1 champion Lewis Hamilton, who, oddly focused at the age of 10, told McLaren team principal Ron Dennis that he would be in his team one day. Are you young, cute and have ambition and petrol running through your veins? So let’s move along then.

Now go seek out any possible business social events or networks where you might possibly bump into your chosen few. Think of it as building any relationship and this takes time. Sending cupcakes to that potential mentor’s office now and then wouldn’t hurt your percentages of succeeding either, but start to represent your potential mentor in icing portraits on top of the cupcakes and you are certainly drifting into stalker territory.

As the two of you bond over time or rather talk to each other often enough, you can stealthily slip in the challenges you face at work during your conversations. If you have done your planning and schmoozing right, if you have chosen a candidate cut from mentor cloth, then they are likely to offer suggestions about how to meet these challenges.

If all goes well, you can save yourself the embarrassment of hastily asking, “Will you please be my mentor?”

Everyone needs a mentor. It’s not exclusive to those aspiring to be a leader themselves. Even managers, directors and CEOs need mentors. Like what Lek Siok Keng, regional HR leader of General Electric Southeast Asia said to me recently, “Every level, even the senior ones, has its different sort of complexities and problems and you need somebody to talk to.” And yes, she does have informal mentors of her own as well.

Mentorship comes in a myriad of ways. It can be a one-off question where you seek a particular person’s advice because you reckon he or she has the knowledge to help, or it could be a long-term affair. Remember though there is a line between seeking advice and simply relying on someone else to make decisions for you.

Whining to your mentor about the same dilemma over and over again is to be avoided. It is annoying and no one likes it. The point of being mentored is you learn and grow and develop the tools to meet your own challenges. Your mentor isn’t your therapist, they aren’t paid to listen to you moan about why everything is so hard and listen to your stories about your dysfunctional childhood.

Make up your own mind about mentoring. If you can’t do that, maybe the leadership cloth isn’t cut out for you.

But of course, the further you progress in your career, I would assume you’d have naturally built up a fine sense of judgement to decide what’s best for you. In that case, would you like to be my mentor?

xielil@humanresourcesonline.net