Mentors bring great goodwill to their role as mentors. But that doesn’t mean they are skilled. It doesn’t mean they have thought about the different approaches to mentoring. It doesn’t mean they have thought about alternative ways of doing careers. It doesn’t mean they’ve had the opportunity to reflect on or mitigate their bias. It doesn’t mean they’ve had good mentoring experiences themselves to draw on.

I am not being flippant when I use the word game.. What I am doing is calling attention to the need for a strategic approach to building a career. Much like a game, many careers and workplaces have intricate rules, some written but many of them unwritten, that you learn over time and with experience. There is complexity, with choices and decisions that lead to different payoffs, requiring various degrees of risk, and a need to look a few moves ahead. You get the idea. Careers don’t just happen. It is this career complexity that can make mentoring so valuable.