Book Review: ‘One Minute Mentoring: How to Find and Work With a Mentor — and Why You’ll Benefit from Being One’ by Ken Blanchard and Claire Diaz-Ortiz

In everyones life there are moments where we look around and wish there was someone else there to help us. Maybe we need help along our life path, maybe we need to know what the path is, or maybe we don’t even know how to walk? At one point or another we all need our own Obi-Wan Kenobi, yet most of us are to scared to look for them.
One Minute Mentoring: How to Find and Work With a Mentor — and Why You’ll Benefit from Being One is a quick and powerful step-by-step guide on how to find yourself a mentor and also what it takes to become one. Ken Blanchard and Claire Diaz-Ortiz mix fact and fiction in a way that makes the book more digestable versus one that is just a series of checklists, graphs and worksheets.

You experience the story of Josh and Diane (not to be confused with Jack and Diane from the amazing Mellencamp song,) who are at different points in their lives and both in need of a jumpstart. It is easy to think a mentoring relationship is a one-way street, a teacher and a student, but the authors illustrate how each person in the relationship can truly benefit the other. The young, aimless employee who is stalling on his career path can gain direction and knowledge that only comes from a lifetime of experience, while the teacher, who may feel their life has hit a plateau, can get a direct boost from watching their mentee flourish, reminding them of how they felt when they first started.

This book is important because mentoring someone is one of the most integral and effective ways of passing our knowledge down, or even up depending on if the relationship is cross-generational. Society only moves forward when we learn and grow from our shared knowledge. Information not passed on is not a hidden treasure, but instead an empty box.

One Minute Mentoring is one of those books that you read initially very quickly, but then keep on your desk or in your backpack for easy reference. It’s not a book as much as it is a guide and how much you follow it is up to you.