What special skills do you bring to your job? Since my background is broad, with technical depth as well as being accountable for business operations and sales marketing, it allows me to have a fairly good perspective on "fit" -- where things are, where they're going, how to explain things to multiple levels of people in the organization, why we do the things we do. I'm leveraging my background to translate experience into actions while helping coach people. I have a high raw energy level and a passion to continually and radically improve things to help the team win.

What's important about having a career mentor? He or she can impart wisdom. A mentor can provide you with a different perspective, a "portal" of their own experiences, if you will, that can shed some light and insight in order to bring clarity to your perspective. That allows you to determine how you want to -- or don't want to -- apply yourself to your particular situation.

Are there any downsides to being mentored? With the (hopefully rare) exception of getting bad advice, I can't think of any downside. I can say that engaging in mentoring does build the mentee's ability to discern good from bad, develop an intuition for things (let's call that wisdom) and identify blind spots where he or she can purposefully target specific types of coaching or advice.

Are you mentoring anyone? Oh yes, I mentor and get mentored from hundreds of people. I do that every day, formally and informally. Formally with my direct leadership staff; informally with all the conversations I have with anyone and everyone I run across. Spending time with as many people as I can helps impart the view from here to help them in their awareness, understanding and fit. It enables them to make better decisions from a professional as well as personal-aspiration perspective, as well as earn their trust, their respect and their commitment to our company's path. Mentoring is an exceptionally healthy activity -- you should get and give a couple of good servings a day!