Recent posting by Sonic Rim’s Uday Dandavate on Anthrodesign group mail caused me to think about my own experience with search for mentor. (Thank you, Uday!)
About 7 years ago, I felt a keen need for a mentor of my own gender. Maybe it was because of “coaching” boom in Japan at that time, and the claims on “coaches” and “mentors” making big difference in one’s life were all around me. At the time, plenty of great men I admired were around me. Brilliant, intelligent, and witty male warriors who practiced, fought and won in business world taught me much through their talk and action. But I did not feel whole by following only male mentor. I realized then that I wanted a female mentor who would show me how to live fully in work and life as a woman.
Looking back, I just did not realize what the numbers meant. I rejected the choice to pursue more income and greater power within the global corporate community. It was my tendency to leap before looking that helped me make at that time an easy decision. Many women choose their path I chose, but just as there are very few women who succeeded within corporate world and migrate into happy old age, and even fewer women who tried to tell their stories.
I have doubts that my counsel may be right for someone, but some women have occasionally mentioned to me that talking to me helped, and that seeing me in person, living my choice gave them courage. Even though I know that my advice would have been one of the million things that helped them, seeing them shine brightly in their world today makes me enormously happy.
Perhaps this blog, “Worklife”, has become, or actually has already been a platform for me to tell my work life stories that help business as well as private life of whoever reads it.
It comes at the end, but lastly and importantly, Anthrodesign’s founder is Natalie Hanson, a woman whom I admire and learn from. She reminds me that as women, we can teach and mentor in many ways, one way being telling our story on the web. Thank you, Natalie!
FUJIKO SUDA 