Mentor Stable

Build a portfolio of 3-4 mentors you meet monthly, not a single mentor relationship

Bangaly Kaba
Unorthodox frameworks for growing your product, career, and impact

Mentor Stable

"It's actually better to have a stable of mentors. You want to have three or four. And ideally, what you do is you meet with each one of them once a month on a different Friday of the month." - Bangaly Kaba

What It Is

The Mentor Stable is a framework for structuring mentorship relationships to maximize learning and career development. Instead of having a single mentor (which creates dependency and gaps), you build a "stable" of 3-4 mentors with complementary expertise, meeting each one monthly on a rotating schedule.

This ensures you always have someone to talk to, provides diverse perspectives, and creates resilience when any single mentor becomes unavailable.

How It Works

The Structure

  • Number: 3-4 mentors
  • Frequency: Meet each mentor once per month
  • Schedule: Different Friday each month (Week 1: Mentor A, Week 2: Mentor B, etc.)
  • Result: Someone to talk to every week

Why This Beats Single-Mentor Relationships

Single mentor risks:

  • If they're busy one month, you go two months without guidance
  • Single perspective limits your thinking
  • Their blind spots become your blind spots
  • Dependency on one relationship

Stable benefits:

  • If 1-2 cancel, you still have 2 people that month
  • Diverse perspectives on the same problem
  • Different expertise areas covered
  • No single point of failure in your development

How to Apply It

Finding Mentors

  1. Don't Ask "Will You Be My Mentor?": This generic request often fails.

  2. Start with a Specific Challenge: Tell people what you're working on or struggling with. Be specific: "I'm trying to figure out how to change the way this team operates because we need to shift from model A to model B."

  3. Ask for Referrals: "Do you know someone who's really good at [specific skill] that I could talk to?"

  4. Use the Triad: The best mentor connections come through referrals:

    • You: Person seeking guidance
    • Recommender: Person who sees the match
    • Mentor: Person with relevant expertise

    The recommender creates affinity by saying "There's common purpose here."

  5. Let Relationships Develop Naturally: Initial conversations about specific problems can evolve into ongoing mentor relationships.

Maintaining the Stable

  1. Diversify Expertise: Each mentor should bring different strengths:

    • Strategic thinking
    • Execution and operations
    • Leadership and people management
    • Technical or domain expertise

  2. Keep Meetings Consistent: Same day each month creates rhythm and commitment.

  3. Come Prepared: Have specific topics, challenges, or decisions to discuss.

  4. Give Back: Share what you're learning, make introductions, help where you can.

  5. Rotate Over Time: As your career evolves, your mentor needs change. Add new mentors and gracefully transition out of relationships that are less relevant.

When to Use It

  • When building your career development infrastructure
  • When you realize you're too dependent on one advisor
  • When facing challenges that need diverse perspectives
  • When your single mentor relationship becomes stale
  • When moving into a new role or problem space

Source

  • Guest: Bangaly Kaba
  • Episode: "Unorthodox frameworks for growing your product, career, and impact"
  • Key Discussion: (00:20:09) - Framework explanation and advice on finding mentors
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

Practical Tips

Sample Mentor Stable:

  • Mentor A (Week 1): Former manager, strong on organizational politics and influence
  • Mentor B (Week 2): Industry expert, deep domain knowledge
  • Mentor C (Week 3): Peer at another company, fresh perspective on similar challenges
  • Mentor D (Week 4): Executive, strategic thinking and big-picture guidance

Conversation Starters:

  • "I'm facing this specific challenge: [describe]. How would you approach it?"
  • "I'm considering [decision]. What am I not seeing?"
  • "I observed [situation]. What does that tell me about the dynamics?"
  • "I want to develop [skill]. What worked for you?"

Related Frameworks

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