Can I Have Multiple Mentors at the Same Time?

People ask me this one with a nervous look on their face, like they're about to admit to cheating. "Jay, is it okay if I have more than one mentor? I've got somebody helping me with my career, but there's another person I really want to learn from too — is that disloyal?" And I always want to laugh, kindly, because I remember carrying that same guilt for years. So let me take it off your plate right now: not only can you have multiple mentors at the same time, most of the growth I've had in my life came from exactly that. One person was never going to be enough. And that's not a knock on anybody — it's just how people actually grow.

Let me tell you where this comes from, because it shapes how I see the whole thing. I started working at 17, the June of my senior year. I was married at 22, and by 23 I owned a home and was a dad. I grew up fast and I had a lot to figure out fast, and there was never one wise old guy on a mountaintop who had all my answers. What I had instead was a handful of different people, each of whom was strong at something the others weren't. I just didn't know to call it a "board of advisors" back then. I thought I was scavenging. Turns out I was building the smartest thing you can build.

The Myth of the One Perfect Mentor

Somewhere along the way we all picked up a story — the story of the single, all-knowing mentor. The old master and the young student. Mr. Miyagi and Daniel. And it's a great story. The only problem is it sets you up to fail, because it makes you go looking for one human being who's supposed to be wise about everything: your career, your money, your marriage, your character, your fear of public speaking, and how to handle a boss who drives you nuts. That person does not exist. I've been on this earth 63 years and I have never once met them.

Here's what's actually true. Every good mentor I've ever had was excellent at a slice of life and pretty ordinary at the rest. I had one man early on who could read a room and handle a difficult person better than anybody I've known — and couldn't manage his own calendar to save his life. I had another who was a genius at the technical side of the work and useless at the people side. If I'd waited for the one who was great at all of it, I'd still be waiting. Instead I learned to take the best of what each one had and leave the rest. That's not settling. That's how it's supposed to work.

Think about it the way you'd think about your own health. You don't ask your dentist to set your broken arm. You've got a whole little team — a dentist, a doctor, maybe an eye guy — each one great at their piece. Nobody feels guilty about that. Nobody says, "I really should pick just one." Mentorship is the same. Different people, different specialties, all pulling for the same person: you.

Build a Board, Not a Marriage

Here's the reframe that changed everything for me. Stop trying to find a mentor. Start building a board of advisors. A mentor sounds like a marriage — one person, all in, forever. A board sounds like what it actually is: a small group of people you trust, each brought in for what they're good at, who help you make better decisions than you'd make alone.

Big companies run this way for a reason. Every outfit I worked for — Coca-Cola, Estée Lauder, AmerisourceBergen, and now Oerlikon — has a board of directors. Not one all-powerful genius. A group. Different backgrounds, different strengths, arguing it out and steering the ship together. If a five-billion-dollar corporation knows better than to bet everything on one person's wisdom, so should you. You are the CEO of your own growth. Go build your board.

You don't need all five, and you don't need them all at once. Two good ones is a real board. The point isn't to collect people like trading cards. The point is to stop expecting one person to be everything, and to notice you already have more teachers around you than you're giving yourself credit for.

Why You Can Drop the Guilt

Now let's deal with the thing that's really bugging you, because I hear it every time: the guilt. "If I go learn from someone else, am I betraying my mentor?" Let me be as clear as I can. No. You are not. And here's the honest truth most people won't tell you — a good mentor wants you to have other mentors.

Think about what a real mentor is actually after. They want you to grow. That's the whole deal. A mentor who needs to be your only source of wisdom isn't mentoring you — they're collecting you, and that's a red flag, not a compliment. The good ones have enough security in themselves to say, "I don't know much about that, but you should go talk to so-and-so, they're great at it." The best mentor I ever had used to send me to other people. He knew his lane, he was proud of his lane, and he didn't pretend his lane was the whole highway.

If your mentor does the opposite — gets jealous, gets territorial, makes you feel guilty for growing — pay attention to that. That's not loyalty they're asking for. That's insecurity, and it'll cap your growth at the ceiling of their ego. A mentor is supposed to be a door you walk through, not a room they lock you in.

How to Manage More Than One Without Dropping the Ball

Okay — so having a few mentors is good. But I won't pretend it takes care of itself. Get it wrong and you end up with a pile of conflicting advice, a couple of relationships you're neglecting, and the special kind of paralysis that comes from having five people in your head all saying different things. So here's how I keep it straight.

The one that trips people up most is the conflicting-advice thing, so let me sit on it a second. When two mentors I respect tell me opposite things, I used to feel stuck, like somebody had to be wrong. Now I love it. Two smart people disagreeing means the answer isn't obvious, which means this is exactly the kind of decision I need to actually think about instead of outsource. I take both views, I hold them up against what I know about my own situation, and I decide. The mentors inform the choice. They don't make it. The day you hand your decisions to your mentors, you've stopped growing and started outsourcing your own life. Don't do that. Use them like the smart, generous, wonderfully imperfect people they are — and then own the call yourself.

Why This Is Really the Law of Modeling

Here's where this whole question connects to something bigger. One of John C. Maxwell's 15 Laws of Growth is the Law of Modeling, and it says this: it's hard to improve when you have no one but yourself to follow. We become like the people we watch closely. We copy what we see. That's not a weakness — it's the oldest, most reliable way human beings have ever grown. You get better by having good examples in front of you.

Well — read that Law again. It doesn't say "an example." It says examples, plural, in spirit. Because if you only ever follow one person, you can only ever become a slightly worse copy of that one person. You inherit their blind spots along with their gifts. But when you're modeling several strong people at once — this one's discipline, that one's patience, another one's courage — you're not copying anybody. You're assembling. You're pulling the best thread from each and weaving something that's finally, genuinely you. That's the quiet superpower of having more than one mentor: you're not cloning a single hero, you're building an original.

I came to this the long way around. I attended college but never finished, and for years I thought that meant I'd missed the room where you were supposed to get your wisdom. What I finally understood is that I learned leadership on a factory floor, not in a classroom — by watching a whole cast of people up close and taking a little from each. One taught me how to keep my word. One taught me how to stay calm when everything was on fire. One taught me how to treat the newest, lowest person on the crew like they mattered. I didn't get all of that from a single mentor. I couldn't have. It took a board. That's the Law of Modeling in real life, and it's a good part of what ended up in Leadership Between the Lines and the LBL-10 workshop — the idea that you become the sum of the examples you choose to follow. So choose more than one. Choose good ones. And go be the original that only you can be.

Reflection Questions

Pick one and sit with it before you go add somebody to your board — or feel guilty about the ones you've already got:

1. Am I asking one person to be wise about things they were never meant to cover?
2. What are the two or three areas of my life where I most need a good example right now?
3. Is the guilt I feel about "extra" mentors coming from my mentor — or just from me?
4. When two people I respect disagree, do I use it to think harder, or do I freeze?
5. Whose example am I actually following most closely right now — and is it a good one?

The Bottom Line

So can you have multiple mentors at the same time? Yes. Full stop. And the sooner you trade the fantasy of one perfect guru for the reality of a small, strong board of advisors, the faster you'll grow. Nobody is great at everything. The smartest people I know aren't the ones who found the one right teacher — they're the ones who quietly assembled a handful of good ones and learned to take the best from each.

Here's what I'd do this week: name the two or three areas where you most need a better example, and figure out who's already in your life who's strong in each. You probably have more of a board than you realize — you just haven't been treating them like one. Go thank one of them. Ask another a real question. Start following good people on purpose, plural, and watch what you become.

This ties back to The Law of Modeling — one of John C. Maxwell's 15 Laws of Growth.