To the extent that you feel you fall into that category – a rare genius who has perfect pitch in terms of what the market wants – you may be able to specify the work that needs to be done clearly enough for others to merely execute. In that case, go for it! You will be able to forfeit seeking or listening to the input of those who work below you in the organization. Henry Ford, after all, was said to have complained, “why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?” But for the rest of us, I wouldn't recommend that approach. Few business leaders today can afford to squander the brainpower available in their companies. At the very least most of us need an honest sounding board. But better yet, we need people to bring their ideas to work to help us create better products and a better organization.

She believes we need to move from mentors to sponsors because a sponsor advocates on your behalf.

Sallie says, ‘All the important decisions about your career are made when you’re not in the room. People decide to hire you, fire you, promote you, fund you, send you on the overseas assignment, all when you’re not there. So how do you ensure that you have someone in the room fighting for you? I would strongly argue that you need to have in place your Personal Board of Directors. Those are your mentors, your sponsors, your confidants, the people you can turn to when you’re thinking about a career transition—for the kind of advice your boyfriend, your parents, and your best friend from college just can’t give you.

Don’t be a perfectionist. Not everyone has to be convinced of the advantages of your agenda. Achieving the buy-in of key influencers will provide the leverage you need. You don’t even have to make the right decisions nearly all the time. The key is to make decisions and create an environment where you can see how things work out and make course corrections as necessary. Confront your own fallibility and keep moving forward. Success is as much about taking action and recognizing your mistakes and addressing them quickly as about striving for the ideal.

Lots of people will be ready to give you advice on your life. Be very careful about that. Counsel is entirely different. Counsel is always helpful. You can never be too clear on your own thinking. You can never get too good a grasp of your own best wisdom and insights. Finding someone who can give you good counsel and who regularly leaves you in a clearer and more settled state of mind is a great asset. This is where good mentors shine. We would say that all legitimate mentoring is centered on giving counsel. Counsel invariably begins with lots of questions aimed at accurately understanding you, what you’re saying, and what you’re going through. Good counselors will often seem to ask the same question a couple of times from different points of view, to be sure they’re getting it. They will often try to summarize or restate something you’ve said and ask, “Did I get that right?” This approach tells you that they’re focused on you—not on themselves.

The value of mentors’ life experience when they are giving counsel lies not in borrowing what facts or answers they know but in accessing the breadth of their experience and their objectivity, which helps them to help you to see your own reality in a new way.

Working with a master firsthand is the best education; it’s the surest way of raising the bar. Their excellence demands your excellence. But most of aren’t lucky enough to have that opportunity. Still, not all is lost. If you don’t have the chance to work with a master directly, you can still surround yourself with people who have higher standards by reading about them and their work.