“Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I started at BCG, my desk was in The Quad. It was the only office on the floor with four desks squeezed together. The air sometimes hung a little heavy with Axe body spray. Phone calls overlapped. Privacy was nonexistent. In theory, the least desirable desk assignment. In practice, it became one of the first real world classrooms of my career.

The three people around me were a few steps ahead of me. They became my first line of defense in navigating the relentless pace of consulting. Smart, funny, motivated. They showed me how to handle pressure, maintain perspective, and make progress. Simply by sitting in that room, I learned more in weeks than I might have in months on my own.

The Quad was one of my earliest experiences of apprenticeship. But not the last.

After the Quad came The Team Room. Overheated, food scattered on the tables, notes taped to the walls, laptops and charger cables tangled in the corners. These rooms weren’t polished, but they were alive: long days and late nights where ideas collided, pressure mounted, and you learned by being shoulder to shoulder with people figuring it out in real time.

The team room was where you found your voice in a room full of smart, hard-working people, and where you learned to push hard and hold each other up when the pace threatened to break you.

Before my first CEO meeting, a partner pulled me aside: “Say the headline. Read the table across and down. Share the key message. Then pause. If he doesn’t ask, move on.” Simple. Direct. It worked.

Later, overwhelmed on a large engagement, a former cage-fighter turned manager gave me advice I still carry: “Problems are like fingers. Take them all at once, they form a fist and knock you out. Take them one by one; none are that hard to beat.”

And eventually, when I worked up the courage to apply to grad school, mentors wrote letters on my behalf. It’s hard to describe what it means when someone stakes their reputation on you. The feeling was a mix of equal parts relief, courage, and responsibility.

Over time, the roles reversed. I wrote recommendations, coached junior associates, and tried to be the same steady presence others had been for me.

Those rooms taught me that proximity accelerates growth. Not by curriculum, but by immersion: overheard calls, quick corrections, the steady modeling of people a step ahead, the shared urgency of solving something together.

That kind of learning is fragile now. AI can spit out first drafts in minutes, erasing the messy early passes where judgment was built. Remote work strips away the crowded rooms and casual corrections that shaped instincts. What I once absorbed without even noticing now has to be deliberately designed.

This isn’t about longing for the past. The world has changed, and it will continue to change. The real question is how we continue to feed ourselves the benefits of mentorship and menteeship in the world we live in now, and the one on the horizon.

Because mentorship doesn’t only shape the next generation, it shapes us too. I think Emerson was right: we all need people who draw out more in us than we thought we had. And when we give that to others, it doesn’t just help them, it steadies and restores us as well.

I know this firsthand. Life makes it easy to overlook each other. The people who shaped me weren’t the ones with grand advice, but the ones who stopped, saw me, and made time. Those moments mattered more than they could have known.

And it comes full circle, if we’re lucky.

I’ve written reference letters for several mentees over the years, and this week, one of them sent me a photo from class, taken during “hat day.” Surrounded by case studies, water bottles, name cards, and friends, the grin on their face said everything. It reminded me how far someone can go when a little space is made for them, and how much joy there is in watching them grow. Mentorship doesn’t just ripple forward; it reflects back and fills us, too.

By now, I’ve realized mentorship isn’t just about kindness. It’s about scale. A program, a culture, even a room like The Quad or the team room can shape careers for decades. It shapes the impact you as an individual have on the world.

Choose one of these and act on it this week. Apprenticeship endures only through practice.

Someone once made space for me.
Making space for others isn’t the only thing that matters, but it matters a lot.
Even the smallest gestures can last, sometimes for years, in ways we never expect.

A friend and I were reflecting this week on the same truth. People once made time for us, and it mattered. And now, when you think about what will matter in five or ten years, it starts with where you choose to make the time.

Until next Sunday,
Eric

P.S. If this brings someone to mind, a mentor you never properly thanked, or a mentee you could encourage, forward this note to them or reach out.

It’s never too late to say thank you or to lend a hand.