Where's my Yoda?

I need somebody to guide me in the ways of leadership. I need a master who will help me gather the insights and experiences that will enable me to extract the best from the people I work with. But there is nobody in my organization whose leadership skills I admire and seek to emulate. At least I don't know of anybody who has the skills that I would like to have. 

I'm skipping ahead. Why do I need a leadership mentor? The only way to develop leadership skills is to lead. Leadership requires influencing other people. There is no way to do that other than to actually go out and influence other people. The more I lead, the better leader I'll become. The real trick is figuring out how to select leadership roles that will allow me to push my skills without going beyond my capabilities. I think a mentor could help with that. There's also looking back over a particular experience and figuring out what I did well and what I can do better. The only way this will happen is to talk over my experiences with an experienced leader.

Where should I find my mentor? I need somebody in my company. I've been told that I should start building my network in the organization. This mentor thing sounds like a good way to do that. There are formal programs for finding a mentor, but they're passive and overly bureaucratic. I'm going to go about it the old fashioned way. (I'm going to ask somebody. There's an opportunity to practice my influencing skills.) As the best mentors are probably in a different site, I'll need to consult with somebody who has some insight into who works up there to help me find a mentor. I have a meeting with somebody to discuss some training that I took a couple of weeks ago. She knows people up there. That could be my chance to start the search...