After writing several best-selling business and career-oriented books, author Marsha Sinetar moves toward a more personal approach in her latest work, The Mentor's Spirit: Life Lessons on Leadership and the Art of Encouragement (St. Martin's Press, 1998).

"What's different about this book is that I disclose my own story," said Sinetar in a phone interview from her office in Northern California. "So many people write to me, asking for career advice." She added with a laugh, "And we know what free advice is worth."

So this best-selling author of Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow and To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love, put aside her natural reticence to share her career and vocational journey.

"One of the least understood issues in the business world is mentoring," she said. "That's why I wrote about it."

In The Mentor's Spirit, Sinetar, who is also an educator, corporate adviser, and lecturer to university and corporate audiences, takes a wide view of the mentoring process. "We seem to need mentors-wise and faithful guides, advisers, or teachers," she writes. "Much more, we need the mentor's spirit: an unseen, affirming influence and positive energy."

Sinetar believes that true mentors are "artists of encouragement. Life is complicated - it's one reason we need mentors," she said. "It's a life affirming process not always connected to business." However, she offers a caveat.

"Today we have all these TV gurus, who give us the feeling we can't make it without them," she said. "But we need to know that we don't have to have a mentor spoonfeed us."

The 12 lessons within The Mentor's Spirit don't provide us with a tidy formula for finding a mentor, or being one. Rather, with depth and wisdom Sinetar presents a thought-provoking discussion of the various elements connected with the mentoring relationship and how enriching it can be.

"Productive mentoring demands a dialogue -- a deep relationship of mind and heart -- not canned speeches or mechanized training blueprints," she writes, asserting that truly inspiring mentors help us transcend our limits. "If we feel hemmed into a conventional career slot, they'll challenge that thinking. Their power wakes us up, motivates us."

And just like good parents, Sinetar said, "productive mentors help themselves move out of the job of giving advice. That's part of the leadership dimension of mentoring."

Readers seeking deeper insight may want to go further into this layered work than simply reading it. By examining the theoretical sides of the mentoring process, then illustrating these concepts with her own life experiences as a "self-made" professional, Sinetar has created a useful dual approach in just over 150 pages.

"There are two ways to use the book, either in a substantive or superficial fashion," she said. "A person can dig in, and really study the theory. But for a nice, enjoyable Sunday night read, one can skim the theory and just read the personal story."

Judging from the warm reception Sinetar had at Village Books last year, it's likely that many local readers would welcome either opportunity. A standing-room-only crowd greeted her when she appeared to talk about To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love.

She reports that she's also received positive feedback from readers of The Mentor's Spirit, particularly about the personal struggles she relates. "It surprises them to find out that I've been on my own since my early teens. More people than we realize have been alone, have made it on their own," she said. "People see themselves in my story. It validates their own discovery process."

Sinetar feels her book also has much to say to what she calls "the helping professions," such as teachers, therapists, or the clergy. Too often, she believes, people in these professions have a tendency to let their mentoring activities take over their lives. "They feel if they're not giving advice, they're not helping."

She suggests that these professionals might want to study the book chapter by chapter, either by themselves or in a group. "We do need a kind of reinforcement when we're learning something," she said. "When we speak our truth, we learn."

According to Sinetar, mentoring in business carries its own set of issues. "People new to business think they need political connections. Leadership needs to understand that success first comes from within."

Without that inner strength and sense of purpose, Sinetar stresses, people can be too needy -- which leads to what she calls the "mentoring paradox." "Leaders are very independent. So the needier we are, the less likely we are to attract the mentors we want," she said. By developing our self-reliance, we have a better chance to attract the mentors we admire.

Mentoring in the business milieu can be even more effective as a two-tiered process. "In a large company, it helps to have someone to show you the ropes," she said. "But this isn't substantive mentoring. For that, we need a high-trust relationship. And we also need to choose someone in sync with our deepest aspirations."

But she emphasizes that if we're not in tune with ourselves, entering a mentoring relationship can hold some pitfalls. She's seen too many companies matching up junior employees with senior manager "like a computer dating service."

"If you need a mentor, don't jump to the yellow pages," she said. Sinetar advises us to brainstorm with a friend to see who's teaching seminars, or what's being offered at the university. Joining professional organizations is also helpful.

"People owe it to themselves to do some reading, take a course, or interview knowledgeable others," she said. "And find a chemistry that works."

Sinetar said that she has seen paid mentoring work effectively in a number of situations. She's found it helpful to gather a team of experts several times a year for counsel and advice. "And people starting a business might want a personal coach."

But whether a mentoring relationship takes place within business or outside it, one concept Sinetar emphasizes is that mentors are everywhere. And we can actually be our own best mentors by utilizing self-trust and intuition -- what she calls "spiritual intelligence."

"Intuition is absolutely critical in business," she said, and mentioned the growth of the World Wide Web and the effects of global news and markets as evidence of only a few of the changes people must contend with daily.

"Since we don't have roadmaps for the future, we have to be more intuitive about our jobs," Sinetar said. "We have to develop a shrewder approach: be grounded, intelligently intuitive, and deeply centered."