Mentoring involves life-to-life exchanges that help others discover and pursue their passions and sort out their priorities.
- David Stoddard
Ask any successful leader and he or she will tell you: a young
person starting out in a career, for example, will benefit greatly from
a mentor-an older, experienced person who knows the ropes and will
teach a protégé how things are done.
Here's a pop quiz question:
A mentor is . . .
a) A model
b) An encourager
c) An imparter of knowledge
d) All of the above
The answer is "d." A mentor may wear many different hats but the
one thing that all mentors share is the ability to listen and
encourage. A mentor is "a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push
in the right direction," according to the Uncommon Individual
Foundation, an organization devoted to mentoring research and training.
It reports that mentoring is one of the most powerful tools we have for
influencing human behavior.
The term mentor arises from an unlikely source. It first appeared in Homer's classic, The Odyssey, where
Odysseus asked a wise man named Mentor to care for his son, Telemachus,
while Odysseus was off fighting in the Trojan War. Mentor taught the
boy "not only in book learning but also in the wiles of the world." The
fabled Mentor must have done his job well, because Telemachus grew up
to be an enterprising lad who gallantly helped his father recover his
kingdom.
But mentoring is more than the stuff of legends. A real, life
mentor, one who serves as a model and provides individualized help and
encouragement, can be invaluable to a receptive mentoree. Among the
most important roles mentors play include:
- giving timely information to mentorees
- modeling aspects of what they wish to impart
- challenging and motivating mentorees to move to higher levels ˇ
directing mentorees to helpful resources when needed (sometimes
painfully so)
- encouraging goodness and inspiring greatness
- lessening mentorees' anxiety by normalizing experiences
- helping mentorees set goals
- keeping mentorees accountable to their goals
- providing a periodic review and evaluation of mentorees' performance
A word of caution is in order: Mentors can do all of the
aforementioned things and still be ineffective. Two dynamics are vital
to the success of any mentoring relationship. Without them, all the
modeling, challenging, encouraging, goal-setting, and accountability
will fall flat.
The two critical dynamics are (1) attraction, and (2) responsiveness.
Attraction is the starting point in every effective mentoring
relation, ship. The mentor and the mentoree must be drawn to each other
to some degree. If either side is not genuinely interested in the
other, true mentoring will never take place. Along with this
attractiveness, the mentoree must be willing and ready to learn from
the mentor. Without a responsive attitude and a receptive spirit on the
part of the mentoree, little genuine mentoring can occur. |
