I’ve been mentoring (with varying degrees of formality) for about 10 years now, and some of those mentoring relationships have been absolutely amazing. Others… well, not so much.
photo courtesy of ©Depositphotos.com / dimmushka
It’s always a flattering thing when someone asks you to mentor them. It usually means they like you, and (at least for the moment) care what you think. If you know you have the time to invest in them, and you genuinely like them, it can be tempting to jump right in and say, “Yes, of course, I’ll mentor you!” without thinking it through.
But you need to, and here’s why: saying yes to a mentoring relationship is saying yes for the long haul – even if the long haul is a pre-determined amount of time. So you’ll want this to go well – for both of you!
Every relationship is going to have its less-than-stellar moments, mostly because they involve people. We’re none of us perfect on our finest days, so we’re going to experience (at the very least) conversations that don’t quite go the way we’d hoped and/or (at the very worst) relationships that will make us wonder in retrospect how we could ever have thought that was a good idea. Those truly awful experiences can often be avoided, tho, if you know what to look for in the people you’re thinking about mentoring – before you say yes:
If the person you’re mentoring doesn’t understand that we all need mentors (because we all need wisdom), and/or has an attitude about being mentored, you’re both going to have a really tough go of it. It takes a degree of humility to say:
If someone’s asking you to mentor them, chances are good that they know themselves well enough to be able to say it. If you’re asking them to let you mentor them, be sure to gauge their enthusiasm for the idea accurately (it’ll tell you a lot about how this will go).
Falling off someone’s metaphorical pedestal can be really painful. If the person you’re mentoring seems to think that everything you say is pure gold, you should be the first to caution them that your opinions are simply that – your opinions. You don’t want anyone following you blindly; you want the people you’re mentoring to:
You can (and should) offer counsel where it’s needed, but most of the time it will be more beneficial to the people you’re mentoring if you can help them arrive at their own conclusions by asking a few carefully crafted questions to guide them in the right direction, rather than telling them what to do or think.
Again, this comes back to humility, and it takes a lot of it to be able to say (with honesty):
(This is also a maturity issue, and possibly an area in which you may need to help them grow, so don’t let this one be a complete deal breaker unless you can tell from the get-go that they’re not going to be coachable.)
That said – if the person you’re mentoring doesn’t value your opinion highly enough to consider it, even when they think you’re wrong, you may need to have a tough (but gentle) conversation about whether or not this relationship is really worth the continued investment for either of you. And if one or both of you can’t get past your disagreement without losing respect for each other, it may be time for what Henry Cloud calls a “necessary ending.” (I would never advise that lightly – but there are relationships that will come into our lives for a season, and part of becoming a better leader/mentor is learning to recognize those relational seasons for what they are.)
There are a lot of other things you can look for in potential mentoring situations, but I think those three are key. What do you think? Are there other things you’ve looked for in the people you’ve agreed to mentor that you think are important as well?
