Now I have a question for you. In your experience with the word mentor, think about what it means to you. When you say that you are mentoring somebody, what are you doing? Supporting them. Personalized training, individually nurturing that person, right? These are some of the common words that you hear when we talk about mentoring.
Have you ever had somebody that you considered to be a mentor for you? Well, if you have, then you know some ways to mentor, and you know some ways not to mentor. If you never have, perhaps you can look around and see those kinds of activities.
When you've got the opportunity to provide some mentoring, when you're in your role as a coach to the people around you, ask "What do you have to give?", "What skills or techniques?" Some of you have a lot more experience, and you can offer that to the people around you. Maybe they have more technical knowledge because they're new around the job and they have the latest updated information. But you can offer the political side of it.
So, you can provide some value. But what do you have to give? Consciously think about that. What do you get? This is a high maintenance activity. This is something that does take use some time.
And then we ask the question, "Gee, which people do we mentor?" Folks, there's a five-point checklist here. If they don't meet three or four or five of the qualifications, they're probably not the person that you mentor. They're probably a person that we could spend some more time teaching. And there's a difference there, between that mentoring role and strictly teaching. Let me tell you what to do.
See if you can think about your past mentoring experiences. Go ahead and list some of the best situations that you've seen and some of the worst things. Now, how do you use that information? Well folks, if you remember the things that people did well when they were mentoring you, guess what? Do these more. When you see the things that you didn't like, guess what? Do these less.
If there are some things that you heard somebody say to you, and you swore that you'd never say that, so then don't say it. But you have to be conscious of that. And I'm really urging you, this is an excellent activity for you. If you really want to cement this information, take the time to do this. Identify these different pieces and do the mentoring things that you liked best, more. Do the things you didn't like, less.
There was a gentleman who was one of my mentors at a bank. He was great at giving options. Instead of, "Here's what you should do," he'd say, "Here's what you could do."
Give options. That will give you a start to getting this lesson done. Instead of telling people what to do, say, "Gee, if you do this, here's what happens. If you do this, here's what happens. If you do this, here's what happens. And that might be the best one for us to do, but you decide."
When you're giving the options, one thing to do less is don't look like you're the only expert. Make sure that you give that indication that you've learned these things as well. And as a mentor, if you ever set yourself up to be the only expert and they start to find chinks in your armor, if there are some things about which you weren't a hundred percent correct or about which you didn't have the only worthwhile idea, they'll start to question all the ideas that you have.
So two good tips for you in terms of being a better mentor is: make sure to give options; and secondly, don't set yourself up as the only expert. If they start to rely on you too much, then they'll always need you as well. And that's not what a mentor is, after all.
Empowering the People
Look over the next word. Empower. The empowering. The empowered relationship. What does empowered mean to you? Empowered is certainly the buzz word of our day.
I'll give you a couple of ways not to empower. If you don't want people to be empowered, have a rule that says everybody has to do this. Exactly this way. Exactly this function. Exactly this time. Exactly this activity. Have blanket rules if you don't want to empower people.
If you don't want to empower people, simplify too much. Tell that stone cutter it's their job to hammer the chisel. If you don't want to empower people, just tell them that that's all they ever do. "Don't give me any back talk, just hammer that hammer."
If you don't want to empower people, solve the problems all the time. Because folks, if you're solving them all the time, where are they going to go when they have a problem? Where are they going to go? Back to you. Right. And they won't ever solve them themselves. And so, those are ways not to empower.
I never like to close on things not to do. I always like to focus on things to do. But that's where you come in. That's where the work comes in. Because you see, there comes a time when every coach, of whatever game or sport, or in this session, when the coach has to say, "I've done my part." You know, the buzzer sounds, the coach says, "I've done my part, get out there and play." Well, we don't have any buzzers in here, folks. But I've done my part. Now it's up to you to get out there and play. Best of luck to you as you try to do that.
