Mentor – It’s Not About You
It feels great to help someone. The skill to achieve this, though, is not necessarily natural. Given the opportunity, most of us will eagerly offer advice from our own experience and viewpoint. This may include throwing in a story of victory on how we tackled a similar type of situation.
A good mentor considers the situation and advises the person seeking guidance by factoring in that person's viewpoint and capacities. For instance, a female mentee tells her male mentor that she is not being heard in meetings. For himself, the male mentor might start interrupting or employing other aggressive tactics. However, he recognizes that those tactics are just not going to work for a lot of women. Research shows that people (men and women) tend to reject women who come off as too strong, bold, or aggressive.
The mentoring approach then is to improve the mentee's ability to skillfully take her place at the table as her rather than as a female version of the male mentor. When mentoring, tailor your ideas and advice to the mentee. As best as you can, frame up how to approach the situation from your mentee's point of view rather than your own.
This is not easy. It takes awareness for the highly intelligent, seasoned mentor to restrain from expounding on all that they would do. The caution here is that advice based exclusively on your own experience may or may not work for another. Any time you ask your mentee to adopt whole cloth what you would do, it will be a challenge to sustain because it entails your mentee is not acting as their true self.
Though our mentee is undoubtedly drawn to our numerous positive qualities, still our mentee (or protégé) remains a complex, unique, and entirely different person from ourselves. Not every piece of advice is a "One size fits all."
As a mentor, I advise discarding the first thought that springs to mind when your mentee poses a dilemma. That thought commonly is going to be: "What would I do?" Move to your NEXT thought: "What could my mentee do better or different that will work for them to obtain the result they seek?"
Unless you are certain that a personal story is relevant, restrain from launching into a tale of how, in the past, you triumphantly conquered a similar situation. While this may be true, minimizing the dilemma can imply to the mentee that they are (unlike yourself) defective.
If you employ patient listening, dispense compassionate advice without judgment, and leave out a steady recounting of tales where you are (as ever) the undisputed hero, you will achieve strong interest from your mentee in listening to you and applying your sage advice. The ideas you impart will be:
A) well-received,
B) easily absorbed, and
C) implemented.
Not only will your mentee be successful, they very well may go on to model your techniques to skillfully help another valued member of the team.
