It is here! You have been assigned as a mentor and been given the greatest opportunity in leadership which is to build a person and help them make themselves better and achieve their goals.
Historically, if you look at how people report the most influential people in their life, it is often a coach, teacher or parent. Coaching is more about a manager or supervisor trying to change behaviors.
Mentoring is about a relationship where a person seeks advice and the wisdom of a person whom a person can trust. Mentoring and the handing down of information or placing decision making opportunities in front of a protegee is a time-honored role.
1. Develop a Mission, Vision and Value Statement.
Successful employment and a healthy career depend on alignment of the person with an organization.
While great organizations have well designed mission vision and value statements many times a person has never gotten to define what their purpose or mission is, where they see themselves going and most importantly does an organization’s values align or reflect the individual’s values.
The synergy of aligning these features verses being in conflict. Often people find themselves in an organization that does not reflect their values. It can be an agonizing experience and with the help of a mentor defining those values and what they are enthusiastic about can help steer a career in ways that create healthier progress of their career.
Relocating or joining a different organization can be life changing. In this economy and with the generations entering the workforce feeling like you are making a meaningful contribution and that your time devoted to an organization is purposeful.
2. Leaders Intent Exercise
In advanced wildland fire training, there is a course L380 and L480 which have a large section in the training that is designed to help a leader explore and deliver their intent. Often, the difference between a leader and a manager is that a leader has a vision and needs to get a team, group or individual to follow.
The articulation of that vision is the intent on where the leader intends to go. After the completion of a vision for an organization or a career, there is a “How are you going to get there” and a “How are you going to get to it?” statement.
As a mentor, a good exercise with the protegee is to help them state their intent for a certain project or goal. How are you going to get to where you want to be professionally and where you want your division, work group or organization to be?
When a new officer or preceptor is taking over, it is often best to sit with individuals and set expectations. Several sessions to practice this in the mentor/mentee relationship to refine a message is key is a leader’s success.
3. The No-Win Situation
A leader is sometimes faced with a no-win scenario. As a mentor presenting a scenario to a protegee with a stressful scenario and helping them through it is a great exercise. For example, a leader is never prepared to manage the death of a provider.
There is never anything good and no win to be had by such an event. Put a protegee through a simulation by telling them they have just lost a crew member and what do you do now?
To add complexity, one employee who is injured and one who is a fatality creates stress. A mentee benefits tremendously from a run-through of an incident before being faced with a real event.
Talking to family, dealing with the press, managing organizational grief and following through on insurance or public safety benefits are just a few of the complexities that a mentor can help guide.
4. Winning People Over
A mentor as a relationship often needs to remain as unadvertised as possible. As people progress up a career path or a mentor arrives in a position where they are uniquely qualified to shepherd a person, they may have made some enemies along the way.
For whatever reason, people get cross, hold vendettas or out of spite and ego, even jealousy can seek to derail not only the protegee but the mentor’s success in seeing the mentee grow and achieve their goals. For the goalless and unmotivated, we have seen events where people try to stop a motivated person by throwing up administrative roadblocks or claiming in the name of fairness a person is getting too much or rewarded for extra effort.
Winning over people or establishing influence and gaining trust, attention or resource allocation is about winning people over. As an exercise a mentor can play the role of the person saying “no,” and work on how to get to yes with an answer or allocation.
In the “what’s in it for me” world, it is simple as consulting a person in other situations it is about making a team win or what benefit would someone have to help, participate or allocate resources to a mentee’s goals.
Some mentors use a transactional exercise. A simple task can be what do you have to offer a person to get buy-in? On the opposite side is what part of the other person’s values and needs connect to the mentees’ offering or accomplishments? Either way, it is about winning people over it and getting busy.
The most ineffective way is to demand it or enforce a hierarchy where dozens of opportunities to introduce conflict and sabotage on the goal can happen.
5. Situational Leadership
A person who is being mentored should have a basic understanding of leadership and management. There will be times when a laisse fare approach is to be employed verses and autocratic or direct order approach.
However, it it is classified as a democratic approach verses an autocratic approach, a mentor should discuss routinely with a mentee the situation and which application of leadership style is best suited for that situation.
In this exercise, a mentor should look at the needs, the risk and objective of the mission at hand. It is important to know the background and the makeup of a team or group who the situational leadership is being applied.
Stories of heavy-handed leaders not understanding the “Y” or “X” generation often feel it is not necessary to explain the “why” to an individual, group or team. It is expected they do something verses telling them because “I said so,” or “it’s your job” have typically resulted in a disaster.
One size does not fit all when it comes to motivating people as a leader. A dynamic leader is supposed to have a toolbox of options to employ.
6. Well Rounding and Then Are You Ready to Give Back?
As a mentor and mentee approach the end of developmental relationship, and a mentor is about to disengage a relationship in a formal setting and transition to a peer it is time to evaluate what is to be given back. Mentorship at its heart is about servant leadership.
It is a giving relationship and at some point, the mentor as part of their expectations should identify the next step.
On their own they can find a way to give back, to add to the benefits of another who could benefit from their newfound wisdom. It is a jumping off point and final exam for a mentee to see if the motivation can sustain itself. For example, is there is long-term change for a mentee or just a course completion?
A mentor should ensure that there is well roundedness, a place to process stress, a peer group that is supportive and something that is putting water back into their bucket.
A mentee should be inspired by a mentor and get excited to go out and change the world.
