Helpful Tips on Mentoring - Day 20: 100 Days of Leadership

Leaders have mentors. They need them. The mentors encourage them, challenge them and reveal to them things about themselves they didn’t even know.

Banking businessman David Gonski gives some helpful tips on mentoring. He says:

1.    You’re never too old to learn new tricks (so have a mentor)

2.    Do not pick your boss as a mentor

3.    Have more than one mentor (e.g. a leadership coach, a social media expert, a finance mentor, a personal coach, etc).

4.    Mentors share knowledge that you would not have gained but through the mentoring relationship (Adapted from Australian Financial Review, 13/2/15, page 3).

Let’s stop and look at a definition of mentoring. ‘Mentoring is to support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order that they may maximise their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance and become the person they want to be.’ Eric Parsloe, author of Coaching and Mentoring.

If you’ve been on the leadership journey for a while, then who are you mentoring? How effectively are you supporting and encouraging, within the mentoring relationship, to help bring about the best success for the one you mentor? Take a leaf out of the Apostle’s Paul’s book. He mentored Timothy and allowed his life and ministry be an example to him.

I thank God for the different mentors I have had over the years. One mentor could challenge me lovingly about my health. One mentor would give me tips on how to preach. Another mentor would pat me on the back and assure me, that it’ll all work out in the end. Leaders need mentors.

What does the Bible say?

2 Timothy 1: 13-14 - What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

What will I do now?

Maybe for you, it is time to explore a mentoring relationship with someone; be it a leadership coach, a personal coach or a mentor in a specific field of expertise. Maybe for you, it is actually time to start mentoring someone. Have you learnt some lessons along the way? What if it is time to support and encourage someone in mentoring?