I was interviewed by mentorship expert Kate Berezo for her podcast "The Mentors Who Made Us" recently. After only a few introductory episodes, Kate has already set the bar high with really great questions, solid content, and excellent guests.
Mentorship is like friendship on steroids, without the emotional weight. It's a connection rooted in advancement and has as its sole intent, the reaching of a goal. But it is more than just guidance. It’s a relationship rooted in trust, respect, and shared values.
Over the years, I’ve learned that the most impactful mentoring relationships are built with people you know, trust, admire, respect, and honor. These elements are essential so that you can maximize your experience and really make progress rather than just paying lip-service to the idea.
Paying lip service to development is the equivalent of signing up for a gym membership, talking to your friends about your goals, charting out how long you expect your progress to take....and then never going to the gym.
Working with someone else and having them guide you, and being willing to be vulnerable as you step into that space, is you getting up, getting out the door and actually going to the gym. Do the work and you will get results. You know this to be true.
As Kate said so well: "This is what mentorship looks like: guiding you to dig deeper, ask the right questions, and discover your own truth."
There is a sign above my door in Seattle as I step out into the world. It says "ELIMINATE COMPLICATED". I will be diving in to this in a subsequent article, but what it means in this one is that mentoring need not be emotionally, psychologically, or professionally tangled.
Ultimately, we want this kind of work to flow. We want to be in a flow state with it where we are on a path that is consistent and incremental, rather than obsessing about endlessly moving upwards.
Self-work is challenging and there will be setbacks along the way. We need to partner with
On the episode we emphasize the importance of mentorship and how it can profoundly impact one's path, specifically through personal relationships (I describe mine with a trusted mentor and friend), academia, or artistic endeavors.
Mentors don't have to be gurus. The relationship would be skewed if they were. They can be trusted friends, partners, and even family members. The mutual trust and intentionality of the interaction underlying the relationship is the key.
For me, mentors in my life have taken the form of trusted guides who helped steer me when I’ve lost my way or needed to find renewed focus.
I remember once, years ago, I had gone through a really rough stretch involving the end of a friendship due to a betrayal. I had a really hard time finding my way and wasn’t sure how I was going to get back to center again. I had a mentor, a close friend who knew that his role was to help me find clarity, and he served as a sounding board for me.
At one point, in the midst of months of feeling confused and listless, I had a good weekend. And not just a fun weekend, but one that was truly fulfilling and inspiring. I remember going back to my mentor and telling him about the weekend.
He looked at me and asked me to think of this weekend as if it were a well. He said that I could imagine my listlessness or pain, as a thirst. It was a thirst that had been quenched by that well. In the future, he suggested, whenever I was thirsty for this kind of clarity in the future, that I could return to this well to drink.
This was a transformational moment for me and one that I remembered for decades. This is the power of trust and connection. It was transformative in a time when I was feeling vulnerable. Trusting in my mentor and friend, and having them be worthy of that trust, led to a solid growth opportunity. His stake in the game was seeing me advance.
Trust is the foundation of any mentoring relationship as it also allows honest feedback to flow freely. It creates a situation where authenticity and vulnerability are viewed as strengths rather than weaknesses. This was the case with my friend and mentor when I came to him feeling lost. I wasn't afraid to tell him that I was lost. I was just lost. That's a solid starting point.
But that ability, to say such a thing or to describe such a place, is essential because without the ability to be vulnerable and to admit or show weakness, we end up being steered - or steering ourselves - in directions that aren't key to our growth.
For example, if we don't want to admit something (let's call it "X"), we might ignore it, and thus could end up changing something else (let's call it "Y") instead. Not because Y needed changing, but because we didn't have the courage to (or the situation that would allow us to) mention X and how we needed or wanted to dive into it.
This is a borrowing against ourselves in a way and it never ends well. We are going to have to do the work on X ourselves eventually so it makes sense to do it sooner than later and with people we trust in every moment helping guide the way.
It's tough living in a world where our actions and desires are scrutinized and "liked" (or ghosted!) in every moment. The lack of a like is a mini-death where we don't get the validation we need to continue or the jolt of encouragement to keep trying.
When we find a mentor we trust, or, if we can become a mentor for someone else and serve as that trusted source of contact, then we discover a mutual bond as a way though the chaos which allows us to start building a better now, and we get to do that outside of the shackles that likes present to us and by which we are often bound.
Ok, so what are the potential downsides? Surely, there could be nothing wrong with turning to someone else for guidance?
Without a system of check-in’s, mentorship can establish and enhance power imbalances and even dependency between people rather than supporting mutual development and independent thinking and growth.
People are ego-driven, always insecure, sometimes generally freaked out, and are flawed as a result. This can lead to strange imbalances in relationships depending on the day. The operative word is “can” because relationally, mentoring doesn’t need to go here.
What to watch out for:
· Mentoring in traditionally hierarchical settings such as corporate environments, academic situations, and wherever there are established roles in a vertical power structure can perpetuate unequal dynamics of power between those being mentored and those doing the mentoring. Not a good thing. We need to be aware of this potential so that we can work counter to it.
· If the mentor holds sway or any degree of considerable control over the mentee’s success beyond the coaching relationship, or if that mentor can influence the resources of opportunities available to the mentee, caution should be taken. The work could be skewed in a way that is distant potentially from the primary goal of achievement and advancement.
The issue is that the imbalance in the dynamic here could stifle actual growth, and inhibit self-initiation. It can also even create dependency where the person being mentored is acting out of hope, and expectation for advancement or recognition, rather than discovering their own path.
Another more practical critique of mentoring is that mentoring as a concept often benefits those who have access to established resources, contacts, networks, and is more difficult to engage with for those who do not have similar opportunities.
Consider peer mentorship as a solution. More work is done on the front end to make sure that the mentor/mentee relationship is rooted in a more reciprocal or egalitarian balance, but that work insures that there later is less of a one-sided transfer of knowledge, and more a situation where participants see mutual growth.
As I talk about in my book, Reclaim the Moment: 7 Strategies to Build a Better Now, we learn about ourselves while in relationship and we grow accordingly. The same is true for mentorship. We become more ourselves through the relational dynamic.
We learn about ourselves and we grow into who we actually are when we work with and see ourselves reflected in other people around us. If we want to build the future that we want, we need to bridge the gap between what we want, what we can imagine, and what we currently have. Mentors can help get us there. Balance in relationships can get us there.
If you've ever been in a really strong and healthy relationship, you know how empowering it can be to have someone have your back and uplift and support you for the sake of just doing exactly that, rather than having an ulterior motive. Real relationships can exist all around us. They just take some time to find.
This means developing and exploring meaningful and authentic relationships so that we are connected to the idea of helping people feel like they actually matter. That's where we are going to find the best mentors. This also means that learning and growth will transcend simply having mentoring be a professional activity.
Ultimately, if people realize that they have immense responsibility to themselves and to the other, whether they are mentor or mentee, then they will commit to real change.
The mentorship has the potential to transcend the issues that can creep in, or overwhelm participants. Instead, we can eliminate complicated, and can shift towards the potential for creating lasting developmental connections. These will inspire growth and lead to both parties feeling as though their contribution, and the outcome from it, really matters.
Check out my conversation with Kate by following her here on LinkedIn. You can check out the episode on Apple podcasts here.
You can find out more about me and my keynote speeches and trainings, listen to podcasts where I ramble brilliantly about a host of topics, and read more things like this article at www.gregbennick.com