Mentoring Matters, or Making a Case for Hope
I used to think mentoring was when some person older than you that you were supposed to admire but perhaps didn’t even really like very much took you to lunch and you listened to long stories about back when times were better and how great things were. I didn’t think much of mentoring. It didn’t help that I would see postings on Craigslist in the gigs section from people (mostly men) looking for people to mentor, and those posts mostly sounded like they were looking for someone to do unpaid administrative work. My opinion of mentoring was that it was probably better if I just figured things out on my own.
Fast-forward to…now. Now, mentoring is something I do on a regular basis. I even keep 1-2 spots in my coaching practice open for people that I am mentoring, ensuring that we have calendar space in which we can work.
So, why the about-face?
What Is Mentoring?
The Association for Talent Development defines mentoring as this:
Mentoring is a reciprocal and collaborative at-will relationship that most often occurs between a senior, more experienced person (the mentor) and a less-experienced person (the mentee) for the purpose of the mentee’s growth, learning, and career development. Mentors sometimes act as role models for their mentee and provide guidance to help them reach their goals.
Mentoring is the ultimate pay-it-forward act. In its best and truest form, it is generous, selfless, and focused on helping the mentee achieve his or her goals, on increasing knowledge and learning, on creating a trust-based relationship.
Mentoring is about the mentee. It is not about the mentor; the focus is always on the mentee.
Mentoring does require content authority and actual experience. For example, I can serve as a mentor to other Agile coaches, but I cannot mentor budding musicians. I’ve been an Agile coach for ten years and have worked diligently to improve my skills. However, I’ve never been a musician and wouldn’t have the first clue how to be one.
The best metaphor I’ve heard for mentoring is this:
“Mentorship is the act of planting trees under which you will never enjoy the shade.”
— Hyacinthe Loyson
For the record, I had to dig a bit to be able to find the correct attribution for this paraphrase. French theologian Hyacinthe Loyson said this while in Paris is 1866, apparently, but it is as true today as it was in the 19th century.
What Is Mentoring Not?
Just as important as knowing what mentoring is is knowing what mentoring is not.
Mentoring is not coaching. There are many similarities, but no, they are not identical. Only in mentoring do I share my own experiences, things that I have tried in my past.
Mentoring is not consulting. I’m not here to tell you what you should or should not do. That’s what consulting is for. I may share experiences, ideas, and tools, but ultimately, the decision as to which path you will follow is up to you.
Mentoring is not mindless. I think about and plan most everything, and yes, that includes my mentoring sessions. Even if I never use that plan, I am mindful and careful about how we can best use our time together.
Mentoring within the Competency Framework
Several years ago, I completed a weeklong agile coaching bootcamp, one of the ICAgile camps for both coaching and facilitation. One of the skills we began to practice there was mentoring. This was the first time that I’d encountered mentoring in this form. Deep, powerful questions went into the mentoring sessions, as did potential ideas to try, which I could take or leave as I saw fit.
This was nothing like what I saw in Craigslist, nothing at all.
In the Agile Coaching Competency Framework wheel, mentoring sits next to teaching and directly across from coaching, and with good reason: they are different skills. This is important: teaching and mentoring are about imparting skills, sharing experiences, gaining knowledge. Coaching and facilitation, on the other hand, are about relationship, holding space, and reimagining what is and what could be. Am I trying to start a holy war on coaching and mentoring? Absolutely not. I just want to be clear on what mentoring is and why we need it. As an agile coach or any kind of coach, for that matter, we will oftentimes mentor other people to ensure that our practical, experienced-based skills are passed forward.
Finding a Mentor
Earlier this summer, June 2020, to be exact, I was supposed to be in Lagos, Nigeria, speaking at the first-ever Regional Scrum Gathering. It was going to be great! I was going to talk about powerful questions (I know, I know, always with the questions), and I was going to deliver a full-day workshop on coaching skills. I was all set to go, and then Covid-19 rolled in. So, I pivoted. I moved the workshop to Mural, modified my facilitation plans to account for not being in the same room as attendees, and found a different way to make the session work. Last Friday, I delivered this workshop in Nigeria for people for whom this type of training was generally not financially possible, all from the (dis)comfort of my chair in Austin, Texas.
After that workshop, one woman approached me about mentoring. We had an in-depth conversation about what a mentoring relationship means to her, what she needs from it, and the like. I’ve included some of the questions I used during that initial conversation here. These questions can be used, with some modification, of course, by either the potential mentor or the person seeking a mentor.
Why do I want a mentor?
Why do I want this person to be my mentor? What do I like or dislike about this person, their work, and their values?
What do I want out of this mentor/mentee relationship?
What is my level of commitment for this work, for this relationship?
How do I want to work with this person?
Big questions, without a doubt, but they helped us both to be very clear about what we could give to the relationship and how we wanted to work together.
Going Forward
In tracking down the Loyson quote, I also found this gem of Thomas Fuller’s, although without mention of shade:
“He that plants Trees, loves others besides himself.”
— Thomas Fuller
What I love about this version of mentoring is that it recognizes that both the mentor as well as the mentee have roles to play in the relationship.
In writing this, I realized that I’d left something unnamed in my definition of mentoring: hope. In a nutshell, mentoring is about hope. When I mentor, I have hope for those that come after me, I give hope to those following, I am building for a future that I will never see. I hope for better things. There is, I think, hope on the other side as well. The person being mentored (ideally) receives hope, too, not just knowledge and skill and experience, but in knowing that someone else believes so strongly in them that they’re willing to give the most valuable thing they have: time.
There is one question I did not include in my above list.
How will you share this experience and what you learn with others in the future?
I see this question as building on that shared hope. We sow hope in a mentoring relationship with the intent that more trees will be planted. If that forest of shared knowledge, skill, and heart-first relationships doesn’t give one cause to rejoice, I don’t know what will.
Image courtesy of Linda Nickell. Connect with her on Instagram as @coznlinda.