In our continuing series on leadership attributes, we now come to a very important one – leaders are mentors. Mentors are more experienced leaders who willingly share their experiences with younger leaders and those aspiring to be leaders. I always enjoy mentoring others, and it would give me pleasure to see mentees go on to grow and achieve higher levels of leadership.
Mentoring others, in a way, can be looked at as a way to “give back” because other leaders poured themselves into us earlier in our careers. I like this definition of mentoring from Tony Dungy in his excellent book The Mentor Leader:
Mentoring is about building character into the lives of others, modeling and teaching attitudes and behaviors, and creating a constructive legacy to be passed along to future generations of leaders.
It is not uncommon for leaders to have multiple mentors. For example, I had one mentor that helped me with project management and another who helped with understanding technology. Also, the mentoring relationship will vary from situation to situation. One rule that I have had however, is that the mentee drives the relationship.
Why do I say that? First, although I was always willing to mentor others, I didn’t know for sure in what areas they needed help. The mentee has to tell me how I can help them, only they know for sure. Second, driving the mentoring relationship shows commitment to the relationship. In his book Mentoring 101, John Maxwell wrote:
Commitment is the one quality above all others that enables a potential leader to become a successful leader. Without commitment, there can be no success.
I would often read and discuss a leadership book with the mentee. Over the years, I’ve often used John Maxwell’s helpful book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. The chapters are short and full of illustrations. The value of our meetings was not so much about what was on the printed page, but rather our discussion of the book, the questions that were asked, etc. Even though I was the mentor, I always learned a lot in these sessions as well. However, it was the responsibility of the mentee to read the chapter assigned for the meeting and then actually come to the meeting. Some mentees would frequently reschedule our meetings or come not prepared to discuss the chapter. Doing this might reflect a lack of commitment to the mentoring relationship.
Leaders are busy, there’s no doubt about that. Taking on a mentee will only add more time to your already crowded schedule. But trust me, the rewards will outweigh any inconvenience.
This is an Adapted Excerpt From My Book “A LEADER WORTH FOLLOWING:
40 Key Leadership Attributes and Applications to Master”.
