MENTORING IS BACK IN FAVOR AGAIN, like a wonderful old story that hasn’t been told for so long it sounds new. In some ways it has taken on the characteristics of a fad; if too much is expected too soon, it will fail.
Mentoring may seem new, but actually it is an update of one of the oldest and best methods of learning. In times before degrees were mandatory, the mentoring system was the accepted one, not only in manual skills but in the professions, such as in medicine and law.
I have heard respected pastors say they believe the apprentice system of pastoring would be more effective than most seminary programs. Ray Stedman, who pastored Peninsula Bible Church for many years, believed in and practiced the apprentice method. He always had a few young men on staff who would travel with him—together they would study, observe, and delineate the scriptural principles of life. These young men saw how the work was done successfully and how they could apply their learning in a practical way.
During the Second World War, industry discovered that when workers learned new skills, they did not retain the information unless they used it immediately. Simultaneous learning and doing is the secret of cooperative education. There are several types of mentoring. I will discuss three: role model, lifestyle, and, the more common, skills-art mentoring.
Role model
Role models personify whom we would like to become.
My wife, Mary Alice, had three women in her life who laid out the path she wanted to walk. The first was her high school teacher, Miss Brown, who was stately, dignified, totally ladylike. Mary Alice saw in her what she felt a southern lady should be, and she wanted to be that. Even today, after being away from Miss Brown for more than fifty years, she will refer to her as the perfect lady.
Next was her Bible teacher, Mrs. Keen, who taught a group of young mothers to understand the Scripture. Her cup overflowed with love and grace from the Lord to those in her class. Mary Alice would say of her, “She is what a Christian should be.”
Then there was Miss Gordon, a tiny, immaculate, white-haired woman in her eighties. She was raised in culture and wealth but spent a great deal other time reaching prisoners. On occasion we would take her to church, and other times we would simply visit. We were with her as Gert Behanna was with her Episcopal priest: we sat and warmed our hands in the warmth of her love. She personified the quiet power of victory. When she passed away, it was a short step from here to heaven.
Mary Alice found in these three women role models who mentored her adult life and vectored her lifestyle. They influenced her not by what they had but by who they were.
Observation and identification are the important elements in role-model mentoring. Often the role model is not conscious of his or her effect on another. Sometimes there is little personal contact between the two. Sometimes a role model will be a character from the Bible. Some say, “I’m like Peter” or “I resonate with Paul.” Another, “Mine is a quiet witness, like Andrew.”
We often look to historical figures for our models. As you know by now, Fenelon, the French priest, is my daily mentor. Though he lived and wrote three hundred years ago, he still speaks to me. He holds me just as accountable through my reading of his ancient writings as if we were talking on the phone.
Lifestyle mentoring
Another form of mentoring defines the principles of living. Recently I heard a young man say, “My grandfather was everything to me. He loved me, and he taught me how to live.” How fortunate to have an older person in one’s life about whom you can say that.
As we look at the Scripture for lifestyle mentoring, we immediately think of Paul and Timothy. From the text we don’t know how much technical skill as a missionary Paul gave Timothy, but we do know Paul was an excellent sponsor. We know he was a father in the faith. He let Timothy observe him at work. Paul promoted him to the churches. In the broad sense, we could call Paul a lifestyle mentor to Timothy.
This type of mentoring is a kind of parenting without the typical parental responsibilities. The real responsibility falls on the young person to absorb and to observe correctly.
For years Zig Ziglar and I have met to talk. Zig gets out his paper and pencil, even though he has a far better memory for material than most people. When he and I discussed this chapter, Zig said, “Be sure to tell the person being mentored to make notes. No one should trust his memory with anything this important.” Another friend, Dr. Ramesh Richard, will invariably put his electronic notetaker on the table as we begin to talk. He says he has a complete file of all our past conversations.
For over forty years in observing my mentor, Maxey Jar-man, I made notes of everything I saw him do or heard him say that I thought was meaningful. After he retired and I was in my sixties, I went alone to our place at the lake and transcribed all those notes. When I told him what I had done, his only remark was, “What a waste.” He didn’t see himself as a mentor in the normal sense. You had to watch to learn. When I asked him to review my notes, he offered to give me a memorandum amplifying anything he felt I had not seen fully. I put his sixteen-page memo with my hundreds of pages of notes and observations over the forty years of our friendship.
The responsibility of the lifestyle mentor is to be open, real, and to consistently personify who he is so the young person receives a clear signal. The mentor must provide a comfortable atmosphere in which the student feels free to ask any question he needs answered.
Sometimes it’s profitable for a young person to make a list of questions. One of the men I’ve worked with for several years is coming to Dallas with a list of questions he wants me to answer before I go into the senile eclipse. These may be questions about the older person’s life or questions the younger person is or will be facing. For example, the learner may wane to ask the mentor, “What were the major decisions in your life? What were the circumstances and what were the principles involved in your decision-making? How did you evaluate the outcome?” These questions help in forming a case study. The more probing the questions, the better the learning.
A good mentor never ridicules a question. He may choose not to answer it, but he is careful never to ridicule, for questions are the pump that makes the answers flow.
I’m an inveterate notetaker. Rarely do I hear anything, read anything, or even think anything that I feel I should retain that I don’t commit to paper. I’ve been doing this now for fifty years.
Skills-Art mentoring
Role-model and lifestyle are unique forms of mentoring and certainly are in the minority of mentoring relationships. Mentoring normally is done to improve skills and the art of performance.
Increasingly churches are starting mentoring programs. I have participated in a few, and from my experience have come to believe that the concept of mentoring is not generally well understood. Often what it becomes is simply older men visiting with younger men without an agenda. These visits sometimes turn into Bible study or prayer rimes. These are excellent activities, but they are not mentoring.
Mentoring is a one-on-one relation between a mentor and mentoree for the specific and definable development of a skill or an art. One of my favorite mentoring stories is of the young pianist who came to Leonard Bernstein and asked to be mentored by him. Bernstein said, “Tell me what you want to do, and I will tell you whether or not you’re doing it.” When you analyze this, you realize Bernstein’s deep understanding of mentoring. The young man initiated the contact, he had a specific request, and he made the request of an authority—not that he might get rich as a concert pianist or famous like Bernstein, but that he might become a better pianist.
Bernstein essentially said to the young man, “You’re responsible for your playing and your practice. The one thing you can’t do is hear yourself as a great pianist hears you. That I can do and will do for you.”
The study of mentoring can be organized, but not the application of it. Effective mentoring has no set formula. It’s a living relationship and progresses in fits and starts. It can involve a specific area or several areas. For example, one big area of need is the improvement of decision-making. Goal-setting is another. However, these must be specific. The goal may be broad, but in skills-art mentoring it must be specific.
I’ve discovered it is not difficult to make a list of desired characteristics in a mentor. However, like characteristics of a leader, they are in combination and not equally balanced. To some degree, however, each of these qualities should be in a mentor:
1. The two must share a compatible philosophy. Our goals and methods are really an expression of our philosophy. If the goal is to be Christian, the philosophy must be built on divine principles. To me, wisdom is the knowledge and application of scriptural principles; not the citing of verses or telling of stories, but the definition of the principles. I usually illustrate this by the biblical principle: “God will not do for you what you can do for yourself, nor will he let you do for yourself what only he can do.”
It is wrong to pray for a miracle, for instance, when God has given us the mental ability, opportunity, and facilities to accomplish what we should do. To ask for a miracle is to ask God to be redundant. But he will not let us do for ourselves what only he can do. For example, he will not let us gain our salvation by works; it is only by his grace.
On the other hand, if the goal is based on humanistic values, then the result will be cultural, not Christian. Human philosophy often exploits our greed and selfishness. Human philosophy promotes self-love and self-aggrandizement. Recently a young man came to me asking that I help him “make a million dollars.” That was his life’s goal. He has a materialistic, humanistic philosophy.
I told him chat we did not agree on philosophy; therefore, I would not be a good mentor for him.
2. The mentor should be knowledgeable in the subject and objective in his criticism. The mentor who simply says what the other wants to hear is irresponsible. He should not counsel in matters in which he is not an expert or pass judgment in subjects beyond his limitation. The young pianist was right in going to Bernstein, because he was an authority, a knowledgeable expert, and an objective critic for the young pianist.
It is important that the mentor on occasion admit, “I don’t know. I’ve had no experience with that.” It is good when he has a broad network of knowledgeable friends who might be helpful on occasion. That is one of the strengths of Mayo Clinic. It can call in experts when an individual doctor gets beyond his or her expertise.
Once a young, brash president of a growing corporation was being dangerously extravagant. Though I was on the board, he wasn’t accepting my authority on the subject. I got him an appointment with the ceo of a major corporation, who successfully warned him and possibly saved the company.
3. The mentor must genuinely believe in the potential of the mentoree. A mentor cannot do serious thinking about the needs of the learner or spend the necessary time with him without believing in his potential. A mentor isn’t doing what he’s doing to be a nice guy. Then there may be times when the learner loses confidence in himself, particularly after a failure, and he will need the mentor to restore his confidence.
I had breakfast with a young executive in Dallas, and I asked him to tell me his story. He said, “Until early in my twenties, I amounted to nothing. I think that was due to the face that I was raised in a fundamentalist family who believed it was wrong to say anything good about anyone that might stir up his pride. I felt there was nothing special about me until my Sunday school teacher put his arm around my shoulders and said, ‘I believe in you.’ “
Gradually this young man began to believe in himself. From that time, he started to climb the executive ladder.
4. A good mentor helps define the vision, the goal, and the plan. So many young men I calk to have several options for their life, and they are not equipped to choose the right one. They hesitate at the thought of giving up the others.
Recently I had lunch with a young man who graduated from a prestigious European university with high marks and told me he had “tested genius in thirteen areas.” Yet he had done nothing, though he was in his early thirties. I was talking to another man in the same general circumstances, and I said, “You could have married six or eight girls, but you chose one. You will have to do the same with your goal.”
Choosing a specific goal is the key to many other activities. The goal defines the discipline, creates the energy, and gives the measure of progress.
Clarifying the goal is a crucial step in the mentoring process. It controls so many other elements. I try to find whether the individual’s goal is formed by outside or inside influences. Is his accomplishment to please or impress others or to satisfy himself? The image of success has become prevalent in our society. I want to know what gives him his deepest satisfaction. What, to him, has meaning? What does he do easily? What does he learn quickly and remember clearly? Is the goal realistic, considering his talent, opportunities, and facilities?
Sometimes a person will say, “I know where I want to go, but I don’t know how to get there.” I have found it much easier to work out the map once you know the destination. Be sure the plan is as simple as it can be. Elaborate plans seldom get carried out. Too often, complicated plans are a subconscious attempt to avoid doing.
Paul J. Meyer, creator of Sales Motivation Institute, spent the day with me when he was a young salesman going over the four-step program he had for his life. I was so impressed I asked him for a copy, and he gave me the original, written on a piece of yellow paper, which I still have in my files. In our original conversation, he said that after you set the specific goal, you work the plan, then forget the goal, and develop enthusiasm for the plan, knowing that if you work the plan, you will reach the goal.
5. The chemistry must be good. The first evidence of this is clear communication. Each must clearly and easily understand the other. Before I start to work with someone, I check this out by calking for a few minutes and then asking the person to repeat what I’ve said. Sometimes I’m amazed at what I hear. It’s difficult to work well together unless each communicates well with the other.
Intuition—a feeling of the spirit of each other—is also important. When our spirits are in harmony, then we can work until our communications are clear. We won’t jump to conclusions or get carried off into prejudices. I find this particularly true when working between races.
Often our communications are controlled by certain grids. For example, our value system is a grid. If someone said to me, “I don’t believe the Bible,” that would immediately get stopped by my value grid. I would find myself subconsciously devaluing what that person said. There are several grids through which our communications must go.
Communication, to me, is understanding, not agreement. I hear people say that their problem is a lack of communication, when it may actually be genuine difference of opinion. No amount of communication will change that.
6. The mentor needs the experience and originality to develop options rather than decisions. Often individuals with whom I work initially become frustrated that I will not give them advice but rather options from which they can choose. If I give advice, then I’m taking over responsibility for their decision-making, and that is not my function. Furthermore, how a decision is carried out is as important as the decision, and the mentor can’t control the carrying out.
The mentor must never take over the decision-making responsibility for the individual. After the mentor has given options and ramifications, an intelligent learner will generally select the correct one, the one he believes in most and therefore the one that will get his best effort. A good mentor is not a quick-fix artist.
7. The mentor must be able to commit to a person and to a situation. Once I was involved in a land development requiring large amounts of money from a New England bank. The loan officer was careful in exploring all the details. He explained, “Don’t think I’m being too careful. I don’t want to get you halfway across the river.” When we commit to a mentor, we commit to the person all the way across. That will take time and thinking. I must be willing to take a phone call any time it comes from a mentoree in stress.
8. The mentor must be given the responsibility to hold the mentoree accountable. That the mentoree gives this responsibility to the mentor is important, because this avoids his becoming resentful or quietly rebellious or hostile. Accountability is a major feature of mentoring.
I tell one of my mentorees that my accountability factor is like the tail on a kite—it keeps it from darting around. Accountability is not control. In mentoring it is pointing out objectively what is happening and asking if that is what the mentoree wants. At no time should the mentor take control over the other’s life. The mentor is a counselor, not a boss.
Accountability is confined to the area of mentoring. It is not open season on all areas of a person’s life. If we are mentoring in professional matters, it doesn’t give us the right to invade family matters.
Traits of a good mentoree
There are also certain traits essential to an effective mentoree. Some may have to be developed more as the relationship develops.
1. The mentoree must be honest with himself. Effective mentoring must be based on reality. To me, two of the most important words in life are “current reality.” That means being committed to things as they are, not as we wish they were. We may want them to be different and be willing to work to make them different, but for the present we have to deal with things as they are. I am particularly sensitive to what the psychologists call “transference.” The mentoree must own the situation before he can correct it or develop it.
Recently I stopped working with a young man because he had been dishonest about his financial situation. He admitted he was in debt but said that it was his wife’s fault, which he couldn’t control. A prominent psychiatrist once told me that America’s second greatest sin, after refusing to delay gratification, is transference, at the heart of so much of the victim syndrome. Those who feel they are victims generally expect more than they are due.
I applaud the individual who is handicapped in some way (mentally, socially, physically) but has accepted it as a challenge and no longer sees himself as a victim but as a victor. It’s easy to work a little harder and a little longer with people who think that way. An executive I’ve admired for years had an eye put out when he was a small boy. When he entered an Ivy League school, he checked the records and found that no one had ever made straight As and four letters in athletics. He did it, with one eye. He later became vice-president of a major corporation. He was a winner, not a victim.
2. A mentoree must be a good student. A truly good student enjoys the growth process as well as the reward. When I became intrigued with golf, I thoroughly enjoyed the practice and the study of the game. Great teachers want to find great students. With my mentor I tried to be a good student. That entailed several things for me:
First, I never tried to impress him with my knowledge. I always exposed to him my ignorance. To hide my ignorance from a teacher is as foolish as hiding my sickness from a doctor. A humble person is always conscious of his ignorance more than his knowledge.
Dr. Walter Hearn, who was a biochemist at Yale University, surprised me once by saying, “Fred, every night when you go to bed you ought to be more ignorant than you were when you woke up.” I took this facetiously until he explained that if I thought of my knowledge as a balloon and every day that balloon increased in size, it would touch more and more ignorance on the periphery. Therefore my knowledge brought me into contact with my greater ignorance. The arrogant are proud of their knowledge; the humble are acquainted with their ignorance.
A good student never tries to “use” his mentor. A person with a well-known mentor can be tempted to refer to him in ways that really use him, particularly in quoting him out of context. The mentor is for progress, not ego satisfaction. On a few occasions I have been abused by someone claiming me as his mentor when there was no relation.
A good student works to ask the right questions. Right questions come from thought, analysis, and discernment. He never asks an idle or careless question. It is demeaning to the mentor. There is power in a good question. Recently a young professor told me how following an awards program he asked a prominent man two questions, and the man concentrated on answering only those two questions to the disregard of all those trying to shake hands with him. I have found writing out my questions beforehand helpful in minimizing the verbiage.
A good student does his homework. In dealing with my two mentors, I never called them unless I had written down on paper what I wanted to talk to them about. When we met, I had organized my questions; I knew it was not a social situation. If later we wanted to spend some social time together, that would be up to them, not me.
In fact, I never walked into their office and sat down until I was invited to sit down. They had to know I was not going to waste their time.
3. The mentoree must show reasonable progress. Progress is the pay the mentoree gives the mentor. Currently I spend at least 50 percent of my time mentoring talented individuals. I make no charge. But I get amply paid by the vicarious accomplishments of these individuals. Putting our lives into the lives of others is the best way to attain human immortality.
In the New York obituary of my mentor, it said, “The awesome intellect of him is gone.” I can refute that, for as long as I and others whom he mentored live, he lives.
4. The mentoree needs to develop disciplines to maintain his gains. Discipline always starts with a habit, and when the habit is practiced enough it turns into a reflex, and then it doesn’t have to be consciously done anymore.
Our disciplines should be more positive than negative. The only reason we employ negative disciplines is to help us perform the positive ones. Unfortunately, in Christian circles a lot of people practice negative disciplines and consider this Christianity. They don’t realize the negatives are practiced in order to release time, energy, and resources to do the positive.
Let me show you what I mean with a silly illustration: Your wife sends your son to the grocery store for a loaf of bread. She gives him the money, asks him to hurry, not to stop and play with his friends, not to get dirty, and not to lose the money. He hurries off and comes back without the bread. When she questions him, he says, “You told me to hurry. I did. You told me not to stop to play. I didn’t. You said not to get dirty. I didn’t. You said not to lose the money, and I didn’t. I didn’t do what you told me not to do.”
Nor did he get the bread. The negatives were to promote him in the positive of getting the bread. He avoided the negatives but didn’t complete the positive. Too often we police people with the negatives rather than inspire them with the positives.
5. The mentoree must possess vision and commitment. As a mentoree, the two most important elements are vision and commitment. A clear vision and unconditional commitment are absolutely necessary. History is replete with illustrations of great accomplishments by ordinary individuals with extraordinary vision and commitment.
I vaguely recall a story about an ancient philosopher who when asked by a young man how he could get wisdom, took the young man down to the stream and held his head under the water until he nearly drowned. When he let the young man up, the philosopher said, “Long for wisdom like you longed for air, and you will get it.”
There must be desire and passion for accomplishment—definable accomplishment.
I do not know how to instill passion in a mentoree. As a mentor, I try to channel it. I have found that continually reviewing the vision renews the passion. The passion works the plan, overcoming disappointments, and the plan accomplishes the goal.
Ten principles of a fruitful relationship
To close this chapter, let me mention several additional mentoring principles:
First, in a healthy mentoring relationship, all the cards are on the table. That involves crust between the two. I am careful not to tell my wife confidential matters that are told to me. Anything given in confidence should be held in confidence.
Second, though I have been mentoring actively for more than forty years, I cannot claim any success in improving character in adults. I have become convinced that the only improvement in character in adults is through spiritual experience, not through mentoring. Sophisticated individuals may learn to mask or hide their character flaws, but under excessive pressure they will fail. Character failures come at the most crucial time, when they can least be afforded. Dishonesty, laziness, anger, greed, selfishness, uncooperativeness—all are character failures.
Third, we progress by climbing, then plateauing for assimilation, then climbing again, plateauing again—repeating the process as long as we live. Unfortunately, many people reach a comfortable plateau and stop. They become seduced by comfort and routine. It is the mentor’s challenge to see in the mentoree a potential he does not see and to motivate him to make another climb and another plateau, and then another and another, until his full talent is developed.
Fourth, not everyone can be a mentor, just as many superior performers cannot coach. Skill in performing and skill in coaching are very different. Most successful leaders have had good mentors, just as successful athletes have had good coaches.
Fifth, every good man should be good at something. Helping to develop this good is the mentor’s responsibility. Management expert Peter Drucker has the correct idea of mentoring. When someone says of another, “He is a good man,” Peter asks, “Good for what?”
Sixth, a mentor has accomplished great good when he has taught the individual the joy of accomplishment. I learned this from my mentor, Maxey Jarman. It has become so much a part of my life that when I get low, I immediately start to do something that I feel will be worthwhile. The joy of living returns.
The great opera diva Beverly Sills personified this philosophy when one afternoon at a cocktail party in her apartment one guest said, “We’d better leave, Beverly has to sing tonight.” She protested, “No, I don’t have to sing tonight. I get to sing tonight.”
Seventh, as we progress in our relationship we should come to the place where we need no preface or qualification. My two great mentors never prefaced with me. At first that seemed rather discourteous, and then I realized they were paying me the ultimate compliment of saying that I wanted to know truth and they didn’t have to adjust it or varnish it.
Eighth, the mentor has a responsibility to create an atmosphere in which the learner can be honest and still respected. In good communication we need to avoid two disruptions: Never show shock at anything anyone says, for in showing shock we are setting our value structure against theirs. Instead of verbalizing shock, I like to say something neutral or noncommittal. If appropriate, I will even try to say something humorous to prevent ill feelings.
Never show curiosity. Curiosity hurts good communication. I think we all would like for people to be interested in us but not curious about us. Curiosity is an invasion of our privacy and generally comes out of a question that has nothing to do with the main purpose of the communication. For example, if someone cold me he was having an affair, I would never ask with whom. If he wants to tell me, that is his call.
Ninth, I make the mentoree responsible for all contact. The individual must set up the appointment, make the calls, and so forth. I do this for a reason: I want the mentoree to know that he can break off the relationship any time he wants to simply by not contacting me. He controls the continuation of the relationship. I will never question why. Sometimes a mentoring relationship becomes nonproductive and should end. I accept this as normal.
Tenth, mutual respect is crucial. I have never had any success helping anyone I did not respect. I’ve tried but failed miserably.
Joy of mentoring
My favorite title is “mentor.” Zig Ziglar flattered me, after years of publicly referring to me as his mentor, by dedicating Over the Top to me. I shouldn’t repeat it, but since I’m over the hill rather than over the top, here is what he wrote:
“To my friend and mentor Fred Smith, Sr., who is fun and inspiring. He is also the wisest and most effective teacher I’ve ever had.”
I hope you sense the seriousness and joy I feel in mentoring.
Copyright © 1998 Fred Smith, Sr.
