Growing Leaders founder and president, Tim Elmore speaks about mentoring:
At Growing Leaders, we’ve decided to post a helpful article each week continuing through the summer on our blog page, geared especially for student leaders. You can expect it on Fridays. They’ll contain practical tips for leading meetings, communicating a vision, choosing priorities, dealing with difficult peers, bossing your calendar, effective planning and more. You can find today’s tip below. If you like it, it’s our gift to you and your students. Feel free to copy it for each of your student leaders as a discussion guide that will equip them to be more healthy leaders. Also, click on “Free Resources” to view and download the growing library of Leader Tips on a special page of our site. This is a page just for young leaders to practice great leadership. Feel free to have your students look for it, all summer as they anticipate leading this fall. Enjoy.
I have been privileged to lead mentoring communities each year since 1979. I have mentored groups of high school students, college students, twenty-somethings, athletic directors and coaches, and mid-life executive leaders.
As I observe the art of mentoring around the country, I’ve noticed that most mentoring initiatives go “south” and eventually for one of two reasons: they are over-programmed or under-programmed. By this I mean they either become too structured and kill the life and excitement out of the relationship, or they provide no structure and they simply turn into chatting about current events and never push anyone to grow. Below, I will summarize what I do to balance these two extremes.
The Focus of a Mentor
Student leaders and staff members engaged in mentoring report the following five items define an effective mentor’s role:
What the Mentoring Community Does Over the Course of a Year:
It is amazing how life-changing this kind of experience is for leaders. Some have told me it is the single most impacting experience they’ve ever had. Most have never been mentored and most want to mentor others, once they know how.
For a practical encyclopedia on the subject, check out the book, Life Giving Mentors on our website: www.GrowingLeaders.com
Questions for Reflection