Throughout my professional life my passion has been mentoring. Very early on in my career by complete chance I found a mentor that would have a tremendous effect on nearly everything I've done since then. Given that I myself have experienced the profound impact that mentoring could have on someone I have always wanted to pay it forward and give that gift to as many other people as possible.
I started on that journey initially by mentoring as many people as I possible could. Then realizing this was a severely limiting factor I came up with the notion of a blog about mentoring. My OnMentoring blog's goal is to both inspire people to become or seek out mentors as well as exchange ideas. The OnMentoring blog has led me to speaking engagements, posts re-published in other forums and just last year a YouTube channel as well!
The Idea
One of biggest reasons people found my blog was to find tips on how to be a mentor. It's also one of the most popular questions I get asked. I've written several articles about finding and being a mentor, figuring out if you'll be a good mentor and if you are being effective in your current mentoring relationship.
As I pass the 4th anniversary of the OnMentoring blog consisting of over 100 postings and celebrate nearly 20 years actively participating in a mentoring capacity I felt I needed a succinct mechanism for people to remember what's important about being a mentor. So I came up with an idea and a simple model that captures those key elements of being a great, effective and empowering mentor - I call it GREAT Mentoring™
The Model
Here is the model - simply remember the word GREAT and what each of the letters stands for:
G = Great - Assume your mentee is Great from the beginning no matter what - your job is to build them up from there.
R = Relate - Be sure to relate to your mentee and be personally involved. The more you are both connected to each other the more you will both get out of the mentoring relationship.
E = Ear - Be an Ear to your mentee and actively listen. Sometimes your job as a great mentor stops there because all the mentee needed was a person to bounce ideas off of. More than likely your active listening will lead to important questions that further a person's thinking and self-awareness.
A = Authentic - Authenticity is the key to a productive mentoring relationship. Be yourself always. You will quickly gain a lot of trust by being yourself and being honest. And besides you'll feel more comfortable.
T = Trustworthy - You can't have a relationship without the basic attribute of trustworthiness. You need to create a safe space for both yourself and the mentee to discuss and share anything that will move the relationship and personal growth along.
The Future
Over the course of the coming weeks and months I'll be expanding on each of these areas and adding resources such as templates, links to information and related material.
It's been my passion to make mentoring a worthwhile and life-changing pursuit for mentors, mentees and companies alike for nearly two decades. After synthesizing all that experience and research I'd like to provide you with specific tools to achieve greatness in that pursuit.
Please join me in this journey by subscribing to this site by clicking the SUBSCRIPTION link on the right side of this page!
Thank you.
