7 Tips for Mentors and Coaches

All power and authority comes with a responsibility to serve. Those who realise it often live the roles of mentors or coaches to give to others what they have learnt in terms of life experience or professional skills.

To clarify again, a mentor helps the protégé to clarify his or her intent while a coach helps a person to improve or clarify his or her ability to do something. To complement the earlier article on tips for a mentee, here are some tips that mentors and coaches can use to become more effective at the task:

1) You can’t Control the Outcome

A seasoned mentor knows that his job is limited to using his best intentions and efforts to transmit the wealth of his knowledge, wisdom and skill to the protégé. But ultimately he is not responsible for what the protégé does with this wealth. The mentor therefore must be unconditional in the relationship. If there is any attempt to control the outcome, the relationship will become self serving to a degree.

2) Your Attention

You are required to give your fullest attention to the protégé with the focus on serving what is in the mentee’s best interest. This means you give the protégé full significance, you listen without interruption, you do not compare and you do not judge the mentee on the basis of his or her weaknesses. In the Sufi tradition for instance, the master never thinks of himself as superior to the disciple. You must observe the mentee with mindfulness to gauge strengths and weaknesses. You must also seek to reinforce the goodness in the mentee so that it covers the weaknesses ultimately. Do not enter into the relationship if you cannot invest your time and full attention into developing the mentee.

3) The Protégé is the Project

Know that your relationship with the protégé is not about your glory, ego and success. The project of this relationship is the enablement of the protégé. The project is to help the protégé to change weak areas into strengths. If you understand this, a number of things will clarify in your relationship. For instance, you will not share your life experience to get appreciation but to show the way. You will not speak for the sake of speaking but only if it really might help the mentee. You will not expect the mentee to return to you with favours and place you on a pedestal forever and ever because the relationship is not about you… it’s about the protégé.

4) Preach what You Practice

You cannot possibly expect or demand from the protégé something that you have not attained or practiced yourself. Etsko Schuitema explains it in these words: “Apply the criteria that you impose on the other on yourself, with equal ferocity and ruthlessness.” People with children would understand this instinctively. The best way to teach a child is to live by example.

5) No Mollycoddling

The focus of your relationship must be to make the protégé independent of you. The protégé should use his mind and draw from your experience and wisdom to make good decisions and the right choices. If the protégé depends on you emotionally or otherwise, your approach as a teacher and guide is flawed. Again, a dependent or sanctimonious protégé smacks of your self-significance which is not what this relationship is about.

6) Your Genuine Care

The coaching legend Eddie Robinson said, “Coaching is a profession of love. You can’t coach people unless you love them”. The truth is that you will only win the trust and love of your mentees and students if you genuinely care for their well being. And genuine love does not mean that you always be nice to them. In fact, genuine love and concern will require you to be firm, strict and unapologetic where the protégé has gone off the track. Your concern must not be to please the mentee but to do what is in the mentee’s best interest, even if it hurts your own.

7) No Substitute for Patience

Neurologist David Levitan says that roughly ten thousand hours of practice makes one achieve real mastery of a task. A mentor therefore needs to be really patient with the mentees in imparting skills and wisdom. Again, it all boils down to the relationship being about the mentee’s enablement.

Remember, that your key skills as a mentor are listening, observation and giving feedback. Listening and observation enables to understand the real issues and unconditional love enables to give the right feedback.

Finally, your job as a mentor is to make the mentee take accountability of his intent and actions. If this is not there nothing is there.