What Do You Have, Mentor?

As a mentor/father you need a conscious knowing of, and confidence in, your value and worth internally. Many people and mentors do not really know what they value and why. Without this intrinsic confident self-awareness, you cannot deal with others in a relationship with security and assurance. 

If you do not know and have a deep sense of knowing your value, your worth, and secure contentment with who you are, you cannot convey and impart it to another.

But to do that you also have to be able to

I Can’t Talk to My Mentor!

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson

  Mentor/Father, you are going to need a good dose of perseverance to influence mentee’s (or children or others).

Perseverance is the ability to be patient and restful with another when everything around you is screaming for attention.

Often we find ourselves in times of stress and anguish, reacting to people in our lives with hasty anger and punishment in one form or another, without having given them the time to communicate with us what they are experiencing.

“Don’t bug me!” is sometimes the message we convey by our intolerance and short snide response to an enquiry or when they show a lack of keeping up with us. Patient perseverance involves a refusal to retaliate, a refusal to be overwhelmed, to permit my demeanour toward a mentee, to be affected by my surroundings.

We may say the wrong thing or become sarcastic when we are stressed and impatient. Or we just refuse to communicate and rather communicate a sulky attitude – “I will punish and show you!” attitude.

Basically, we reject the person and remove them from our space, by the defence mechanisms of our emotions. The result is, more than likely, going to be withdrawal and even despair from the mentee. It will breed a lack of trust, feelings of inferiority, counter dependence, inadequacy, and low self-esteem.

Bear in mind, that if you are doing it once, then you are doing it in other forms on most occasions as well.

Perseverance is a state of character and heart that is a characteristic and discipline actively part of your make–up as a mentor/father, but also as a mature human being.

It means being able to be merciful under even extreme pressure. It is not a passive resignation, but a conscious knowledge that everyone is on a journey. That everyone has the need to be significant and accepted and loved and acknowledged.

It means to exercise understanding and patience toward others, to be merciful. It means we have self-restraint before moving to any form action.

The result is giving the mentee, the sense of being accepted and important, conveying by our attitude and demeanour, that they are valuable.

One man that I viewed as a mentor, never seemed to have time for me. Always, always, he would have some excuse or other that there was a pressing need that didn’t allow him to listen, understand or spend any time with me. People around me who would witness these encounters would ask why he was rejecting me like this. That is exactly what it is – rejection.

I have learnt that even though I may be busy or not agree with the individual, but having an empathetic attitude of interest and genuine perseverance, allowed me to influence them so that they trust and receive from me, not for any accomplishments, but for the fact that I made time to listen, understand and accept them.

Over the years I have seen and experienced so many leaders that do the same. If it’s an inconvenient time, say so, but give the mentee or person, an alternative, to show and impart a sense of their value and uniqueness.

Do you have time for people? Ever?

When you do is it always on your terms?

Are your relationships suffering because you don’t have time for significant and insignificant others in your life?

Is it irritating, or do you take time, to listen to their feelings and experiences?

Are people around you sensitive and removed because of your harsh, closed, I’m-not-interested attitude toward them?

Or do others feel you are approachable, interested and involved in who they are what they are going through, and what insights they have to offer?

Guard The Tongue.

Courage is the quality of every quality at its highest testing point.

Stephen Covey

Guarding what you say and how you say it takes tremendous courage and self control.

Derogatory or negative words can inflict wounds beyond anything we could physically do to a person. Words last longer, go deeper, and influence than we sometimes can imagine.

Some people take great delight in boasting about their ability to tell someone off, putting others in their place, sarcastically bring them down to size and tell them exactly how 'they feel' about them.

But the Bible says:

We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in WHAT HE SAYS, he is a perfect man, able to keep HIS WHOLE BODY in check. James 3.2

Perfect here is not, as in, never a fault, but rather a mature, fully grown up person. Someone who is emotionally mature enough to keep themselves in control, even as a mentor(verse 1).

Isn't that amazing?

Keep your tongue in check and controlled and you keep your whole body bridled or mastered.

Weighing your words before speaking, especially when you are stressed, under pressure, tired, frustrated, and irritated, takes tremendous self-discipline. But this could mean the difference in destroying someone's life and purpose, or at least inflicting wounds that create callous insensitive hearts or an mentee that does the same to others.

You must be a reference point, a model, an example of someone who can guard their words so that you do not react to situations, without a self-discipline or self-control.

Much can be said about the power of words to build, encourage, acknowledge, love, and empathise with another person, or to tear down, wound, destroy, break down, discourage, manipulate and divide from another person.

But really the idea here is that we see the vital place of making control of or tongue a habit and behaviour that we can live as mentor/fathers, to be seen by those we mentor and father.

Do you think before you speak?

Or do you mouth off and then regret what you have said afterwards, if at all?

How measured are your words?

Do you personally have mastery in this habit, this element?

Can you honestly say, under all conditions, that you are able to choose your words and not react with negative words?

Are you in the habit of building people with your words?

Please! Your Habits, Mentor!

Over the years, my encounters and journeys with various mentors have taught me some things to do and some things not to do.

My own journey as a mentor/father has allowed me to discover what I should do and model and what I shouldn't do and model.

Either way, as a mentor/father there are certain elements that allow you to influence and mould your mentee/child.

What I found over the years was that I am by no means perfect and definitely needed reminding about these fundamental actions and habits in my life and relationships wherever I am.

You see, its not the great big things we do that matter in the long run, its the basic elements we can habitually exercise in our dealings with those we mentor every day. Whether I am in business, ministry, a father, a friend, disciple, spouse or dealing with people, these fundamentals need to be part of my behaviour and personal make-up.

Even though as mentor/father you are not a failure if these things are not always there in your lives, but from my experience, they will affect the outcomes of your mentoring.

And definitely will affect how you feel about yourself. Your own self esteem as a mentor/father.

Developing mentee's is an outcome of what you live, how you relate, and what you instruct.

As a mentee on a journey, I never looked for perfection in a mentor/father but for some basics that would assist me in my own change of paradigms. Someone who could and would model and be a reference point for what it was that would be my own purpose and destiny.

Mentor/fathers are so important for the honing of the life skills necessary as a leader and successful individual. When we look around us in the professional and personal world, in politics and church, we can see the need for the deep shaping of character based on the right values and principles modelled by mentor/fathers par excellence.

Its easy to command, demand and instruct but another thing to invest and develop and guide a person to a fruitful and effective life, in every area.

The key here is the fundamental personal elements that can be modelled and passed onto them, shaping their paradigm and view of the world and their behaviour in interacting with others,

but if you cannot master these and infuse them into your behaviour and relationships – what will you be producing in your mentor mentee relationships?

• What strengths or weaknesses are you likely modelling?
• Do you exercise self-control in your habits?
• How are your relationships? Friction? Don't get on with people? Inconsiderate?
• Are you what you teach and instruct?
• Do you try and impose a rigid standard or do you influence by being an example?

In the next posts we will look at these in more detail.

Til next time.

Hey Mentor Are You Hearing Me?

It is such a privilege to sit with a mentor/father and hear their insights, stories of their experiences, their wisdom and to receive their input on issues that you may be facing.
But there are just those times when you wish you could share your heart and soul with them.
Mentor/Fathers have to learn to listen, to listen to understand, to hear the paradigm of the mentee.
It is a skill that mentors should bring to the relationship from day one.
It is a skill because most have a 'sell and tell' focus. (As my friend always says)
They feel that regardless of what you have to say, they have the answer anyway, and generally cannot wait for you to finish speaking so they tell you how it really is. (Did this one too!)

Listening, really listening with your heart
Develops trust
Helps you to understand the mentee
Eliminates assumptions
Creates the opportunity to share what the mentee needs
It is the beginning of a paradigm shift
Opens the door for more intimate future encounters
It inspires creativity

When you don't listen first, you really create an environment for assumptions, misunderstandings, suspicion, and disappointments.
Simply because you may be hearing enough for you to think you have the solution, and you begin to speak from your own paradigm and the danger is you could be imposing something on the mentee that he/she doesn't need or want.
The result will be that they will 'swith off' somewhere in the rhetoric thinking they don't know me and don't want to.

Is there room to give your input as mentor/father?
Definitely!
But the key is to be an empathetic listener - first.
When the mentee, believes you are prepared to listen and understand where they are coming from and what they are trying to say and why they are saying it, they will be prepared to listen to your view - your values and principles.

The Bible talks about being "quick to hear and slow to speak".
There may come a time when you will have to guide the conversation so that what is being shared is constructive and reaching a point of insight and reflection; where the mentee can begin to understand their own paradigm and make the shifts necessary or strengthen and be aware of what they haven't discovered about themselves and their paradigms yet.

Mentor/father, it takes discipline and perseverance to acquire this essential skill.

Build deeper relationships with your mentees
Reveal your wisdom
Make your counsel available
Be a trusted friend