Trainings in Trondheim

Some of the adepts in TrondheimAs I told you before I went to Trondheim in Norway to hold two seminars. Both for the participants in JCI Evolutions Mentorprogram for young people in Young Enterprice Norway.

On saturday we started at 10 am and were working with strenght, posibilities and SMART-goals up to 16 pm with all the adepts in the program. They were very interesting in the subject and real active all day. This is going to be the platform for further development trough the program and especially for the AM-meetings (Adept and Mentor meetings) every month.

Oh I love to meet so many positive and active young people and spend time with them, I actually learn as lot as them.

On sunday we started at 11 am to train all the mentors, from businesses around in the county. They were also very positive and active through out the wholde session, working with «The Big Five». Tools for AM-meetings.

I look forward t be hearing from the project group next time.

How important is mentoring to young women?

Mentoring is discussing in all sorts of ways, and I am positive to that. I mean that mentoring is the right way for an boost in personal life and in job life. I come across this Lily7 (www.lily7.com) which exists to encourage and equip young women to develop Godly character and to find their self-worth in Christ alone. I am not going to discuss Christ pro contra, but point out the value of mentoring as a good tool.

And I think they answer very correct in a question they got from one reader. She thinks that mentoring could be a scary word to people. When people at lily7 responded that it could sound really formal and intimidating. But further more they say that mentoring can be as casual as you going to someone you trust and respect for advice. It can also be specific to a particular part of your life, too. For example says Sally, from lily7, I’ve got professors and lawyers who I seek out for how to write a legal argument, and I’ve got totally different people who I seek out for their thoughts on things in my everyday life. These people all see different aspects of my life, but the one thing that they have in common, which makes me call them mentors rather than regular friends, is that my relationship with them involves a lot of me learning from them and them giving their thoughts on whatever it is I’m doing. By contrast, I learn with or alongside friends. And in the end she asks “Does that make sense as a definition of mentoring?”

I say that it is a good definition because it is important for me to make everybody understand what it is, how to use it and that it isn`t intimidated.
To read the whole answer and more from lily7, follow this link:
http://www.lily7.com/consider-lily/

My book project

I am writing two books about mentoring. They are handbooks for the involved part in a mentoring relationship.
I have learned in my years working with mentoring that both adepts and mentors don`t get the full potential out of the time they spend together.
The reflection part and the overall perspective is less because they take easy on the fact that writing down all thoughts is important.
It is important if you want personal growth to take notes. So my project is to find some tool to make it more easy for both adepts and mentors.

I am writing one book for the adept and one for the mentor. Mentoring is an exciting topic and it is easy to find a lot of material, but more difficult to select the most important.

Care to comments or tip me of topics you are more than welcome

Getting a younger mentor

I read an article about getting a younger mentor (in Norwegian at http://www.konsulentguiden.no/index.cfm?id=147082&side=1).
The article said that it is a trend among middle-aged leaders to get younger mentors.

It`s called “Reverse mentoring” and Jack Welch (www.welchway.com), then chairman at General Electric (www.ge.com), was maybe the first to try this.
When he ordered 600 of the leaders to get a younger mentor in 1999.

Matt Starcevich at Center for Coaching & Mentoring in Oklahoma (www.coachingandmentoring.com) says that reverse mentoring can give advantage for the organization.
He found out that 41% used reverse mentoring to learn technical expertise, and 26% used it to give leaders a more youthful perspective.
Of course it is important that the older leaders don`t have any prejudice against younger people.

What do you think about reverse mentoring? Do you have some experience with it? Tell me!