- Where do I want to be at the completion of my mentoring voyage?
- What opportunities do you want a mentoring experience to give you?
- What will be different for you then?
- Do you really want that?
- Will you be ready for it?
- What does your gut say?
How to make mentoring a success
Mentoring begins when a person strategically affects the professional life of someone else by fostering insight, identifying needed knowledge, and expanding the other person´s horizones.
(A Mentor´s Companion)
(A Mentor´s Companion)
Guiding principles of Mentor Success.
- People learn best through self-discovery. Help your mentee reflect on and learn from their experiences.
- You cannot mentor someone unless you understand the person. What is important to your mentee? What does he/she value
- In mentoring, askin a question is often the answer. You don´t have to have all the answers… help your mentee find her or his own answers by asking the right questions.
- Most signifikant learning occurs outside our comfort zone and we allow those we are comfortable with to push us beyond our zone. Support and then challenge.
- Mentoring is about growth, empowering and risk taking. The goal of every mentor is to act in such a way that the mentee is better able to do for him or her self.
From Perrone-Ambrose
January is official National Mentoring Month
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 2010 as National Mentoring Month. I call upon public officials, business and community leaders, educators, and Americans across the country to observe this month with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs.
Well, President Barack Obama decided this last year and I hope that he ment it to be every year, so also 2011.
SO, HAPPY MENTORING MONTH ( and thank you Mr. President Barack Obama).
Mentoring with Dilbert
Life responds to deserve, not need
The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not a bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.
We must learn to help those who deserve it, not just those who need it. Life responds to deserve, not need.
My mentor said, “Let’s go do it,” not “You go do it”. How powerful when someone says, “Let’s!”
Good people are found, not changed. Recently I read a headline that said, “We don’t teach people to be nice. We simply hire nice people.” Wow! What a clever shortcut.
Managers help people see themselves as they are; leaders help people see themselves better than they are.
Learn to help people with more than just their jobs; help them with their lives.
by Jim Rohn
Giving is better than receiving
Giving/Sharing/Generosity
It’s best to start the discipline of generosity when the amounts are small. It’s easy to give ten cents out of a dollar; it’s a little harder to give a hundred thousand out of a million.
Giving is better than receiving because giving starts the receiving process.
Here’s what is exciting about sharing ideas with others: If you share a new idea with ten people, they get to hear it once and you get to hear it ten times.
Sharing makes you bigger than you are. The more you pour out, the more life will be able to pour in.
Somebody says, “Well, I can’t be concerned about other people. About the best I can do is to take care of myself.” Well, then you will always be poor.
What you give becomes an investment that will return to you multiplied at some point in the future.
Only by giving are you able to receive more than you already have.
«Vitamins for the Mind» is a weekly sampling of original quotes on a specific topic taken from The Treasury of Quotes by Jim Rohn.
Mentoring and being mentored: A win-win situation
(Part 4 of the Series)
In Part 1 of this series last week we looked at what a mentor is and does. In Part 2 we looked at ways to find a mentor and in Part 3 we looked at how to be a mentor. In this article, we will talk about wether you are an mentee or a mentor it´s a win-win situation never the less.
Making a difference in the lives of others is one of the keys to fulfillment. Susan Krauss found this out in her study of happiness in midlife adults. No matter what their job, the most fulfilled were the people who were reaching out to the young and helping them through life hurdles.
By helping young colleagues, students, friends, and family members, midlife and older adults provide valuable insights based on their own life experiences, insights that can’t be easily transmitted through "book learning."
There is all kinds of advice that the experienced can give to the novice ranging from proper behavior in new situations to hands-on skills to succeed in a given profession. In fact, you don’t even have to be that old or experienced to pass along the knowledge you’ve acquired. I’ve seen many junior and senior undergrads help "mentor" their first-year and sophomore classmates. You don’t have to reach that far down the age hierarchy to pass the torch.
Passing along knowledge from one generation (defined loosely) to the next is a central feature of what psychologist Erik Erikson called "generativity." He believed that the feeling of connection you derive from mentoring helps your ego develop the value of caring. If you don’t develop this quality, you run the risk of what he called "stagnation."
My advice is: Don’t give up on the young. Don’t label them any more than you would like to be labeled. And when a young person appears disrespectful, don’t take it as a sign to write off an entire generation. The person you will be writing off is– yourself.
Mentoring entrepreneurs
I just come a mentoring session today with 4 entrepreneurs within education. They are 4 girls and one guy (the last girl couldn´t make it today). I´m going to be their mentor, but in a formal mentoring program.
The business idea is to make training for small kids and sell it to schools and kindergardens. It is a lot fun to meet them because they are so enthusiastic and willing to do almost everything you suggest. So today we had a two hours session about their businessplan and a presentation they are going to have on the 22. of september.
I am really looking forward to meet them again and work more with this brilliant idea.
Go Phi, Wenche, Hanne and Erlend.
I’m ‘growing through other’
I’m so sick of leadership catchphrases. Irritable enough, is also right in the majority!
This morning I met with my mentee. And I was struck by the cliché is actually true: it is developing to be a mentor.
By mentoring, I have to think through how I do things and why. It is a bit embarrassing having to admit it, because I have developed allergies to all the clichés surrounding leadership and leadership development. But «I want to grow the second« it is so true.
A commentary by Catharina Nordlund from Sweden giving in the swedish leadership magazine www.chef.se
The Value Of Mentoring
Helping business start-ups is a rewarding activity for many retired entrepreneurs and (since selling his own company) it has even become the principal activity for Derek Barr, a business angel with a keen interest in early-stage ventures. Having grown his own specialist engineering concern into an international business, with turnover of £25 million, he sold out to international engineering group GEA in 1996.
Barr has vast experience in training and developing successful executives and his involvement with the London Business School Entrepreneurship Summer School goes right back to the beginning. He has seen the Summer School change in form and scope to what it is today. For him, however, one key part of the programme has not changed – namely the role of mentors.