by Tim Swanson
When I was still in college, I met a scruffy haired teenager named Kyle. He sat across from me at his first lesson, awkwardly gripping a cheaply made bass guitar. I asked him what he wanted to accomplish. His response, “I want to master this thing.” At the time I had never even thought about mentoring someone. I liked his ambition, but I thought I was just looking at another music student. I didn't realize it back then, but that turned into the most rewarding mentoring relationship I've had yet.
Since then I've mentored other leaders who are both younger and older than me. Looking back on the mentoring relationships I've been in, I have identified six essential stages of mentoring that have driven my success as a mentor and a mentee. Whether you're a mentor or you're looking for one, you need to be aware of these six stages if you want to be intentional about growth.
1. Admiration. This begins before the mentoring relationship does. It happens when a soon to be mentee spots a quality in someone else that he admires and would like to emulate. These days when I talk to young people about finding a mentor, I'll usually tell them, "Look for somebody that has something you want. Then, ask them how to get it." When I’m searching for mentors, I look for people with experience in various areas that are relevant to my life. I have several mentors for church music. I look to one guy for personal guidance (he is the one I complain to the most). I go to my dad for writing and publishing. One pastor I used to work with give me career advice. And my wife is one of my mentors. I can always count on God to speak to me through her.
2. Orientation. Some mentoring relationships have official beginning dates, while others are more informal. Whichever way things get kicked off, it is the mentor’s initial responsibility to find out everything he/she can about the new mentee. This is where the two discuss dreams, fears, past wins and failures, ambition level, motivations, and plans. This is also where preliminary goal setting happens. I like to do 1, 3 and 5 year goals. But when it comes to goal setting, I always explain to my mentees that the goals will change and become more refined as time goes on.
3. Teaching and Challenging. This step involves the mentor consistently presenting the mentee with challenges that will push him outside of his comfort zone. It's important that challenges work, in one way or another, to bring the mentee closer to his bigger goals. Mentors should also be very careful to present bite size challenges that the mentee won't choke on. You can ask just about anyone I've mentored and they'll tell you that challenging people is my favorite part of mentoring. This means I know a thing or two about giving people more than they can handle. Trust me you don't want to do that to people. It's not good.
4. Evaluation. It's not natural for most people to stop and look back at their original goals once they get going. That's why they need a good mentor to remind them what they originally set out to do. Without doing this it’s easy to get distracted and go down a road that could full well be a dead end. If, looking at the original goals, the mentee still wants to pursue new direction, that's fine. But it's very important to be intentional about changing goals so that the mentee doesn't end up just going whichever way the wind is blowing. There is no right or wrong amount of time to step back and evaluate the goals. But when it comes to my goals and the goals of my mentees, I like to ask evaluation questions frequently. These can be questions like, "how are you feeling about the degree you're pursuing, is it still the one you want?", "If you could have any job in the world, would it still be the one you wanted when we started?" You'd be amazed at how a well placed question can get someone thinking about important things they would have otherwise never considered.
5. Sticking to it. This step is best accomplished by the pair just doing life together. This way the mentor gets to see his/her mentee frequently succeeding and failing, which creates a lot of teachable moments. You can see this in the Bible with the great mentor Paul. He traveled with his mentees. They taught with him, wrote with him, planted churches with him. Timothy and Silas even went to prison with him. That's commitment. When I mentor people, I will inevitably try to fold them into the programs that I lead so I can work with them more frequently and watch for area of potential to develop.
6. Harvesting. Eventually, the mentee will be ready to spread his/her wings and fly. At this point, a good mentor will step back and let the mentee take flight. In 1 & 2 Timothy, you can read about this as Paul is writing to Timothy, who has taken on the role of pastor in the Ephesian church. I am fortunate enough to be at this point with Kyle, who has music students of his own and is engaged to a girl he met while serving in the Music Ministry at Moon Valley Bible Church. That is the coolest thing in the world. I have watched Kyle grow from a snot nosed teenager who had never seen a quarter note, into a man who plays bass very well. In fact, last night Kyle was showing me how to play something new on the acoustic guitar that I'd never played before. There's more reward in that than I can tell you.
There are a countless different kinds of mentoring relationships out there. The beauty of mentoring is that there’s no one right way to go about it. I have had lots of mentors in my life, and no two of them have done things the same way. Not all of them have followed these six stages, but the best ones have. Whether you're the mentor or the mentee in the relationship (hint: You should be both) you can be intentional about growth. You and your mentees can reach goals faster, which means you can set higher goals for the future. Whether you want to become an excellent guitarist, or well rounded worship leader, by being intentional about these stages mentoring you can become more of the person you want to be, and that’s a good thing.
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