Mentoring:

Supplying targeted information, as needed.

This can augment the coaching process.

• Why have a mentor? With the right mentor you will gain distilled information and objective input on a variety of systems and knowledge. A mentor is a person who has “been there and done that” regarding what you are trying to improve. Mentoring is about sharing the ‘Street Smarts’, and bits of information the mentor has acquired through blood, sweat and tears, in addition to their study and research.

• What is the point of mentoring? The point is to save you time and work, and to present you with what works best in a given situation due to a very broad base of experience in your field.

For example I have been in business most of my life, meeting vast numbers of other women in business and I see a major and consistent stumbling block is with marketing, and I know why this is. So I move clients to get comfortable with this area quickly. Then the business flourishes.

• How does the mentor work? There is a saying about poker playing I often use, which applies to the art of mentoring. “You need to know when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em, and when to walk away”. The art is to offer just enough information to inspire the learner, without divulging the entire plan, and then know when to stop talking.

• Like what? Like the parables or metaphors that indicate some important information but don’t tell exactly what to do about X.  The things you might not have any background information on, and are hardly even aware of.

• Like what? Like the dozens of facets of running a business that a person may not have considered until bumping smack into them, unprepared.

The thing that is so wonderful about running your own business is that you get to creatively move in any direction you want, without needing a set of credentials, degrees, or resume to match someone else’s expectations.

The thing that is so challenging about running your own business is that you have to creatively move in every direction, whether you feel prepared and ready, or not, frequently tackling what you know you are not prepared to do.

The mentor, unlike the coach, needs to have experience in your field, having acquired some really good information, resources, and people along the way. Things to thread you through the maze.

• Isn’t that intimidating? No, for the same reason as above. The mentor is not there to tell you what, when, and how to do it, which would be a replay of the difficulties within many schools, and some parental homes. The job isn’t to load you with data you don’t want and didn’t ask for.

The job of the mentor is to offer them self as a resource. For example, in mentoring a woman with limited space for her office and shortage of funds for storage I proposed a dozen ways to use vertical space, which she had never considered. This nearly doubled what she could do with her small office. She made all the choices.

The mentor knows things about timing and sequencing, about breaking through obstacles, and a thousand details of running a business alone so that, with that resource of mentoring, you never feel you are operating in a vacuum.

• How do I know when the mentor is good? Everyone is born with the capacity to know when someone is speaking from the heart and that what they say is useful. There is a resonance. Conversely, we observe children becoming almost cross-eyed when their parents tell them an un-truth. You see the surprise, then the questioning, and then the confusion in their eyes. They sense what is not true and are baffled by the parent saying such.

Due to childhood years of hearing un-truths from adults, we tend to forget that we know the sound of honesty…of ‘straight’ information served up without any tilt.

So, when interacting with the mentor, the need is to listen for this—that ring, that pitch, that sound of someone speaking from the heart, where you know/feel that self-interest is not leaking in so much as it does in ordinary situations. There is actually a lower pitch to the voice, a different timbre. Hearing when someone is speaking from the heart is something the mentor can help you refine, as it is invaluable knowledge. You can test it by listening to yourself, and then more readily use it when listening to others.

O.K., so I hope that is enough information to help you along with your search. I combine mentoring with coaching, if that is something you would like to try. Please contact me now for a free consultation. If you have your own specific questions...I am here, waiting. I would love to speak with you.  

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