Steps to Effective Mentoring

The Bible challenges us to make every moment count (James 4:14), so taking steps toward becoming more effective are positive ones. If you want to enjoy the mentoring experience, consider these steps:

  1. Select a mentor or protégé whose philosophy of life you share. The greatest mentors are also our role models. In the church, who is it that you sense has a close walk with God? What qualities does this person possess that makes them a hero in the faith for you?
  2. Choose a protégé with potential, someone you generally believe in. Then you help that person get to where he wants to go. Sports scouts do this all the time.
  3. Evaluate the protégé’s progress constantly. Remain objective and correct when necessary or encourage him to stay on course.
  4. Be committed, serious and available to your protégé. This person desires to learn from your life, not just your information.

Every mentor should also have a mentor. Mentors are not just wise older people passing on a lifetime of knowledge and experience to a younger person. It looks that way on the outside but after a closer look, the mentor also should have his own mentor from whom life, knowledge and experience have come. In the past is one thing, but it is also good to maintain a mentoring relationship of their own, someone to whom they are currently accountable.

Part of the mentoring process is to help your protégé ask the right questions, search in the right places and stay interested in the right answers. Sometimes the protégé has no clue where he needs to go much less how to get there. But you’ve been there and know where they need to go. Ask the right questions and help the protégé ask the right questions to discover their next steps.

Decide on the level of excellence or perfection you expect. Remember the goal of mentoring is improvement, not perfection. How many of us would step into a mentoring relationship if perfection was required!? We would not even seek a mentor since no one is perfect. If we expect perfection in a protégé, we will be very disappointed.

As a protégé, accept a subordinate, learning position and keep your ego in check; don’t let it get in the way of learning. Don’t try to impress the mentor with your knowledge or abilities; you could be setting up a mental barrier against learning new ideas. When we have a proud, know-it-all attitude, we are not teachable. This should not be like a teacher assigning homework that the student doesn’t want to do. In teaching, it is frustrating to assign a task and the student not do it. There are some students who do the assignment for more than just a grade; they do it with an eagerness to learn. It’s like a person voluntarily going back to school after a lifetime in the business world. These people tend to be much better students than those who are there just for the degree. When you know the outcome or benefit, it is much easier to accept a learning position.

A protégé should respect the mentor but should not idolize him. This is a practical issue: respect helps us to accept what the mentor teaches, but idolizing him removes our critical ability to fit their teaching into ourselves. With an idol, we see no faults and are not objective.

Put into effect immediately what you are learning. People don’t remember much of what we say, a little more of what is read, even more of what we hear, read and talk about; but if we want real life change, we need to put learning into practice. Learn, practice and assimilate new ideas and strategies.

Set up a discipline for relating to your mentor; a time schedule, subject matter, homework. It must be more than “we’ll get together sometime” or “we will make time.” There are goals set, calendars are brought out and dates set, assignments are made and the protégé is held accountable and encouraged in them. The protégé will reward the mentor with his own progress, which is the highest reward.

Don’t threaten to give up; you have made a decision for progress and quitting is not in the best interest in the protégé. We cannot mentor only during the good times, but we should hold on to the commitments we make, and guide and direct the protégé through times of difficulty.

Make every effort to make your time on this earth count. Life is a vapor and time is short, then it vanishes away. When we get to the other side, everything but the kingdom will be irrelevant.

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