4
So have patience with the mentoring process and clearly see
its value in your overall job accountabilities.
Emotional Maturity
Maturity on both sides is required in a mentoring process. An
effective mentor (or any other leader, for that matter) controls her
emotions for the sake of effective leadership. Even when you’re
sick of hearing the same questions over and over again, you must
remain (or appear to remain) calm and eager to help.
Emotional control and handling anger figure into the values of
effective StaffCoaches™. Mentors teach and exercise control, they
aren’t born calm. You can use many methods to build emotional
control while guiding an associate to comprehend the bigger
issues. These include:
- See the mentoree as your child or your special project.
Everyone is someone’s child. So when the questions seem
especially irrelevant ... when your tendency to explode or
give up seems impossible to push down ... think how the
associate’s parents would want you to react. Think how
you would want a manager to respond if the associate
were your child, or your brother or sister, etc. Silly?
Forget age and get personal.
Seeing the associate as your project implies that you have
chosen this for your next accomplishment. Many coaches
have a project each season. They take on one associate
and nurture and develop her to independence and the next
level of success in her life. Seeing mentoring as a project
puts a timeline on it and provides markers for successes
along the way. It’s a technique that adds satisfaction and
accomplishment. - Schedule mentoring sessions to end with “rewards.”
Having something to look forward to can minimize
emotional intensity. Anger is less likely to grip you when
you’re about to do something pleasurable. So schedule
your mentoring sessions to end with lunch or quitting
time, or even to take place during leisure events. Go into
The Mentoring Role: Instruction by ExampleAlways remain
calm and eager
to help.