Champions Fax Archive

Inherent Qualities of a Mentor
by Don Zimmer
Volume 4, Number 20, October 4, 1999

Don Zimmer is a member of the Church Champions Editors Board. This is part 2 of a series on Mentorship.

People select their mentors, not the other way around. People involved in a mentoring relationship must have a shared understanding of what it means to mentor and to be mentored.

Mentors need to be passionate learners rather than "knowers". They need intentional, accelerated learning opportunities. Mentors also need learning partners different from themselves who ask new questions, use different language, frame issues in new ways and experience reality differently.

The willingness to be open and vulnerable is important if a mentor is to be credible. A person being mentored learns as much from the mentor's quality of being as from his or her knowledge and technical skills. The deeper and more important question is not "What do I do and how do I do it?" it is "How should I be?"

Mentors have a clear sense of self, a clear understanding of their personal values and their calling. They must also have a wholeness in their person, good boundaries and necessary transparencies.

Mentors need to listen at least twice as much as what they speak. They need to be available any time. Mentoring is more about enabling others to discern and discover rather than you revealing.

Mentors value stories. Each mentor must have a story. Stories tell larger truths. Our credibility lies in our story. Listen deeply to other's stories and listen from the perspective that people know what they are saying in their story. People being mentored need to know that their mentors understand.

Effective mentors are encouragers. Lighten up, laugh more. Humor unlocks much about our situation and ourselves and opens us up to others in ways that allow relationships to blossom where they might otherwise have limited growth.

Mentors must have a clear sense of a person's goals and objectives. Mentors help people focus on their actions. Effective mentoring enables and empowers people to take successful action that is directly related to producing concrete results. This involves helping people expand their capacity to do things they could not do before without encouragement. One of the most important things you can do is to simply keep people in action when they are not successful, for, it is through continued action that results will eventually emerge.

Mentors should be mindful that the people they are mentoring need to feel free to accept or reject transformational mentoring that might fundamentally change them. Your calling is to serve. Authentic service results in leadership.

Mentors are not called to be all things to all people. Mentors must adopt the larger view. You must be prepared to go where you are a stranger. Strive to see things whole and encourage others to see with new eyes things that will extend their horizons.

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