Mentoring - Lesson 4

Hello, I'm Chuck Coker, your host, and we're in session number four of the mentoring program. We're going to focus this time on planning your interaction with your mentee. So where do we start? Well, let's review what we've learned first, and we're going to start by filling in the behavior and mindset scores because that's going to help you better understand how to interact with your mentee's skill sets, their strengths and their weaknesses.

So get a piece of paper and write down your mentee's three strengths. If they're a strong extrovert, you might say they're very quick-paced, they are very conceptual in the way they think, and they pride themselves on their accomplishments. So when we go to the weaknesses, what are the opposites of that? Well, the opposite of it may be that they jump to conclusions too quickly and make decisions that may not be well thought out.

Plus, they can tend to make decisions that are based on the circumstances in the environment at that particular time, and they're probably not paying attention to the details along the way. So when we take those three things, what we have to do is isolate those differences that can actually cause friction with other people. So if you had to integrate yourself into a new group of people that you didn't know, you would have to explain what aspect of the process you feel would be the easiest part.

Well, for that extrovert that we discussed, it would be fairly easy because they enjoy interacting, talking about themselves and talking about the things that they've worked on. That's that high D and I with the objective mindsets. If you had to integrate yourself into a new group of people that you did not know, then how would that process look and what would be the hardest part? Well, oftentimes this extroverted person that we talked about may project themselves in a way that other people shy away from and don't want to get too close to because they can tend to be intimidating or cold.

So the hardest part would be how do we slow them down? How do we get them to empathize and how do we get them to ask questions rather than make statements? Because the one thing that we know about statements is that there's only two options. I can either agree or disagree. Where when you ask a question, you bring the person collaboratively into the process and we know from studies that collaboration is a way to solve 80% of the problems that are out there.

So as we think about that, we have to understand that these differences between yourself and the mentee can actually cause tension between you and that's something that you don't want. You want to develop something over a period of time that will work for both people because the mentee has a need to learn and grow and the mentor need to know how the mentee is going to respond to the feedback. So in order to do that, you literally have to understand that there is something critical and that is the fact that as you walk through this mentorship program, there must be accountability.

But to achieve accountability, there must be intimacy and that intimacy is what will allow you to have accountability in a way that is not offensive to the other person. I use the word accountancy because when you think about the concept of accountability, it means that you are responsible for the things that you are being held accountable for, but you do it through a level of intimacy that is known only to a very few people and that can help you grow and develop the relationship much more quickly and literally avoid unnecessary tension. You can also use the results of the coachability assessment to identify their openness to mentoring, coaching, and feedback if you go to the website and take that particular assessment.

It's a shortcut that every mentor should really use to access the knowledge and understanding of the mentee that they're working with. Now, as you work with your mentee, there are going to be several triggers that begin to occur from time to time and you must be able to recognize them because some of them will jump out very quickly depending on the behavior and mindset type. First of all, there's something called truth triggers.

These are set off by the content of the feedback. In other words, if you are telling your mentee you have to slow down because you are a fast-paced extrovert and you can't speak from paragraph 1 to paragraph 3 to paragraph 7 to paragraph 10 because you lose people. So this may be challenging to the individual.

You have to go paragraph 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on to make sure that the content is understandable by other people because they have had no exposure to this. Another thing that can actually be tripped up during the process is something called relationship triggers. Now, relationship triggers are actually tripped by the person providing the feedback.

Now, if you as a mentor are that aggressive extroverted person and you're trying to mentor an introverted person who is much more subjective, you really have to slow down the pace, soften the voice, and begin to communicate. Otherwise, you are literally going to keep the person at a distance. And when you do that, the relationship can begin to fall apart because they can tend to think that you're being critical, you're not being sensitive to their specific needs, and you're not really addressing things the way they need to be addressed.

So keep these things in mind because they're critical moving forward with each individual and their uniqueness. The third trigger is something very important. It is called an identity trigger, and it's related to an individual's sense of self or their self-worth.

When you tell a person that's strongly introverted, that has lower self-esteem or is much more internal than externally motivated, you may trigger some issues. Oh, I can't talk to crowds. I can't talk to people that I don't know.

I need some sort of help, introduction, or some sort of network referral. But here's the thing that we have to remember. If God orders our steps because his ways are higher than ours, he must have brought you to a place or a position that will allow you to grow and develop in the next stage of your life.

So just because you may not have been successful in something in the past doesn't mean that you're not going to be successful in moving in and relating to people. Ask questions about themselves. Tell me about your family.

Tell me about your kids. Tell me about what you were doing this time five years ago or whatever it might be. When a person begins to be able to communicate about themselves, they then become much more relaxed and are able to get a stronger identity so that you are not triggering their identity trigger and causing them to feel insecure either in the situation or with the set of circumstances that you're placed in.

So let's talk about feedback skills because these feedback skills are critical to not just you but to your mentee. If you'll notice on the graphic in this particular slide, you'll see that because this person is extroverted, they're very willing to express their ideas and opinions and they're going to go at it very well. But when we look at their mindsets, we see something even stronger and that is the very, very high individualistic mindset.

And that individualistic mindset describes the next highest aspect, which is to be efficient and effective. So this individual is going to be very assertive about getting things done. And you notice because of that low aesthetic, they're not very cognizant of what's going on around them and they will focus more on small groups of people than they will larger groups of people.

So what's going on here? In our feedback skills, we have to focus with this particular individual on the fact that we have to work through a process in which they are willing to participate, but also help them understand that there may be different ways of approaching the process that they may not have thought of and that you as the mentor can share your experiences. And this is where it's very important that you begin to share some of your own failures because in doing so with an extrovert, they can then begin to relate to the fact that you as an individual, despite your success and despite their desire to have you mentor them, have also made mistakes, but those mistakes have grown you and developed you over a period of time. Let's look at another type of individual that you may want to work with.

This individual, as you can see with the high I and S, the yellow and the green, extremely people-oriented, but not as strong in a task orientation as perhaps they might need to be. This person is very open to new ideas and alternatives. Why? Because they love learning that high theoretical, but they also love people, which is the high social and any number of different objectives that they could follow.

So what's happening here is that they are looking for information that will have a positive impact on people and they will impact other people, number one, by being a good listener, but also by being strongly communicative. So what you're going to find with this person is a bit of a focus aspect that needs to be paid attention to because they want to talk their way through a situation rather than work their way through the process. So as you can see, different behaviors require different focus by the mentor so that they can achieve the objectives in their own manner, because if they don't own it, the chances of them being successful in completing it are greatly reduced.

Now, as you begin working with this particular mentee, it's important that you realize that there are going to be times when conflict or differences of opinion actually come about. And it's almost certain that one of our triggers is going to be activated. So as the mentor, you have to be able to deescalate the situation.

You must be able to relieve anxieties by continually asking for feedback. Otherwise, adrenaline will have its impact. Now, there's two important factors here that I think we need to discuss.

First of all, anxiety. Oh, I've experienced that emotion many times. It's based in fear, and I worry a lot.

Well, guess what? Anxiety is not an emotion. If we look at 2 Timothy 1, 7, it says, we have not been given the what? The spirit of fear. So what you have to realize is that as you experience anxiety, it is a spiritual attack.

It is not purely an emotion. And because of that, a simple prayer like, Lord, build a hedge of protection around me so that I may rest in a place of peace and be able to understand how to work through this process, because my mentor is trying to give me good feedback. The other thing that we have to realize is that Satan, his demons, angels, whatever you want to call them, can actually trigger something inside of you through this anxiety that will cause your adrenaline rate to increase.

Now, for those of you that aren't aware of it, a 10% increase in adrenaline causes a 10% increase in your heartbeat. And most people call that a fight or flight instinct. But if your average heartbeat is 60 or 65, a 20% increase only brings it up to like 75, 78.

And now you're working with 20% less mental capacity to reason and think through the things that you are dealing with. So there will be times when you feel that anxiety, and you feel your heart pumping faster, you have to do one thing. And that is label it and table it.

Identify and acknowledge and accept what's happening to you and put it on the table long enough for you to be reasoning through the process and moving to a point to where you can actually think through it with a sound, logical reasoning. Afterwards, you can actually benefit from that feedback as you grow through this process. Now, one of the things that may be hard from time to time is to get your mentees to accept constructive feedback.

And as I mentioned to you earlier, we want to ask questions rather than make statements. You see, we're much less likely to set off any of these three triggers that we've just discussed. We can get some bite sized pieces of feedback and identify if it's hitting any nerves during the process.

You can ask questions like, what's the one thing you see me doing or failing to do that holds me back? That's not a problem. That's why you have a mentor is to ask those kinds of questions. What you are trying to do as a mentee is seek the depth that the mentor has to offer.

You see, mentoring is not equal to evaluation. It can actually help you sort through things and avoid confusion on either aspect of the process. Next, unpack the feedback that is illustrating what you're trying to accomplish so that it fits into the mentee's interest.

Start off by simply reminding them, you know, I love you, right? That should settle things and bring a bit of peace, especially if you can see this happening or this happening or the rolling of the eyes or whatever it might be. You have to take the lead as the mentor. It's important that you bring that peace, that trust, that transparency and relatability to the process.

You also want to analyze your concepts using the questions that we discussed. Let me give you an example. If you were doing this, how would you approach it? Or questions like, in the past have you done anything like this? And if you did, what kind of results did it produce? Or, have you seen anyone do this that was extremely successful at it? And with this, you now bring them into the situation collaboratively so that they are a participant in the process and it's no longer you telling them what to do.

It's you coming alongside of them so that you're not making snap judgments in the process simply because you only have an hour to work through the process. I also would like you to think about small experiments. Test your advice.

Even if you doubt its usefulness. There was a book written back in the 1980s called A Whack Upside the Head. That book illustrated the fact that we can bring everybody from the janitor to the CEO in the same room.

We take off our ties. We sit down and we start throwing ideas out that can be used. Then after lunch, we come back and we start eliminating the ideas that everybody feels may not be exactly right.

And then we can deal down and get to the most profitable opportunities. Start with small experiments. Think about things that you can do that will literally test the ability of the process and identify how to approach something both experientially and theoretically.

Now, during this initial process, I want you to understand that it is extremely critical for the first six months to be a type of bonding and development. I would even suggest that your mentee have a focus on shadowing some of their peers and get feedback from their peers and then bring it back to you so that you can speak into those things and help moderate the responses of the individuals. See, when you're assigning new responsibilities, use a positive occasion.

Use a positive experience and give them something that illustrates how to approach it in a very positive and productive manner. This way, feedback will be expected to be positive and it will be expected to be directive and help the individual achieve what they want to do. The next thing, in your consistency, make sure that you map out your approach.

Whether it's 90 days, 180 days or whatever, manage things by objectives. In other words, take the time to chunk this up in a way that it allows you to see the steps of the process. You've heard the crazy old expression, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

And this is true, especially as you work towards specific objectives. There's several ways to do that. There's something called a personal development plan and there's smart plans.

And I'm going to share some of that with you at this point so that we can begin to understand how to make that process work after we cover these next couple points. First, there's some keys to being steady and supportive with your mentee. The first one is create feedback windows.

Let your people know that you'll be paying special attention to their performance for a specific period of time. This way, you can literally discuss and identify progress or challenges. Help them understand the immediacy and the specificity with what you're trying to communicate.

Avoid waiting to deliver feedback. The minute that this comes about or a situation comes about that may be tenuous, deliver that feedback but make it short and sweet. Don't get into a long conversation that can kill the little bit of time that you have with your mentee.

Make your feedback positive. There's an old process that's been around for years called the sandwich method. It's where you compliment your mentee and then help them identify where they have a little bit of work to do and then share with them that you believe in them and that they have the competency to succeed in that area.

Any chance you do that, try to do it publicly so that they are welcomed by other people and they see that they're making progress. In each and every session, you want to make sure that on that agenda there are objectives. You have to consider the needs of the mentee as you pour into them.

I'm going to give you several ways to do that. Continually seek new ideas. If you've got other people or friends that are mentoring other people, what are some of the things that they're doing that's getting great results? Second, exhibit high standards of professional and ethical behavior.

Don't just plant in them, oh, you can skip this part and move on. Keep those high standards so that the mindsets that they are developing as they work with you now become much more of their own. They take on that ownership when you promote the values through your words, your actions and your behaviors.

Next, it's important that you set challenging goals, but not goals that are going to be almost impossible to reach. Start out by making those goals reasonably attainable and as you work through the process and you understand the mentality and the capacity of the individual, then the goals can be much more challenging. The important thing during that process is to make sure that the mentee stays focused so that they can achieve their goals as you move them through the process.

So, how do you plan for this mentoring phase? All actions happen in the mentoring stage. Mentors and mentees will establish specific intervals to share knowledge and achieve their predetermined goals. Next, as a mentor, you have to establish a formal mentoring program with very specific set projects and targets.

This will be the most crucial step in the entire process. You and your mentee must be able to answer these questions. What are the goals you plan on achieving with this mentoring program? Number two, what would the program participant get at the end of the training program? Thirdly, are there specific career goals or faith-based goals that the program would like to achieve through this individual? These are questions that are going to help you chalk out the goals of your program.

To do that, our next session is going to help you build the SMART process. Because the SMART process will take these objectives that are important to you and the mentee and they're going to break them down into sizable chunks so that you can achieve them one after the other. As you do that, build the confidence, build the character, build the capacity of the individual in the process.

In doing so, the reward will be great because the spirit will guide you through the process as we said in our first session. And each time the individual takes that next step, you're bringing them closer and closer to becoming who God created them to be. Thank you for joining me here in session four.

I'm Chuck Coker, your host, and I look forward to seeing you in session five when we're going to give you the step-by-step process to achieve the things that God has planted in your heart. Which are the desires that He wants you to achieve.