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The opportunity to mentor exists in every setting where people need to draw on one another’s talents to accomplish a goal.
Frank Darabont, director of The Green Mile, reflected on Tom Hanks’s selfless commitment to helping rising actor Michael Duncan achieve his best:
Fifteen, twenty years from now, what will I remember [about filming The Green Mile]? There was one thing—and I’ll never forget this: When [Tom] Hanks was playing a scene with Michael Duncan…
As we’re shooting, [the camera] is on Michael first, and I’m realizing that I’m getting distracted by Hanks. Hanks is delivering an Academy Award–winning performance, off-camera, for Michael Duncan—to give him every possible thing he needs or can use to deliver the best possible performance.
He wanted Michael to do so well. He wanted him to look so good. I’ll never forget that.
In 1999, Michael Clarke Duncan was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Actor in a Supporting Role category. Tom Hanks, however, was not nominated.
Starting the Process
Here, then, are some thoughts on how to begin mentoring others:
First, the best mentoring plans focus primarily on character development and then on skills. As Jim Collins reports, “The good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience.”
Second, we see many mentoring attempts fail because the participants do not sit down together to discuss and set boundaries and expectations. The process flows much better if the participants take time to understand each other’s goals, needs, and approaches than if they take a laid-back, let’s-get-together approach.
Any mentoring relationship should start with a firm foundation of mutual understanding about goals and expectations. A mentoring plan should be constructed by both individuals, even if it calls for spontaneity in the approach. Nothing is more powerful than motive and heart. Both of the people involved need to fully understand what is driving each of them to want this deeper experience of growth and commitment.
Need a Mentor Yourself?
Research has shown that leaders at all levels need mentoring. Even though you may be mentoring others successfully, you need a mentor too.
There are two issues that we want you to be especially cognizant of:
- Vulnerability. You must open yourself up to your mentor by being “woundable,” teachable, and receptive to criticism. The essence of vulnerability is a lack of pride. You cannot be proud and vulnerable at the same time. It takes a focus on humility to be vulnerable.
- Accountability. Commit yourself wholeheartedly to your mentor (or protégé) and put some teeth in the relationship by establishing goals and expected behavior. Accountability should include:
- Being willing to explain one’s actions.
- Being open, unguarded, and nondefensive about one’s motives.
- Answering for one’s life.
- Supplying the reasons why.
Like vulnerability, accountability cannot exist alongside pride. Pride must take a backseat to a person’s need to know how she or he is doing and to be held accountable by someone who is trusted. People who are accountable are humble enough to allow people to come close and support them, and, when they drift off course, they welcome the act of restoration without the pride that says, “I don’t need anyone.”