How to be available in mentorship at any age

“Oooone…twoooo…threeeeee…”

I watch as my oldest sits in the tub, up to his chest in suds, across from his younger brother (up to his ears in them).

“Waaaa….toooooo…bweeeeee…”

He’s catching on, happily clapping his hands and smiling as he mimics his older brother. He grabs a few of the floaties that bob about around him and starts sticking them up in front of him. His mentor approves.

“Bweee cowos…bwooo, wed, and gweeee!” he squeals.

He understands that the color floaties in his hands (blue, red, and green) count up to the number three.

It starts to click.

Two steps ahead

Every phase of life offers the chance to learn and to teach.

The vignette I opened with for this issue illustrates the power of mentorship at every stage of life, regardless of age or the type of skill or knowledge being imparted.

If you have, and you know it, that’s all that’s needed.

The weird part for adults is that when there’s money involved, we tend to think more about continuing that gravy train rather than continuing on the journey forward. The irony of that is that progress comes to a screeching halt. Rather than pushing towards expertise, we end up on the hamster wheel of being “advanced beginners” in perpetuity, content to share the little stretch of the road that we’ve adopted. Lifelong learning is the foundation of the growth mindset, the second stage after the fixed one that I just described.

There is one more mindset beyond this stage.

Once you reach the realization that you are both the mentored and the mentee in the discipline you are sharing with others, you reach the aspirational mindset. The key to this frame of thought is a characteristic that too much power tends to bury, disdain, or hold in contempt…

Humility.

If you think you know everything, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your world shrinks down to the point where what you perceive to be correct and the boundaries of your competence become one in the same. Your cup is full to the brim because your perception of the container is exactly as much as the water you have poured.

You forget about the pitcher from which the water came.

Without humility or awareness, stuff like the quote above gets thrown around easily with a certainty that is ripe for the “hold my beer” moment to come. Over a century later, and we’ve come farther than ever since that declaration and are now facing the challenge of AI becoming integrated into our lives in ways we couldn’t imaging even a decade ago.

Imagine what life will be like a decade from now.

An aspirational mindset is one that guarantees our flexibility, our resilience, and our adaptability to every challenge. Being open to new things and embracing them while at the same time sharing what we’ve discovered and accomplished along the way is how we as a society and a species endure. Things look pretty bad right now, but there’s a saying that sums up my view of the status quo:

“This, too, shall pass.”

Yes, I know, wonderful saying that seems to imply that we might as well go along with business as usual, but that’s a cynical way of interpreting it. To me, this statement keeps everything in check; that how we see the world and how it really is are never completely in alignment. It doesn’t mean that we just let things happen without us playing a part in deciding the outcome.

It means that we continue pursuing creating, leading, and learning with purpose.

As a parent, this fine balance is one of the most humbling for me.

The see-saw of “hands-on” and “hands-off”

My youngest learned to ride a three-wheel scooter when he was 18 months old.

The truth is that I had to sit on my hands and let him “fail forward”. He learned almost entirely from trial-and-error as well as watching his older brother crash and burn on his process of learning the two-wheel version (which I also spectated). I knew that if I gave too much guidance and coaching or tried to grab the handles and guide them that they’d come to expect it of all things.

It took them an entire summer to get it.

By the time my oldest started first grade, they were flying through the school parking lot after hours at panic-inducing speeds on my part. I can still remember when I sprinted alongside my oldest when he was three and scooping him up right before he flew off the same scooter several years before.

As parents, we will never stop wanting to protect our children.

However, there’s a balance between giving advice and stepping back to enable them to solve problems on their own. Now that both of them have their own worlds to explore beyond my supervision, I can only hope that I’ve given them enough of both.

I am their mentor in childhood, but they are mine in parenting.

The funny part about this is that my parents are also my mentors in this respect. While they were my guides and teachers when I was growing up, they are now the same for my own journey in their shoes. As this is the second time around for them, they have this balance down to a science, both for me and their grandchildren.

I don’t suppose grandparents need mentors to be grandparents…it’s just parenting without the baggage.

You offer advice, personal experience, and shine a light on potential hazards. The line that you don’t cross is the one of action. You can’t do everything for them and expect them to internalize the experience vicariously. That’s like encouraging someone to claim they are a chef from watching a dish being prepared on YouTube.

If you haven’t been in the arena, you have no business being a mentor to those who have.

Rule-of-thumb: give advice from your personal experience, but don’t join yourself at the hip to those who are learning the discipling for themselves.

Which comes first?

You absolutely must walk the path before you can talk about it.

I know this is becoming a repetitive thing, but I can’t stress enough just how easy it’s becoming for people to become armchair philosophers just because they’ve consumed hundreds of hours of content. Such activity firmly cements you in the limbo between the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Mental masturbation is only a half-step beyond complacency. Life is not a spectator sport, and there are no consolation prizes for those in the stands.

It ain’t Oprah. You won’t get a car by being in the audience.

Reflect on the balance between being a mentor and a mentee. Ask yourself the following question:

“What’s one lesson that I’ve learned through experience that I wish I could pass on?”

When you have that answer, take out the phrase “I wish” and answer that question.

You just got that much closer to your own digital heirloom.