[MUSIC] Hello, the mentor role is one that we hear a lot about and it's one that some managers use more than others. In this lesson we'll describe what it means to be a mentor. And like other lessons I will give you an example of a manager using the mentor role. And discuss the challenges associated with over use of the mentor role. >> This mentor role comes with experience. So if your brand new manager, you may not be to called on to do a lot of mentoring. But as you grow in your field of expertise and in your management I'm sure you will be called upon to do more mentoring. Mentor is someone who advises based on their own personal and professional experience and expertise. So we go to a mentor when we want to learn something that they already know. And we may go to someone who has a position that we aspire to have so if you want to be the CEO of a company someday, you might look for a mentor who is a CEO. If you want to be the Chief Operating Officer someday, you might seek out a mentor who has that kind of experience. If you want to climb [LAUGH] Mount Everest, you might seek out a mentor, someone who's already done that, you can get advice from. So mentors have experience in the field, in the area that you seek to gain wisdom from. So we generally experience mentors as people with great wisdom and insight that they can share. They typically are thought leaders. They are people who we look to, to have insights that are unique and not necessarily mainstream. I always think of Yoda [LAUGH] from Star Wars for those of you who are familiar with that movie. He just was tremendously wise, right? He had been alive for 500 years or something. So he just knew a lot and he was a tremendous mentor. A lot of times, we don't think about this very often, and so I want to take a moment just to give some feedback for all of you as you are growing in your careers. One of the things that somebody said to me once is we should all have our own board of directors. Our own group of people, three people, four people, five people who we recognize as experts in the areas that we want to work in. And that we lean on them, we go to them. We ask them questions, we ask for help, we ask for insight. It's important for you as you think about your career to know that you have these people in place that you can go to who will be helpful for you. Who have an interest and investment in being helpful for you. And over time, you will be that person for other people. Mentors are invaluable to all of us for our own career growth. So let's look at an example of a manager as a mentor. So Alexis is a Technology Specialist. She and her manager are meeting to discuss her new role. Her manager Roderick is acting as her mentor. And in that conversation, Roderick leans on his own experience as a Technology Specialist. He shares with her his advice and ideas. Based on his experience on how best to handle the situations that he anticipates she might run into. As her mentor, he invites her to think about things differently and to challenge her to try on separate situations, even if she hasn't encountered them yet. Roderick lends her his experience. Now we know that everybody's experience is different and even if I share with you everything I could possibly tell you, you're still going to have to go about it your own way. But a mentor at least gives people the opportunity to try on a new idea before they execute on it. To benefit from some of the challenges or mistakes even, that they may have made in advance. So, mentoring as a manager is a part of your responsibility. Helping people improve by sharing your insights is valuable, but we have to be careful not to overuse it. A lot of managers fall into the trap of what I call over telling, t-e-l-l-i-n-g. [LAUGH] Which is really too much advice. We tell people what to do, how to do it, when to do it which sort of dismisses them from the process. It also can make them overly reliant on you. And it also can create a lack of accountability. If they know that you're just going to tell them what to do, they may not feel like they really own a solution on their own. Sometimes there could be too much emphasis on how things used to be, rather than how we help them learn today. There are always new methods for doing things, and while our experience is valuable, we need to help people with where they are now. And sometimes too much telling might feel good for the mentor you feel like you're being helpful but you're actually not really developing anybody. You're just sharing words that they aren't having any ownership in. So we have to be careful not to overuse our mentor role. And you'll know if you really like this [LAUGH] because you might be the one when people meet with you and hour goes by and you didn't even know the time went by. And that would be because you're talking so much. [LAUGH] So pay attention to how much you offer In terms of mentorship and telling versus a combined approach that we've talked about so far, coaching, leading, managing, and mentoring, and in our next lesson we'll talk about training. So in summary, we can all be mentors to those who come after us. Even if you've only been a manager for six months, you have something to share with other people who are now stepping into the role. We all have our own wisdom and experience to share, and everybody's experience is valuable. And we can help each other by sharing what we know. It's how information moves through all of us. It's through how we share, how we have intention to be helpful. So as we mentor, leaning on our experience and our expertise is exactly what we're suppose to do. So in our last lesson on roles, our next one we're going to talk about the manager as trainer and what that looks like.
