engagement for the first time can be disorienting. The people in our program are there
because they care about leading, have succeeded in leading, or want to succeed. But when at
the table, in their conversation, neither mentor nor mentee is a leader. Mentoring is a
different kind of conversation – for both parties. A short list of comparisons between the
roles of leaders and mentors shows how different the two processes are.
1. Leaders are expert in forming collaborations that accomplish goals successfully.
Mentors tend to aspirations. These delicate states of being need to be coaxed into
clarity, nurtured with reflection, recollection and self-trust, and need to survive beyond any
limited goal.
2. Leaders must act with resolve, in the heat and complexity of the immediate
situation.
Mentors must cultivate in the mentee an awareness of the kinds of feelings,
spiritedness and resolve that leaders need in their hearts and souls, if any goal of merit and
significance is going to be reached.
3. Leaders have their own goals to put into practice.
Mentors have only the mentee’s aspirations at heart. If a mentor approaches the
conversation with the same intense focus as a leader on meeting a goal, the mentoring bond
will be broken.
For these reasons and others, confusing leading and mentoring can place the
conversation at cross-purposes, and dilute the outcomes for both participants. While informal
mentors who are cultivating new leaders are apt to make this mistake, the professional,
trained Arch of Leadership mentors do not.
The confusion runs two ways. Leaders might think they are mentoring to make the
mentee like them. No. Many people who approach us to be mentors feel qualified for this
work because of their track record in successfully solving practical problems. They are
surprised to find that Arch of Leadership mentors bring success to the table, but they also
bring more to the engagement. Mentees can get confused as well. Some might think: “This
mentor sitting across the table from me is worthy of my respect, and she is taking the time to
listen to me, but won’t give me advice or clues as to how to solve my problems or meet my
deadlines and goals.”
Mentors who have been successful leaders would love to offer their two cents’ worth
on solving that problem, but to be successful mentors they must put aside their desire to
dispense advice. Instead of thinking about solutions to problems, mentors sense, identify and
reinforce the qualities mentees can call upon within themselves in order to survive and even
thrive in the challenging life they have chosen, the life of leading. The mentor then lays out
what the mentee can anticipate by taking up the life of leading (long after the immediate
problem is passed). The mentor senses the mentee’s attitude about life, and judges whether or
not that person is willing postpone or even sacrifice some ambitions in order to engage in
something more expansive and more encompassing. Finally, the mentor tests whether or not
the mentee has, exerts and nurtures the energy necessary in this life.
For a successful mentoring engagement, both mentor and mentee must resist the siren
call to fix problems. Success in the mentoring conversation happens when the anxieties,
pressures and pitfalls of everyday leading are put aside, by both mentor and mentee; when
daily “doing” is deprived of its power to enthrall and overwhelm; when the mentor forgets
his sense of accomplishment and the mentee lets go of that crushing sense of urgency.
Mentoring takes a step back from the front line for a moment. Together, mentor and
mentee realize this: because mentoring allows aspiration to rise to the fore in a clear,
informed and definitive way, leading happens.
Contact us to see how the professional mentors at the Arch of Leadership can
transform your aspirations into a commitment to the life of leading.
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