Mentoring as Qualification

One of the biggest hurdles I’ve seen people deal with as they’ve moved into new roles has been coming to terms with how much they’re willing to share with the person filling the role they previously held. Far too often, there’s a perception that if their successor performs better than they did, it diminishes the value they contributed while in the role. We’re about to work through exactly why that’s complete nonsense. But first, I need you to take a quick timeout and reflect on a past failure you’ve experienced and detail the lesson it taught you and how that’s helped you become exponentially more qualified in the area of your life today.

So what happens if the person we train to fill our shoes beats all of our fastest times? For many folks, that can be disheartening. The new guy is already churning out better results than I ever did… No one wants to feel that way - unless they understand the value they’ve provided that person through their relational experience was crucial in them even having a shot at success in the first place. I’m sure there will be some shallow managers that miss this, but I’ve never met a great leader who didn’t fully appreciate the value of training the next generation to surpass old records.

As we looked at steps for fostering a mentorship culture, I shared how Jake had been a decent welder for years but trained dozens of welders who ended up being far better than him. If Jake’s long term aspirations were to be the best welder that company ever employed, seeing many of the welders he trained produce as good or better results in their first few months with the company would have been devastating. Thankfully, Jake saw his opportunity to train welders as his chance to earn even bigger opportunities, ones where he could move away from his daily role as a welder altogether. And that’s exactly what he did. Interestingly enough, I’m not sure Jake ever would have been considered as a trainer if I hadn’t needed his help in keeping the behavior-based safety process afloat while I was traveling. To get him up to speed, I had no choice but to teach him everything I possibly could - even through the concerns I struggled with around that same idea. If he did well while I was gone, would they still need me???

Fortunately for me and Jake, the leaders we worked with at the time (Rod, Kevin, and Terry) understood that being qualified to produce strong results is valuable but being able to teach others to achieve even better results is more valuable. Not only does that increase the number of qualified people within an organization, mentoring others proves and deepens a leader’s qualifications. Over time, Jake became far more valuable to the organization for how he could develop new employees into effective welders than he ever was as an individual welder. And not only did helping Jake learn the aspects of the behavior-based safety process allow me to learn it at a deeper level, it served as a tangible example for what I could offer all the other sites I was providing training for.

If either of us had chosen to only show others just enough to get by, rather than everything we possibly could so they could be successful, I don’t believe we would have ever moved beyond the roles we were in at the time - if we would have been able to maintain them. I can say with complete confidence that mentoring Jake through those aspects of the behavior-based safety initiative drastically increased my qualification to train and mentor others, and I think him doing the same for so many welders provided him with equal value. For mentoring to increase our own qualification over the long haul, though, we’ll need to consistently focus on our investing in our own practical growth. We’ll look at that next. Until then, I’ll challenge you to identify one person you can mentor on a hands-on leadership task. As you do, they’ll improve, their team members will have a better overall experience, and I’ll just bet that it will make you better through the process!