Investing in Mentorship for Exponential Returns

I rarely speak with a group at this point without referencing how blessed I’ve been through the relationships I now have with so many amazing people. Each time I share this, I’m intentional in detailing that the very best of these relationships came from strategic investments of time and energy, and always had a goal of being mutually beneficial. And while all the great relationships I have today add value to my life, the ones that provide exponential returns are those that involve purposeful mentorship. I’m thrilled to see how collaborating with others as a mentor has helped me multiply the impact I can have, and we’ll look at that in more detail soon, but I can say with confidence that any mentorship I could have hoped to offer would have had far less value without the mentors in my life.

To this point, I’ve mentioned several mentors who provided me with guidance in very specific areas but I’ve only scratched the surface. I remember a time early in my career where someone suggested that I should only have one mentor to avoid confusion. Looking back, that may be one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever been told - and it was clearly geared at serving their interests more than mine. Think about it, is it remotely reasonable to believe that one person could provide all the insight we’d ever need on even a single topic, let alone every aspect of our life? And would it be fair to expect them to? Now take that a step further and consider the level of arrogance that one person would need to have to imply they were capable…

Terry has provided me with input on numerous things for more than two and a half decades, and he still does. Similarly, Rod has also shared insight with me for close to twenty years. And my dad has done that for longer than the two of them combined, even if I didn’t always listen as well as I should have. All said, each of them have expertise in their own areas and as I’ve done things in other fields, I’ve had to work to identify mentors with experience related to each new issue. This has never been a knock toward any one mentor. To that end, the manager I reported directly longer than any other - who also taught me more about workplace safety than anyone else on the planet - actively encouraged me to seek out learning opportunities from every source I could. He even suggested that I interview for a different position outside the company at least one a year, just so I’d be prepared if I ever needed to make a job change. 

Since going into business for ourselves, we’ve had to look for a much wider range of mentors. Some have helped us learn how to create and package training curriculum, a few have helped us hone our message when speaking to large groups (which is vastly different from delivering training for a small group), and others have been instrumental in helping us write proposals and set pricing structures. None of the outstanding mentors who did so much for me in my full time roles could have provided this same guidance because they hadn’t dealt with these things themselves.

In each case, I was very deliberate about putting myself in a position where the mentor I was interacting with saw value in offering their initial input. I’ve always worked to demonstrate how I put their suggestions into practice and I’ve actively looked for ways to not only show appreciation but to add value back to them as well. My goal in each mentorship relationship has been to demonstrate how much I’ve valued their investment into my life and career. While there’s no way I could ever list each person who’s filled any type of mentorship role for me here, I can emphatically state that all of those mentorship relationships are yielding lifeline leadership dividends. And much of that has been in helping me grow to a point that I have something to offer others, paying it forward through collaboration that multiplies the ROI I’ve gotten from those who mentored me - and we’ll dig into that next.

For now, though, I’ll challenge you to consider one specific area of your life or career where you’d benefit from strategic mentorship. Who has the experience that could help you grow? What steps can you take right away to engage them in a mentorship relationship?

Collaboration as a Multiplier in Relational ROI

Having just mentioned the manager I reported to for over a decade, and a few specific things he impressed upon me during that time, let’s look at a few more crucial lessons he mentored me on. There are several passages in the Bible that caution us about overlooking the value we get from those we’re familiar with. Proverbs 25:17 teaches us not to wear out our welcome with that statement, “Withdraw thy foot from thy neighbor’s house; lest he be weary of thee, and so hate thee.” Throughout the Gospels, there are references to the contempt Jesus received in his hometown with Mark 6:3 detailing it this way: “Is not this the Carpenter, the Son of Mark and Brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us? - And they took offense at Him.”

I worked side by side with Kevin nearly every day for close to fifteen years, eleven of which he was my direct supervisor - but I can’t recall a single time where he treated me like anything but a peer. Not only did he encourage me to chase all the professional development I could and to interview for other positions so I’d be prepared for whatever the future held, he taught me more about workplace safety than any other dozen folks combined. He also provided an amazing example of how to work with people who often didn’t want to hear the message we were responsible for sharing.

Through all I learned from Kevin, I can’t recall a single time where he said, “Wes, I’m going to teach you something.” His lessons were always shared through a lens of what one of his mentors had taught him along the way. Kevin rarely took credit for the incredible work he did, passing it back to someone who had helped him earlier in his career and just as often shining a light on something I had done (with his guidance). While I can honestly say I’ve never felt the slightest bit of contempt toward Kevin, I know I’ve often taken all he invested into me for granted. Looking back, though, I can now think of dozens of people I’ve passed his lessons along to and I’ve seen many of them benefit tremendously because of that.

In chapter two of Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, “Connecting is All About Others,” John Maxwell tells us that each person we work to build a connection with will be asking these three questions of us before they’ll openly receive anything we have to offer:

• Do You Care About Me”
• Can I Trust You? (There’s that TRUST thing again…)
• Can You Help Me?

Within days of starting to work with Kevin (it never felt like I worked for him), I unequivocally knew the answer to each of these questions was YES! By sharing how others had mentored him, he actively mentored me. And I’ve since been able to pass much of that along to folks I’ve had the privilege of mentoring in one way or another. He and I had one of the most collaborative working relationships I can remember, at least prior to working with Cindy. That collaboration, what he learned from his mentors being passed on to me and likely many others who he mentored over the years, and each of us being able to pass those lessons along through our relationships, has indeed been a tremendous multiplier of relational ROI.

With this example fresh in your mind, I’ll challenge you to think about who has been actively mentoring you that you may not fully appreciate because of your familiarity with them? If you have kids, or have ever been around a kid at any point in your life, you know they often need to hear things from someone not named “Mom” or “Dad” for it to sink in. That happens just as often for you and me… Rather than allowing our familiarity to breed contempt, even if it’s just in the form of under-appreciating the mentorship we’re receiving from a close relationship, I’ll challenge you to approach it from a Proverbs 27:17 standpoint, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” 

Since so much of this look at strength through great professional relationships ties back to that, we’ll work through how we can turn relationships into measurable leadership growth soon. First, though, let’s circle back to the importance of developing our emotional intelligence so we can maximize relational value.

Emotional Intelligence - Maximizing Relational Value

For any relationship to deliver a measurable return on investment, strategic investment will always be required. To take full advantage of the value we can recognize through strong mentorship relationships, it’s crucial that we practice a high degree of emotional intelligence as we make those investments so we can maximize the relational value. Whether we’re being mentored or we’re mentoring someone else, candid conversations will be a necessity. That said, candor is rarely received as alliance feedback without a tailored and intentional delivery. As I mentioned in detailing the role of trust in candid conversations, it’s often less about what actually happened to the dog than how the veterinarian shares the outcome…

Thinking back to the early stages of my professional journey, I can still feel the significant differences in how I received input from each mentor. Terry was always direct, but usually shared specific details backing his suggestion. Rod was just as direct, and his input rarely seemed like a suggestion. Kevin’s approach was significantly softer, almost as if it was just an idea I should consider. At that point, I was far less secure and usually far too willing to defend my position - especially when I felt threatened. Had I not been able to answer each of the three questions I shared before from Maxwell’s Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, the value I would have pulled from my relationship with each of those mentors would have been far less. Don’t misunderstand me here, I’m in no way suggesting that any of those methods were better than another. The limiting factoring in each was my ability to receive what they were willing to share. Thankfully, my self-confidence and my emotional intelligence increased over time - at least slightly - and that helped me maximize the relational value with each mentor.

Regardless of which role we fill in a mentoring relationship, the goal is growth. To have the best shot at achieving forward progress toward that growth, how the message is delivered, even if it’s not about our dog, plays a critical role in whether it’s applied, brushed aside, or completely offensive. Even in the most authentic mentoring relationships, emotional intelligence is key to maximizing the value. In Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry lists the four components of EQ as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. As fascinating as I found Bradberry’s work, much like everything else I’ve studied on the topic of emotional intelligence, I struggled to pull definite how-to’s that I could put into practice. As much as each component resonated with me, I couldn’t put my finger on what I would need to do to improve in any of those areas through just the lens of what I had read in any book on the topic.Thankfully, that wasn’t the only lens I had to look through.

During my time in behavior-based safety, I had taken all kinds of “personality” assessments, even though most weren’t actually focused on actual personalities. While the results from each typically rang true, I can’t remember a single time that any of those results came with detail on how I could apply them. A few years after moving into the human resources world full time, I saw one of the coolest things I had seen while touring a stone quarry. (Picture Fred Flintstone, Barney Rubble and Mr. Slate, but with real earth-moving equipment instead of dinosaurs.) Everyone wore hardhats and each team member had colored stickers on the front. Having worked in safety, using a similar system for showing the type of equipment employees were authorized to operate, I asked the guy giving the tour how the colors corresponded with their equipment. He explained that the colors didn’t have anything to do with equipment or training, but showed each team member’s primary communication style. He said that understanding what each color represented allowed him to tailor how he shared his message with that individual so they had the best chance of receiving it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was my first real-world exposure to the DISC Model of Human Behavior.

When we’re able to customize our candid conversation, especially in the scope of mentorship, alliance feedback takes the place of even the suggestion of constructive criticism. Having the self-awareness we can get from a tool as inexpensive as a scientifically validated DISC assessment (the one we recommend 100% of the time costs less than most fast food combos) provides a foundation for managing how our communication changes under stress. Understanding those two simple questions to recognize someone else’s communication style (social awareness), then adapting what we share to fulfill their needs (relationship management) can be key in maximizing the value in any relationship. When that’s specific to mentorship, EQ turns those relationships into high-value leadership assets and measurable leadership growth - which is where we’ll pick up soon.