Mentoring with All Levels and at All Levels in the Organization
We wish to convey a particularly important insight offered our sage leaders that is directly relevant to our work as a professional coach. We found in reviewing the interviews conducted with our Sage leaders that mentorship occurs at many levels in an organization and can be engaged with the young, the middle-aged, and even those men and women who are older than ourselves. This where the Scope of Appreciation can be expanded by a coach. The coach can help their client discover ways in which they have already been mentoring someone who is older than themselves or consider future ways in which they might assist an older employee or someone much younger themselves.
Here is a Sage leader who enjoys mentoring the young:
“My principal civic role here is in mentoring young people. There is one young woman in particular whose mother had been killed in an automobile crash. I helped to mentor her through her grieving process and our relationship continues to this day. I have also been involved in two other civic roles: as a mobilizer to bring about social change and as motivator to urge people toward public good and away from self-interest.”
Another Sage leader identifies his role as a mentor to those in his organization who are new in the job and need to gain a perspective about how the whole organization works. These new employees need not be young (especially in a work environment in which older people are seeking new career opportunities). We need to get “a lay of the land” at any age when joining a new organization:
“Within the probation department, I’ve had the opportunity to be in all of the units and become fluent in all the aspects of the organization. That’s helped me become a leader in the department, and it has served me well. I tell [new] department members that they should go after assignments in different areas of the organization, because it gives them such valuable perspective to know that each unit has its own style and culture. Each can benefit from the other.”
The mentoring of new or less experienced employees seems to be most effective if the person doing the mentoring is neither judgmental nor intimidating:
“My strongest role is mentor. In my school district position, I often have site administrators who are new or transitioning into a new position. I am the person they contact because I’m not intimidating, and they feel safe in calling me. One of my gifts is being able to put people into the right positions. This is one of the reasons I enjoy the district personnel position. Being able to get the right teacher in the right place is important, because then I know I am impacting many kids. I am a good mentor and really enjoy it.”
Generativity Two often involves not just having gained considerable experience in one’s working life in an organization, but also having achieved some well-deserved status and position-power in the organization.
In mentoring from the top of the organization, one can often provide protection for the younger or less experienced person being mentored:
“I admire leaders who protect their staff and take hits for them. The guy I worked for in Santa Cruz always looked so beat-up, and what he took on was just amazing. Whatever got filtered down to us, he would fight the battle. And when he couldn’t fight the whole battle, he would somehow find a way. That’s hard to do sometimes– because the easiest thing to do is avoid fighting the battle”
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