January 24th, 2024—I was recently asked to present on the theme of mentoring. This started me thinking about mentors in my life, and the times I’ve mentored others. Who or what comes to mind when you think of impactful mentors? How often do you reflect on people you have mentored and changed their life trajectory? Another way to consider mentoring is ask yourself, who are your ancestors and who are you an ancestor too. There are many family and cultural answers to this question, people who travel well back in time and place. In this essay I want to focus on the immediate people or places that have shaped your identity and sense of self as a mentor or when you were mentored.
When thinking about the role of mentor in the context of higher education two broad responsibilities come to mind. The first is technical. It pivots around tasks like course selection, navigating institutional norms, or writing a letter of recommendation. This role is primarily functional and strategic. It might be more fully understood as an advisor. The other role is relational and defines the category of mentor. The nature of the tasks are situational, personal, and require a willingness on both parties to change. It entails the possibility of transformation of the intellectual, emotional, ethical, or spiritual self. In fact, deep and permanent change is the defining quality of a mentoring relationship.
I invite you to take a minute and consider the mentors in your life. Who or what has made you who you are today? Or better yet, who or what has invited you into the greatness of your unique self. When I think of my mentors the most impactful have called me to my better self when I was acting in ways inconsistent with my true self. That is what mentors do, they see gifts-talents-skills in us that we have yet to see or embrace. These mentors were brave enough to trust the strength of our relationship to convey hard truths that I didn’t want to hear but I needed to internalize in order to grow. Other mentors were significant in that they created space for conversation and inquiry around naming my heart’s longing. These mentors worked their magic through questions and storytelling about self, all the while inviting me to share what I knew or was experiencing. These conversations brought me closer to self and self-knowing.
In both cases the purpose and direction of change was me. The guidance that was given was not shared with the goal or intention of fulfilling the mentor’s ego needs. Mentors listen for the fulcrum of change that is meaningful to the mentee instead of listening for personal gratification. This means that a mentor surrenders to or releases expectations and notions of personal success in service of the mentee, and in that way also opens themselves up to change. There are no rubrics of success in mentoring, only the heart-felt sense of making a difference in another person’s life.
These trusted mentors were solely focused on my growth and development by attending to three dimensions of my selfhood, the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. Some mentors brought me into closer contact with my intellectual capabilities and the love I hold for academic disciplines. Other mentors helped me work through emotions of joy, anger, or frustration as I learned to lean into experiences in ways that confirmed core elements of my identity. My most valued mentors attended to my heart and its distinct knowledge system of how the world operates along the dimensions of the mystical, ineffable, and transcendent.
Mentoring is by no means easy. The skills are earned through being mentored, watching mentoring, and making mistakes that when attended to with love, point the mentor toward their own inherent wisdom. Mentors learn to embrace both joy and suffering as tools that are essential to the process of transformation. An effective mentor sees the mentee as fully human, even when the mentee can’t quite see those qualities in their own identity. They strive to bring the mentee into right relationship with self, others, and the world. This requires a form of intentional listening with their ears and their heart. They need to be present to what is known and what is ineffable and harder to define but no less concrete. It is through deep and heart-felt listening that the mentor empowers the mentee to agency through the naming and acceptance of core elements of self.
A good mentor trusts the relationship to traverse the terrain required for growth and in that exploration recognizes that to be a good guide requires walking side by side with the mentee. Mentors accept the entanglements that come with the role. Entanglements that can last a lifetime or a brief period of time that is bounded by institutional structures and time frames. Entanglements that speak to the relational quality of mentoring as one enters into the endeavor with an open heart and commitment to shepherding a mentee through the ups and downs of growth. Mentoring is a verb. The role comes alive in relationships of meaning. It is ongoing and transformative, not static and focused on a result that can be measured in institutional metrics.