Mentoring young people is an investment in your own life as much as it is an investment in the life of the young people you mentor. You can learn from your mentees as they learn from you. Do not see it simply as a task, but as an opportunity to help them with what you have to offer. Even the best mentors are still learning, but in the learning process, you can still give them your best by avoiding these common mistakes.
Today, I share 5 mistakes adults should avoid making when mentoring young people:
- Not being genuine.
Be a mentor with no hidden agenda, ensure your motives are pure and know that young people are looking for someone with integrity. Your motives are what guide your actions. The sad part about this is that no one truly knows your motives but you. Be encouraged to be ethical in why and how you mentor those you do. If your intentions are impure, you rob your mentees of the best mentorship experience as you are only seeking personal gains. Mentorship is how you can help those you are tasked to, not how you can take advantage of them. Also, having impure motives and acting on them is a risk for being found out and risking having what could have been a good reputation.
2. Becoming sympathetic instead of empathic.
Being sympathetic speaks to a feeling of pity for someone who is feeling sorrowful about a situation. Being empathetic on the other hand speaks to the ability to imagine oneself in another person’s situation, allowing you to experience their emotions. Being empathic allows for you to have a greater heart of concern for an individual than. Being able to imagine yourself in another’s situation helps you to guide young people more effectively. Remember you are not their savior, you are a guide, so you may not have definite solutions to solving their problems. Do note, however, that the most effective way to assist begins with trying to understand the other person, and to do so, you must imagine yourself in their shoe.
3. Not coaching their mentees.
Mentoring is not just telling people what to do, it’s about helping them create a vision for themselves and coaching them through it. Young people need to be motivated and coached. Reward sweetens labour, coaching is no different as it helps with one’s desire to push on. Remember, growing in life comes with its discomforts and difficulties, coaching helps with getting through them successfully.
4. Not making time for them.
We know everyone lives busy lives, but in mentoring you have to try to make time to build the relationship. Just like your life, the life of your mentee/mentees is very important. There is never a good excuse to have insufficient time for your mentee. There are 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week and 30 or 31 days in a month. With that much time, how can you not find the time to invest in your mentee? Mentoring is not a task that you should take up lightly. You have to be intentional. How will you be able to measure his/her/their growth if you are never around? How will they know they can depend on you unless you are there? A good relationship can never be cultivated through short random “drop-ins”. Be intentional, make the time, value their life and time as much as you value yours.
5. Feeling like you always have to be right or having the perfect answers.
You are not perfect, so do not put on a mask and pretend to be who you are not in front of your mentee(s). Because they look up to you, does not mean you should be ashamed of sharing that you do not have the perfect answers. If ever you are unsure of what to say, do know that even that is fine to say. Your role is to help guide them, not save them. Also, how you mentor your mentees, will highly likely be how they mentor their future mentees. So, do it right, so that they won’t do it wrong.
These are just a few mistakes to avoid. If you want to learn more about mentoring youths, I am inviting you to join my upcoming webinar called Teen & Youth Mentorship: How To Effectively & Eternally Impact Young People on Tuesday June 30, 2020. Register at bit.ly/dayelightsummerclass to secure your space. Replay will also be available.