To the Mentor: Eating for Two
No one raised an eyebrow when she opened up her second package of Cheerios and a bowl, doused it with a thermos of cold milk, and commenced munching on “second breakfast,” (to lift a line from Tolkien's The Hobbit). That anyone might enjoy a mid-morning meal isn't all that unusual. That it was happening in the middle of an executive work meeting in a formal conference room with folks dressed in charcoal gray and navy blue business suits was another matter. But even here, this second breakfast, raised no eyebrows. Why? This executive, a “showing” pregnant mom, was eating for two. It’s not strange at all that a person would have a voracious appetite when eating for two. Given these circumstances, everyone around accommodates.
But what does this have to do with mentoring? Some protégés are hungrier than others. Some, however, are less hungry than they ought to be. Every protégé should be eating for two. If a protégé consumes the attention, advice, encouragement, and support from a mentor, but has not committed themselves to the developing other emerging leaders around and beyond them, then something is not as it ought to be. It’s the surest indicator that the protégé is merely eating for one, consuming the mentoring investment for only their needs. They are not paying it forward. But the addition of just one mentoring commitment to another emerging leader changes the protégés appetite for growth and contribution. It changes the nature of the entire mentor/protégé exchange.
How do you get protégés to reproduce beyond them? I believe it begins with “TNT:” a “Trans-generational and Transformative” commitment. If a mentoring relationship is to be healthy, and achieve all that it can, it has to be trans-generational. The word “trans-generational” simply means, serving more than the generation of the mentor/protégé in which it started. The mentor commits to developing a protégé (this is the first generation, G1). The G1 protégé commits to mentoring another protégé (G2). Usually I require a protégé make this commitment when I am initiating and framing the G1 relationship, especially since I intend to help the protégé become a mentor as one dimension of the developmental relationship. If the process only stopped there, it would be admirable. It would be more than what usually occurs. Most mentor and protégé relationships never get beyond this G1 phase. Perhaps it would be too dramatic to describe such a relationship as “sterile,” but looked at through the lens of trans-generationality, that's exactly what it is. No, things get interesting when the G1 protégé, recruits a G2 protégé, and requires the G2 protégé to recruit a G3 protégé, who also recruits a G4 protégé. All four of these generations, are under the influence of the first generation mentor and protégé. These relationships are not occurring as serial relationships, sequenced over time, but rather they are simultaneous, as if stacked like pancakes in time upon one another. With all these references to Gs, and 1s, and 2s, and 3s, and 4s, it might be easy to get confused. But it's quite simple, in mentoring you can only get that to which you agreed and the best mentors require their protégés to be investing in others. It builds upon the principle: you learn best, that which you give away. This leads us to the other “T” of the “TNT” mentoring commitment. The other “T” stands for “Transformative.” Unless mentoring is helping a person navigate life opportunities and obstacles that represent growth on the other side, the mentoring relationship is not what it yet could be. People can do poorly all on their own. The mentoring relationship must take on those aspects of life, learning, leadership, and living that one might not face fully unless supported to do so. This is the transformational dimension of life.
Look out into the natural world, where caterpillars become butterflies and tadpoles become frogs, and we see the natural pattern of growth requires struggle, nurturing, protection, and risk. The mentor must represent the structures that keep protégés moving through the formative processes, especially when things are hard, complex, anxious, and elusive. In such times, most of us would rather shrink back and maintain our comfort zone. The mentor must help the protégé edge out and away from the comfort zone long enough to retain new attitudes, beliefs, new patterns of behaviors, and new relational agreements. This is the work of transformative support. Mentors, of course, are not God or magicians, but all through history, they have represented the horizons of what is possible when the emerging leader does serious soul work in the face of transformative opportunities and obstacles.
It is for this reason that creating a “mentourage,” (Howard Hendricks’ word for mentoring clusters like I am describing here) is at least four generations deep, creates a new norm of transformative expectations in a small network of people. It would be natural for all members of a G4 mentoring cluster to make mention of how they are facing transformative opportunities and obstacles. Are you engaged in TNT mentoring? Are you nurturing a mentourage?
If not, here are a few things you can do: 1. Review your Agreement. If you have not planned for four generations of recruitment, revise it so that you may do so. 2. Recruit a Mentourage. Who needs to be invited into the existing mentorauge? Begin recruitment conversations immediately, discuss each candidate and the supervision process with your mentor. Make a few exploratory appointments. Don't stop until you have a G4 arrangement. Work at it. It may take time, but keep working. 3. Revise your Schedule. There is never enough time for mentoring or anything else that’s important. So making time for mentoring and those who are being mentored in the trans-generational linkages must be folded into one's schedule.
4. Revise your Horizon. Mentoring leaves a legacy by the continual investment that views the future as a state impacted by what we do today. Investing in people is the surest means to leaving a legacy in our tomorrows. Consider the multiplied effect of your singular investment in one protégé who is making a singular investment in one protégé, who is making an investment in one protégé, who makes an investment in one protégé. Now, multiple this process over a lifetime! See the horizon as populated by leaders who look out for the development of other leaders over a lifetime.
Eating for two, or three, or four is not too much to expect of a protégé who hungers to develop as a mentor or whose horizon includes the improvement of the lives around them and beyond them.
