To the Mentor: If Your Calendar Could Talk
In the 30 days prior to writing this post, I have been very, very busy. And it’s not been with the ordinary busyness of the average citizen, but with big life changes. I just completed a nine-month sabbatical. My house just sold. I have to choose a new house. With the ending of the sabbatical, a new job assignment has been placed on my lap. My son became a high school student...and not just any high school student, he is in both the marching band with events every weekend and he is on the advance science-based research track that requires him to work like a college student well into the evening. Perhaps you have had a similar kind of month. Most of us wouldn’t consider the events of our lives having galactic implications. However, I want to report, there is one thing that has remained steady in the midst of all of this: I mentor emerging leaders and emerging executives. It's just a priority in my life. As I glance over the last 30 days on my calendar, it reveals that the people who benefit from my mentoring and coaching have been able to get it with a surprising degree of regularity. We have enjoyed phone calls, Skype sessions, coffee shop gatherings, small group meetings, and email exchanges, all with the focus of assisting them in their developmental journey. I do not regret the time I have dedicated to the advancement of others and their agendas. Not one of these leaders I am working with pays me to give them this attention. It's just a priority. "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also," is one of those phrases that we wish had never been spoken by Jesus. It is one of those uncomfortable truths that betrays the real truth about what we want, that at times shows how our walk can very easily contradict our talk, and for those of us in the helping professions, or the developmental professions of teaching, counseling, pastoring, or leading, we inherently know the building of people is our central work. But too often problem solving, programming, policymaking, and playing accountant with the appointments on our calendars, more so than people-building and shaping the lives of others in a direct way. So what can we do? Over the next 30 days, can we close the gap between our talk about contributing to the lives of others and our walk about doing the same? Here are a few ideas:
1. Make a fairly short list of people who would benefit from developmental time with you.
2. Examine your upcoming schedule for tasks, events, and appointments that might be instructive for an emerging leader to join you in, giving them insight into how to conduct business or manage people or solve problems.
3. Select the most teachable and available of these emerging leaders and make an appointment with them. Perhaps you can schedule one appointment a week for the rest of the month. Make the focus of that appointment an invitation for them to join you while you do whatever it is you do. Offer them access to you and your work world as a developmental offer for their lives.
4. Interview them about their professional aims, their aspirations, their gaps, and any expectations they might offer about how you may be of service to them along their journey towards those it. Then begin.
5. Give them something to read. Before you meet, send them to a website, a chapter, or buy a book and put it in the mail to give them as a gift. Give them some advance work to do to prepare for time spent with you so they know deeply that you're not meeting to just have coffee or talk about the weekends’ sporting events. Instead, you are a serious individual that is interested in their development and you're asking them to be a serious individual interested in their own development.
Have the meeting. When you meet, outline two or three elements you intend to discuss with them that day and what you intend to revisit each time you meet with them. Then, get after it. Begin having discussions about the possibilities of meeting in the days to come. Discuss lessons being gleaned from the readings you assign. Ask them what their next steps would be in development, and how you might support them.
6. Write it down. The most productive people of the world share a common habit: they write things down. It's not that anyone would be lying or deceitful when making promises about the future, rather, people's memories fail. Competing priorities have a way of diminishing the importance of commitments, which are complicated, distant in the future, or require deep reflection and change. Writing these things down allows us to begin to massage our best intentions into accountable, action plans.
7. Do it all over again. Never leave a meeting without a next meeting on the books. It’s a simple practice and if you treasure the developmental arts of mentoring, coaching, sponsoring, counseling, and teaching, then it will be part of your schedule.
All of us are very busy. However, what if you could translate busyness into focus? An emerging leader told me last week, "Oh Dr. West, you must be so busy, I don't want to bother you with my question, but perhaps we can schedule a meeting sometime next month?" I looked at her seriously and attempted to help her understand: "It might appear as busyness to an outsider of my life, but actually, I have plenty of time. I have plenty of time for what's important to me. And developing emerging leaders is important to me. So it's not that I'm busy, I’m just focused. And now, I would like to focus on you. Can you meet right now?" Her jaw dropped. Here I was, making time for her when she perceived me to be "busy." I think it's true: "where your heart is, there your treasure will be also." Look over your last 30 days and ask if you are satisfied with your people-building? Look at the proposals I offer above, make some decisions about them, and let's look forward to your next 30 days. Let it be said of you, when it's all said and done, that not only did you talk about caring for the development of the next generation, you did something about it, one day at a time, one life at a time.
