Mentoring

What worked for you might not work for others. This is the challenge with offering advice.

Worse still, because it works for you, it is easy to conclude that something is wrong with the other person if it is not working for them.

In reality, what works for you might be for reasons even you do not yet understand. The lack of understanding becomes a burden on anyone you think should also apply it.

This can be frustrating during mentoring.
The mentee tries to apply an advice, but the results are subpar, yet they expend a lot of effort sticking to it, not wanting to disappoint the mentor.
The mentor on the other hand, thinks it will just take time before things start to work out. They misinterprete the effort being expended as discipline. Of course if you stick to anything, it ultimately works for you, but it might leave you drained everytime you do it.

As a guide, anything that drains you and never refills you, is not working for you.
Usually, such things require a lot of effort to do.
I use “effort”, and not “discipline”, because while effort is energy draining, discipline is energy refilling.

In mentoring, the core job of the mentor is to unearth what already works for the mentee, by asking questions and tracking patterns.
Then you declutter the noise that limits what works.
Finally, you hold them accountable to what works.

Mentoring is basically the process of helping people learn what works for them. Sticking with it will follow, naturally.

– Osasu Oviawe