[April 5, 2016] I got a call the other day from a retired colonel who was one of my several military mentors. He wanted to know if, during my time as a General officer, I had mentored anyone and if so were they successful. I told him that the question was a bit odd because those I agreed to mentor were already successful in many ways. Our conversation rested on the basis of who makes the greatest mentors and who are they.
In my opinion, it is important to make clear what a mentor does before we can say who they should be. Mentors accomplish two things; first, they serve in an advisory role and provide experience and wisdom counsel for the mentee and second, they promote and advocate for the mentee. Most mentorship programs fail to account for the second responsibility of a mentor and this is unfortunate.
A good mentor also knows the essentials for being a leader and always has a mental checklist of those available. Almost two years ago while writing about mentors here in theLeaderMaker.com I provided a list of 66 essentials for junior military leaders that I’d developed from my 40 years in the U.S. Army (see link here). These apply also to any leader in any organization and can be good for senior leaders to abide by also.
Who makes for a successful mentor? I think that anyone can be a mentor but to be useful to the mentee it takes a few other attributes. Of course, the mentor should not be in the chain of command of the mentee. A quick search of the internet nowadays can find several sites on “traits of a mentor” (I got 32 million sites on my first try in Google). So I’ll be providing my own list based on seeing what works.
Good mentors have the following traits:
- Passion to be a mentor and to share their experience, knowledge, and wisdom.
- Ability to provide “high altitude” or big picture advice.
- Ease at developing trust and confidence.
- Communicator, especially on difficult subjects.
- Provide sound and timely feedback.
- Networked into the professional field of the mentee.
- Knows the typical shortfalls, failures, and problems often encountered.
- Personally successful and not tainted by scandal or from ill-gotten rewards.
- Have had a successful mentor in their past.
- Diplomatic.
- Brutally honest and impeccably truthful.
- Objective and fair.
- Can recognize potential and assess capabilities.
- Can initiate and control conflict.
- Resilient and can teach the mentee how to be more resilient.
This is only one side of the equation. Next we will look at traits of the mentee.
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