Troubleshooting Mentoring Relationships
On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers successfully flew the first airplane for 12 seconds before bringing it in for a landing. This was the culmination of a great deal of work, and was only the beginning of the journey. After countless hours spent planning, calculating, building, and recovering from failed attempts, the Wright brothers permanently altered the world by creating aviation. Travel has never been the same, and our modern world as we know it would not exist without the hard and often discouraging work that the Wright brothers subjected themselves to.
Being human is hard. In almost every case that someone creates an ingenious idea or sets out to accomplish an important task, they encounter obstacles that can often seem insurmountable. This is the way of every human endeavor, and it extends to mentorship too.
If you have had or been a mentor for any period of time, you will know the challenges that can present themselves. One miscommunication can create tension and confusion that might long outlast the specific conversation. Too many words of advice from a mentor and not enough listening can cause a mentee to become discouraged. And when the circumstances of life get especially heavy, it can be hard to find the courage to trust your deepest thoughts and struggles with another person—especially one that you admire and look up to.
All of these struggles and more can plague mentoring relationships, and they can feel impossible to overcome. But as with anything, there is growth that takes place in the process. In this post, I hope to offer some practical tips for how to overcome some of the most common difficulties in mentoring relationships. By persevering through the hard times, you will come out on the other side with a stronger connection, a deeper sense of trust, and a great deal of personal growth to show for your efforts.
Doing the Hard Work
Humans are flawed creatures, so it is no wonder that human relationships are fraught with challenges and pitfalls. If you are determined to make the most of life, pursuing mentorship as a way to grow or to pour back into others, you will need to be prepared to put in the hard work of pursuing vulnerability, trust, intentionality, and positive habits of communication in your mentor/mentee relationship.
Vulnerability and trust are the necessary starting points for a successful mentoring relationship. Vulnerability describes the willingness to open up to your mentor (or mentee) about the specific problems and challenges that you are facing. This is important for both the mentor and the mentee, since vulnerability helps to deepen a relationship and to foster greater trust. Trust is the trait that allows you to listen positively to the observations and advice of your mentor. If you find yourself struggling to open up to your mentor, it may be that you need to work towards greater vulnerability in the relationship. Try sharing things that are of a more personal nature. It may be uncomfortable at first, but if your mentor is someone that you can trust, this willingness to open up will almost always be worthwhile.
For a mentoring relationship to make any real impact, you have to be willing to put time and effort into meeting and working together towards the goal of mutual growth. If you find that you are stagnant and not making progress in your desired area of life, it may be that your mentoring relationship is struggling due to a lack of intentionality. Try speaking with your mentor or mentee about the areas that you would like to see your relationship develop and deepen. Set more regular times to meet, debrief, and strategize. While it is important to respect boundaries, you should seek to maintain as much contact as possible. This might be in the form of texting, calling, emailing, or even sending letters if you happen to live far apart. This kind of communication can help you to effectively leverage a mentoring relationship for all that it’s worth.
Finally, it is important to develop good habits of communication. As we have just discussed, frequency of communication is important. But beyond this, the quality of your communication is vital. If you are finding yourself hesitant to speak with your mentor or mentee because conversations often result in conflict or tension, this might be because of a tendency towards miscommunication or misunderstanding. This can occur when one or both parties are unwilling to listen to the other person. It can also happen if one or both parties struggle to communicate clearly. To remedy this, it is important to prioritize listening and asking questions. This is an idea that will help to make any human relationship more harmonious, and it applies both to the mentor and the mentee. Mentees should ask their mentors questions and listen to their responses. Mentors should listen to their mentees as they discuss the things that matter to them or create anxiety for them, asking their mentees questions to stimulate further discussion and to clarify statements that might be unclear.
By fostering a relationship that prizes vulnerability, intentionality, and communication, you can go far in your mentoring relationship. And like the Wright brothers, this process of trial and error might one day help you to soar.
