Another kind of mentor.
Several of my greatest mentors were my clients. Their mentorship came through their willingness to fully engage as a client while I was bringing a new service model into existence. This is true collaboration and mutual mentorship. Few people have the skills and aptitude to be in a mutual mentorship, but when it happens the benefits are immense.
Here's an example of mutual mentorship in action. I was working with a highly skilled client on getting her service business off the ground. We kept running into mindset blocks that were getting in the way of her doing the necessary branding and marketing work. I proposed a shift in how we were working together. I thought it would be most beneficial to focus on what was getting in the way. Intelligent strong willed people can get stuck, their strong beliefs are powerful drivers in some ways, but are powerful impediments in others.
There are many ways to work on a belief system but the most effective require a group. My client and I were working one on one. We could have continued by using the methods available, but this was an opportunity to innovate. I had come up with the idea for a new way to bring the benefits of group work into the one-on-one work I was doing with this client. However, it was unproven and not fully formed.
Fortunately I was working with an innovator. I proposed that we explore the new model in our work. She agreed and her collaboration was instrumental in refining the new model and bringing it to my work with other clients. She experimented with me and provided insightful feedback on the work we were doing together.
We worked together for two years and the model we developed is key to helping my clients resolve mindset and belief system blocks. The model allows my clients to spend more time driving the outcomes that they desire with greater clarity.
Rapid and effective innovation requires partners with a different perspective, but who can also see eye-to-eye with us. In a larger organization, that may be a team member. But if the innovation is truly outside of the box, it can be hard to find a collaborator able to partner with you, and help bring an idea into reality.
Collaboration inspires the process of moving from idea to reality, but how is that being a mentor? A good mentor is not a teacher, advisor, consultant, or coach. A good mentor is someone with mastery who inspires the mentee to bring their unique version of a craft into the world. A good mentor co-creates something new, not because they are a master, but because they are so masterful that they can help the mentee bring forth something new.
The mentor I am speaking of here is masterful, but may not have mastery in the particular craft at hand. At times, this form of mentorship can be more beneficial than someone who knows everything about a craft. With this type of mentorship, the idea or craft is not restricted by old ways and limitations that restrict even those with mastery of that craft.
Masterful mentors; listen to understand, are bold in asking questions, are inspired by your work, see your potential, do not rush to conclusions, and give feedback that is rich, practical, and bold. Often it is more valuable to find a mentor who is masterful than one who has mastery, unless that mentor is also masterful.
I have benefited from having several mentors who were not masters of my craft, but were masterful in collaborating with me on my ideas. From those mentorship relationships, innovation came along with mastery.
