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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Learn how a mentor relationship can make your life more fulfilling
The Mentorship Edge: Creating Maximum Impact through Lateral and Hierarchical Mentoring explores how we connect to others, feel valued, get pleasure from life, and believe our lives have meaning through forming mentor relationships with others. This book covers traditional hierarchical mentorship we're all familiar with, along with lateral mentoring, where you connect with a friend or colleague—someone you can be vulnerable with—whether they work in your department, another department, or outside of your organization entirely.
Insight in this book is drawn from The International Association of Top Professionals 2025 Top CEO and Mentor of the Year Deborah Heiser's experience running The Mentor Project, a nonprofit mentoring organization with more than 100 mentors at the absolute top of their fields. In this book, readers will learn about:
- The proven benefits of mentorship in both work and home life
- Mentorship in various fields, including business, research, entrepreneurship, and art
- Classic examples of the power of mentorship, like when Steve Jobs asked Steve Wozniak for engineering help when he was at Atari
The Mentorship Edge is an essential guide to demystify the special concept of mentoring and inspire individuals to engage in mentoring naturally, whether hierarchically or laterally, based on their goals and passions.
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Seitenzahl: 332
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Harnessing the Power of Mentorship
1 We Are Built to Mentor
Generativity’s Roots
How Generativity Unfolds
Mentoring as a Form of Generativity
How to Become Generative
The Opposite of Generativity
Can You Bounce in and out of Generativity?
2 Five Key Components to Mentoring
1. Generativity
2. Intrinsic Motivation
3. Meaningful Connections
4. Trust
5. Goal Setting
3 What Mentoring Isn’t
An Advisor Is Not a Mentor
A Sponsor Is Not a Mentor
Networking Is Not Mentoring
How Networking Is Different from Mentoring
Coaching Is Not Mentoring
4 Why We Mentor
Survival: The Book of
Ruth
Naomi
To Feel Useful
To Feel Validated
To Leave a Legacy
Is There a Way to Measure Mentorship as a Legacy?
5 Mentoring Styles
Hierarchical Mentoring
Reverse Mentoring
Lateral Mentoring™
How Lateral Mentoring™ Differs from Hierarchical Mentoring
The Start-Up Culture
Lateral Mentoring™ in the Workplace
Lateral Mentors™ in Meetings
Peer Mentoring
Peer Mentoring vs. Lateral Mentoring™
6 Mentors in Our Lives
The Teacher
The Professor
Grandparents
The Nana
Mentoring Full Circle
The Mentor Project
7 Mentoring in the Workplace
Mentoring Enhances Personal and Professional Development
Professional Services
Military
Lateral Mentoring™
Safety
Wall Street
Big Law Firms
Health Care
8 Defining Mentoring through Research
Where Can Research Take Us?
What Research Has Been Done?
Why Is More Research Needed?
Why Start with a Systematic Review
Define, Combine, and Apply
The Learning Breakdown:
Where We Stand Currently
9 The Future of Mentoring
Dorie Clark
Marshall Goldsmith
Mentoring by Video
10 Creating Culture through Mentorship
The Birth of a Nation
The Technology Boom
Workplace Culture
Mentorship Culture within Communities
Families
Friends and Mentorship
11 Call to Action: Finding Mentorship Opportunities
Take Action!
References
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
FIGURE 1.1 Physical activity.
FIGURE 1.2 Emotional growth.
FIGURE 1.3 Generativity vs. reciprocity and generosity.
FIGURE 1.4 Erikson’s life stages.
Chapter 2
FIGURE 2.1 Five key components of mentoring.
Chapter 4
FIGURE 4.1 The legacy tree.
Chapter 5
FIGURE 5.1 Five key components of mentoring.
Chapter 7
FIGURE 7.1 Letter from mentor Lt. Colonel Thompson.
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Begin Reading
References
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
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Creating Maximum Impact through Lateral and Hierarchical Mentoring
THE MENTORSHIP EDGE
DEBORAH HEISER, PhD
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Heiser, Debbie, author. | John Wiley & Sons, publisher.
Title: The mentorship edge : creating maximum Impact through lateral and hierarchical mentoring / Deborah Heiser.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2025] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2024025263 (print) | LCCN 2024025264 (ebook) | ISBN 9781394267118 (cloth) | ISBN 9781394267132 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781394267125 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Mentoring. | Interpersonal relations.
Classification: LCC BF637.M45 H45 2025 (print) | LCC BF637.M45 (ebook) | DDC 158.3—dc23/eng/20240708
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024025263
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024025264
Cover Design: WileyCover Image: © berCheck/Adobe StockAuthor Photo: © Deborah Heiser
To my favorite people in the whole world. I love you!Joel WeinbergerLiam WeinbergerAiden WeinbergerFor my dad, Larry Heiser
Introduction
I dread cocktail parties. Someone introduces themselves, we exchange pleasantries, and then they ask what I do. My reply, “I’m an aging specialist,” stops them in their tracks. Their eyes glaze over. Their jaws slacken, and it’s clear that drool is only seconds away. Then, their eyes dart around the room as they look to make a great escape from the most boring person in the world.
It wasn’t always this way. In my late teens, I’d fly down to Florida to visit my grandparents during winter breaks. The flights from New York were easy and inexpensive, so I went often. My grandma was a ton of fun with a closet full of fabulous clothes, just my size. Even though she had emphysema, which worsened each year, she was always excited to see me, thrilled to take me to an early bird special dinner, to show off her grandkid to her friends, and we played endless games of canasta. Over the years, she remained as fun as ever but would need to go to the hospital more often.
On one visit, Grandma wasn’t happy. In fact, she was cranky, snappish, and unkempt. No one could get her out of her funk. She didn’t want to play canasta, read books, or go anywhere. Her usual fashionable outfits were downright grungy, and her hairstyle resembled the Heat Miser from the Christmas TV cartoons. No family member could determine why Grandma changed from bubbly and well groomed to crotchety and scruffy. One afternoon, my family met the psychologist who worked at the independent living center where she lived. We asked whether there was anything they could do for her. The psychologist said, “Your grandma is depressed. And, yes, I can help her.” And she did. Grandma got back to herself in a few months. In fact, she was better than ever! Her hair was done, she was dressed to the nines, and lo and behold, Grandma landed a boyfriend—Wilbur. She went from zero to hero in months, and I was hooked on the power of psychology and the focus on aging. I moved from wanting to work in business to wanting to fix grandmas—to help them with depression and whatever else plagued them. I changed my college major from business administration to psychology to help cure grandmas.
When I graduated college, I started work at a psychiatric hospital in Westchester County, New York, as a research assistant with a consortium of aging researchers studying depression. How perfect! I dove headfirst into this opportunity and found it very rewarding. Consequently, I decided to pursue a doctorate in psychology. This was the 1990s, and when I looked for graduate programs, I found it incredibly difficult to find programs that offered a specialty in aging as part of a clinical or developmental psychology doctoral degree. The field of aging at the time was like the Wild West. This frontier was wide open and barely inhabited by research or interest. I chose Fordham University for two reasons: I wanted to stay in New York and a professor there had a mild, peripheral interest in aging. Although aging wasn’t his primary focus, he was amenable to mentoring me. I joined the local, state, and international organizations for aging. I became active in every way possible with the excitement of a pioneer looking for gold on the West Coast. It was an inspiring time, but there still weren’t many people studying aging, and most of those who did focused on Alzheimer’s disease, depression, frailty, and everything else we all want to avoid.
Aging was a dread that loomed in the back of everyone’s mind—that thing that people feared and no one talked about. Telling people I worked in the field of aging was like telling them I had leprosy. Cocktail parties … well, you already know what a roaring success those were. Nonetheless, I was moving full steam ahead, publishing, presenting, getting grants, and fully active in local and international aging organizations. I was feeling pretty confident about the mark I was making in the field of aging. It was surprising that I’d progressed so far in this area of research I’d never even given a second thought to a short time ago.
I felt my oats with my newfound success in a new field, full of hope and exhilaration. I was invited to a dinner at an upcoming conference. Imagining myself telling the dinner participants all about my achievements was fueling the days leading up to the event. A multitude of people I admired would be there, and the thought of listing off all of my work accomplishments had me giddy with excitement. The evening of the dinner party, I couldn’t wait for my turn to talk because this was a group of researchers. Researchers love to hear about other people’s research, so I was sure I would be the belle of the ball. As each person took their turn around the table talking about their work, the hum of my thoughts whirred, and I didn’t hear a thing they said. When my turn came, I unleashed myself and my work upon them, going on and on about depression, frailty, and dementia.
As I waited for the excited responses from everyone, I looked around, and no one looked at all interested. A few seconds passed (a million awkward minutes), and someone across from me asked, “Why do you study aging?” I thought this was a strange question. How could it not be obvious? Didn’t he understand the importance of mitigating the distress of older adults? My reply rolled right off my tongue. “Well, I’m trying to help alleviate suffering and frailty and help make palliative care accessible for optimal end-of-life care.” I thought, “Duh.” Then he said, “So you are telling us we have nothing to look forward to. Our future is bleak. All you are doing is putting a Band-Aid on our eventual pain, suffering, and death.”
His words felt as if I had driven into a brick wall at 100 mph. I was stumped. I didn’t have an answer, and I was embarrassed because I felt good about myself and the work I’d been doing. For God’s sake, I won an international award for depression research, was getting grants, publishing, and speaking. I was active in organizations to promote aging. I was killing it. Or so I thought.
That dinner was an aha moment for me. I said to myself, “He’s right!” Why was I bothering with all this if I was simply putting Band-Aids on our future? What does anyone have to look forward to? I suddenly became fearful. What if life was just an inverted V shape, and I was nearly at my peak. Panic set in as I slunk back to work a few days later. My strategy was to hit the books, journals, and theoretical work in developmental psychology to figure out whether I should bother continuing to study aging. I hoped I’d find anything we could look forward to as we grow older.
For years, I’d worked with older adults in psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, and home health care. Pathology was the norm in what I was researching and seeing daily. I had to wrench myself away from that focus and return to my developmental psychology roots, which look at norms and what we should look forward to in life rather than pathology. The field was a treasure trove of hope and positivity that wasn’t talked about in the popular research at the time: Alzheimer’s, depression, and frailty. This wasn’t what I wanted to look forward to. No wonder everyone ran away from me at cocktail parties!
I got excited by the work of Erik Erikson, whose theory of adult development had been around for decades and was groundbreaking but not a mainstream focus in aging. Erikson’s theory posits stages in our lives that go beyond puberty, where most development theories end. The middle and older adult stages fascinated me. They offered emotional treasures that can befall all of us: meaning, value, and fulfillment. These emotional aspects of aging are almost never discussed. The emotional growth that occurs even while our physical decline is taking place. I spoke with Dr. Dan McAdams, a psychologist and professor at Northwestern University, who is essentially the demigod of Erikson’s stage of generativity, a point in our lives we reach in midlife where we want to give back without expecting anything in return. After talking with Dan, I pivoted from focusing on the negative aspects of aging to the positives we can look forward to as we grow older.
I dove headfirst into studying how we develop past puberty. Our physical trajectory looks like a mountain—a steep incline beginning at birth, peaking in our 20s, followed by a steady decline for the remainder of our lives. It is essentially an inverted U. But what I’d never noticed and was keen to focus on was the emotional trajectory we all have. And it takes place at the same time as our physical trajectory. It is a slow, steady incline that never declines as we age. It is a straight line. This explains why most people become happier as they grow older, not depressed. Even when they can’t run as fast or need glasses for reading. Mid-lifers don’t generally care that they can’t run as fast as they could when they were 20. But they like having close relationships with friends and family, as well as skills and expertise they’ve amassed over time. Finding this was striking gold. I felt that we’d been wasting our most precious natural resources. Us! We cast ourselves away as worthless as our value increases. I wanted to share this newfound treasure with everyone.
Midlife and generativity are the life stages I really glommed onto. This is when we emotionally come into our own with expertise, values, skills, and knowledge. Generativity encompasses three areas: mentorship, volunteering, and philanthropy, and it offers us a way to put back into the world what we’ve honed over time in a way that has our stamp on it. It is a legacy and a way to make our mark on the world. I decided that I needed to look at one aspect of generativity rather than all three because that would be overwhelming. I thought, “Well, okay, two of those are free. You can be anybody and volunteer or mentor. Not everyone can donate funds.” So I took philanthropy off the list. Then, volunteering is something many of us desire to do, but it generally involves tagging onto someone else’s passion or idea. Whether volunteering in a soup kitchen or a docent at a zoo, volunteering may not have everyone’s personal passion attached to it.
Mentoring, on the other hand, is tailored to the mentor. It is a way to give back what we’ve been spending decades amassing: our expertise, skills, and values. Whether we are passing on leadership skills or how to make the best chicken soup, it is a way we can leave our footprint and have a lasting legacy. Volunteering comes close, but we work on someone else’s dream or initiative when volunteering. Mentoring is a way to pass a piece of ourselves on, making us immortal. This is how religion has been passed down for centuries. This is how we’ve made enormous progress in technology and why we don’t have to keep reinventing it. We can build on what we already know and grow from that.
I was so deeply fascinated by what mentoring offers us that I interviewed about 40 people in midlife, from a four-star general to a stay-at-home grandma, to see how and why they mentor. As it turns out, they all mentor the same way. They all have a purpose in mind. They all have their values in mind. They all have meaningful connections in mind. And these core principles really motivate them because the desire to give back is an intrinsic motivation. No one gets paid to do it. Like reading a bestselling book or putting together a puzzle, we do it because we want to. Everyone is engaged in mentoring in the same way, even though they all had very different life experiences.
The fantastic thing is that mentoring doesn’t end with the emotional upswing we get when passing information and skills to others. The meaningful connections we cultivate in mentorship make mentors live longer, healthier, happier lives. It’s not just something we do because we want to leave a legacy; it helps us live better and happier.
During my conversations with mentors, I spoke with Jim Moriarty, who saw a lot of combat in the Vietnam War. When he returned, he went to college and then to law school. Jim invented the mass tort law and became hugely successful. He is a legend in the law profession. He was telling me about the cases he fought and won. He was a knight in shining armor for many, responsible for enormous positive change for thousands of individuals. He was a guy on top of the world, and his story was surprising. Jim reminds me of a crusading Harvey Specter from Suits, but with a kind heart and Southern charm. He took on the impossible, and everyone knew he could and would win. He told me how a woman approached him and said, “Hey Jim, you’re the only person I know who can help me. I have renal failure, and my workplace is not willing to pay for my kidney transplant. And I need one, or I’ll die.” She didn’t have long to live. She needed a kidney transplant because she had a medical issue, not because she engaged in a lifestyle that might be correlated with renal failure. Jim was quite sympathetic and knew he needed to help her, but he also knew acting as her lawyer wasn’t right. He told her, “It sounds like you’re nearing the end of life. I can fight and win this battle, But you’ll be dead by the time it’s won. And I can guarantee you I’ll win it, but you won’t be able to even recognize that you’ve won.”
He said something that sparked an aha moment for her. He said, “Go out, raise the funds, get yourself the kidney you need, and move forward. Just do that because then you’ll have your life.” Jim could have taken her money, and he could have fought the case. It would have been another win. But he decided to counsel her on how she could get through this life stage and regain her life. He gave her something to look forward to and mentored her through how she could take control of her life and win it for herself. They continued their conversation, and one day, she returned to him and said, “Hey Jim, I got my kidney. And I also got a kidney for about 1000 other people.” The spark Jim put in her and the guidance he gave to get her started turned into a full-blown flame. She started a nonprofit to get kidneys for others. She got one for herself but didn’t stop there; she continued making changes for many others.
Jim could see that he mentored her about something that saved her life: focusing on winning an argument with others vs. winning your life. Focus on you. Jim’s mentee lived a full life, and other people did as well because when he passed the baton to her, she carried it and kept moving it forward. Countless lives have been saved because of this, and he says mentoring is the most meaningful thing a person can ever do.
All of his work and armed forces success can’t compare to the fulfillment he feels when mentoring others. Jim still thinks about her and cries when he recounts it. Jim’s story made me realize that there’s something really, really powerful about mentoring. After we spoke, I said, “Hey Jim, do you know anybody else who mentors?” He said, “Yeah, you have to talk to my colleague’s husband. He mentors kids on the weekends.”
I knew I needed to speak with him. Mentoring was something that got Jim going. I needed to know whether mentoring mattered to others, too. When I spoke with this new contact, he didn’t talk about innovation or, which he was known for. He was jazzed by his interpersonal interactions with his engineering mentees, one of his areas of expertise. He took pride in launching these kids into the world and helping them create their patents. I found that to be fascinating because it was nothing he ever publicized. His motivation was intrinsic.
I learned from these two people that mentorship followed Erikson’s theory of generativity. But it differed from how it was discussed in the workplace, schools, and personal lives. I kept hearing about mentorship as something that the mentee has to go and find. There is always an elusive mentor, and we are expected to see who will help us. We never hear about the mentor. They are a faceless, nameless individual. There wasn’t any thought about a mutual relationship. Instead, mentorship was described as a “grab the baton of knowledge and run through the open door” endeavor. But these two men put a face and a name to mentorship and described it as deeply meaningful and life-changing for them. Another aha moment for me. This was the first time I’d considered mentorship from the mentor’s perspective.
After these two conversations, the engineer said, “Why don’t you talk to my friend ‘Ches’?” It turns out Bill “Ches” Cheswick is the guy who is one of the fathers of the network firewall. He’s a former Bell Labs guy, and I figured this would be a great conversation. After all, he must be swamped with mentees because he’s well known and well regarded. But instead, Bill said to me, “You have no idea how hard it is for me. I’m retiring and don’t have anyone to share my information with; it’s really bothering me. I am sitting here, full of energy and the ability to give back, and I can’t find anyone to give back to.”
I was shocked. Bill said, “I want to go to the fourth grade and younger little kids before they’re jaded about math and science. I want to teach them STEM before they think they can’t do it, before they think their paths are set. I want to teach quantum mechanics to fourth graders.” Shocked but unsure how to help him, I said, “Okay, let’s see what comes up.” I never thought anything would come up. After all, who doesn’t want to be mentored by someone of his caliber? But to my surprise, his situation was the norm.
I found and spoke with many people who didn’t have access to mentees. And the higher their level, the fewer mentees they had. They simply didn’t have access to mentees, and mentees had no way of finding them. I’d heard all the talk about “go find a mentor,” but I’d never heard anyone say, “Go find a mentee.” It was another one-sided story, and people needed to be connected. This conversation was when I fully realized that our world was in danger. We’ve been wasting our most precious natural resources—our knowledgeable, skilled experts because they can’t find mentees. It made sense after speaking to several people like Bill, who were retiring. Their world was work. They didn’t hang around kids or those just entering the workforce. It wasn’t like they could go to a park and say, “Hey kid, wanna learn quantum mechanics?” People were reinventing the wheel repeatedly because they didn’t have someone to pass the torch of knowledge to them.
Getting back to Bill. Nothing came up as I continued interviewing people about mentoring, with no particular goal in mind. But that changed about a year later. Someone said, “Hey, I think I can get us into schools.” So I called Bill, and he said he was still interested; the engineer was too. I called my dad (an artist and web developer), Irene Yachbes, a former NASA engineer, Gabriel Lews, a college student, and Jura Zibas, an IP attorney my husband knew. Everyone wanted in. And we needed every one of these amazing mentors. Each wanted to mentor and saw this not as a bottomless pit of work without pay but as an opportunity to give back to students. We became the original founders of The Mentor Project.
Jura helped me get the incorporation documents in order, my dad, Larry Heiser, created the website, and Irene got mentors set with Girl Scouts and mentored in classrooms on Long Island. Gabriel Lewis, a college student, joined and got Bill into schools in New Jersey, and the engineer, Bob Cousins mentored students via Zoom. Everyone was having a ton of fun. We talked about expanding, getting into more schools, and doing all this with $547 in the bank account we set up. Realizing that this organization was being powered by highly accomplished, motivated individuals meant money wasn’t needed to fuel the work. Everyone pitched in. My dad was making penny battery kits for the Girl Scouts, Bill was meeting with homeschoolers each week, which was set up by Gabriel, Bob was on Zoom with students, Irene and our growing group were meeting with Girl Scouts in classrooms on Long Island and the Bronx, and Jura was making sure we were filing everything and running as we should. We happily mentored all over the tri-state area, with Bob on Zoom on the West Coast. Then Jennifer Snow joined. It was 2019, and she was a Lt. Col and chief technology officer and intelligence operator with the Air Force.
Jennifer wanted to help us scale. It was exciting to expand with a few more mentors and start thinking about projects for students to work on in groups. Then the unthinkable happened. A mere six months later, COVID hit. We thought we were done. Schools were closed, and the world shut down. But that was really just the beginning for us. One door closes and another opens. People came out of the woodwork and asked to join The Mentor Project as mentors. Mathematicians, an astronaut, astrophysicists, a puppeteer, and several more. Then, Jennifer reached out to the contacts she was working with on a global free-access ventilator project. By May 2020, we had 60 mentors. In six months, we grew to six times our original size. We were still operating with less than 600 dollars in the bank, but mentoring moved to Zoom. We were mentoring in Argentina and across the United States, hosting international hackathons and a mask-a-thon, and our mentors were giving talks on Zoom to students worldwide. We suffered Zoom bombings in the beginning, time zone issues, and Internet bandwidth problems, but nothing stopped us. We reached thousands of students worldwide, and our mentor database kept growing.
Our mentors weren’t just mentoring students (all virtually at this point). They also started mentoring each other. It was like an anthropological expedition. Mentors met regularly online to meet and learn from each other. These became weekly mentor meetups on Fridays. Mentors would hop on Zoom for an hour and give updates, formal presentations, and chat. It turned out our mentors weren’t just enjoying each other’s company. It was as if they’d been dropped into a candy store. They were mentoring each other, something I coined lateral mentoring™. They started working on projects together. Coauthoring articles, workshops, and books. In one case, a chief learning officer and a professor of linguistics, paired up to write an article for Nature based on a conversation in one of the meetings. Mentors connected at deeper levels than expected, celebrating birthdays, milestones, and book launches and helping when times were tough. One mentor drove another home from a colonoscopy, and another offered her apartment for someone to stay in while in town for a medical procedure. Mentors started meeting outdoors for group picnics and rooftop parties. It started to become a family of people who had a burning desire to give back and finally met others who had the same urge to pass on their knowledge, skills, and values. They didn’t expect the hunger to learn from experts in completely different areas from their own. They began lateral mentoring™ (mentor to mentor) and still meet weekly to present, discuss, and catch up. We became a community of mentors.
Harnessing the Power of Mentorship
The power of mentoring goes well beyond a one-to-one relationship. It is more than a one-way street and much more than just hierarchical. Mentoring is something we are built to do and have been doing since the beginning of time. We’ve passed down religion for centuries, keeping faith and values relevant today. Our Founding Fathers came together with a range of expertise to create the United States. The tech revolution was built on mentorship. And, now, with our growing aging population, we are at the peak of possibility with mentorship. We can harness the good we all have in us to pass on to the next generation and those on our left and our right. Mentorship is a web of meaningful connections supporting, guiding, and propelling us forward.
Everyone said getting high-level experts to commit to mentoring was impossible. We thought we were a group of weirdo eccentrics just having fun. We are now more than 100 mentors strong with a wait list of eager mentors waiting to onboard. From comedy writer to science writer, astronaut to artist, entrepreneur to engineer, chemist to psychologist, our mentors are a bridge to the future. We carefully vet our mentors, and no one gets paid. We are fueled by donations, intrinsic motivation, and the knowledge that we are all crafting our legacies. To date, hundreds of hours of online content, podcasts, several patents, research, hackathons, innovation lab meetings, and an annual trip to Tanzania to teach art are just a few of the accomplishments our band of mentors has put into the world. The idea is to give back for free to ensure any student anywhere in the world can receive mentorship. Artist Justin Thompson traveled halfway around the globe to Shirati, Tanzania, to teach them cartooning. Fifteen students were selected to receive the Larry Heiser Art Scholarship. They received online art lessons each month with Justin (who got up at 4 a.m. to teach the class on Zoom each month).
One thing we’ve learned, beyond the theory that we’re built to give, is that we are connected people, and whether we mentor in the workplace or in a rural area of Tanzania, we mentor in exactly the same way. Mentoring is the same whether we are mentoring corporate leadership, entrepreneurship, astrophysics, or puppetry. Mentoring isn’t a unique, secret activity available only to the fortunate. Mentors aren’t experts based on their education. They aren’t in the “up” position. Mentees and mentors are both equal participants in the equation. And now that we have a modern form of mentorship with AI and online capabilities, mentorship can expand more rapidly than ever before. It is ready to explode.
This book is more than a chronicle of my journey; it’s an exploration of the inherent human capacity for mentorship. It delves into the theory, practices, and diverse manifestations of mentorship across various disciplines. Drawing on the experiences of mentors from comedy writers to astronauts, it unveils the transformative potential of mentorship—a universal endeavor that knows no bounds.
As you embark on this exploration, you’ll discover why we are inherently built to mentor, what defines good mentorship, and how it can be applied in diverse settings. Whether you’re aspiring to be a mentor or seeking guidance as a mentee, this book is your map in the rich landscape of mentorship.
The Mentor Project is not just a narrative; it’s a call to action. It’s an invitation to become part of a community dedicated to passing on the torch of knowledge, skills, and values. Join me on this journey, and let’s unlock the immense potential of mentorship that lies within us all.
1We Are Built to Mentor
At birth we begin an emotional journey that propels us from the vulnerability of infancy, where we rely on trust in those who care for us, to the autonomy of childhood, where we eagerly embrace new experiences and master skills. This climb continues from adolescence, where we form our enduring identity, through young adulthood, where we form meaningful relationships, through later adulthood, where we focus on productively giving, and culminating in our senior years, where we reflect on our life’s journey (hopefully positively).
Our early years largely focus on our physical development. As we get older, we must shift from the physical trajectory, which has a steep incline from birth through our early 20s, where our physical abilities peak, and then a steady decline (Figure 1.1). Most of us focus on our physical trajectory, which makes growing older scary. What most don’t recognize is that our emotional course follows a steady incline from birth until our last breath (Figure 1.2). Our emotional path never declines! As we age, our emotions serve as guiding forces, prompting us to continue to evolve, to share our accumulated wisdom, and to shape a legacy that fulfills us. We are happier as we grow older despite our physical trajectory. I am 55 as I write this, and as I say to my undergraduate students each semester, “I can’t run as fast as you, but I am happier than I was when I was your age.” This is typical for adults. As we need reading glasses, can’t run as fast, and gather wrinkles, most of us wouldn’t trade our emotional well-being for that when we were 18, wrinkle- and reading glasses-free. I worked with a client who was in his mid-70s, suffered from COPD, and had very limited mobility. I asked how he felt. He said, “I feel just fine. I can read, work on the computer, and see my children and grandchildren.” Others assumed his physical state would deem him miserable, but he was just the opposite. He was satisfied with his life. He wanted to live longer and looked forward to each day.
FIGURE 1.1 Physical activity.
FIGURE 1.2 Emotional growth.
Our emotions inspire continuous self-improvement, a desire to share our knowledge with others, and the creation of a legacy that resonates with purpose. The stages these emotions help to create are universal. They transcend geographical boundaries, financial status, and work. We are inherently wired to share rather than hoard our emotional wealth.
