The Pitfalls of Mentorship?

I believe mentorship makes a notable difference, it helps create a more knowledgeable workforce and provides individuals with the opportunity for career advancements. The way I see it; It’s always better to approach conversations with your team as a coach, instead of as their boss. Through the course of my career, I have worked with hundreds of individuals. From these hundreds, both in the past and present, there have been many that I have personally mentored, in order to help them reach their full potential.

Now when these individuals first start off, I like to allocate a lot of time, teaching them the ropes and guiding them in certain areas where I feel they need assistance. It’s needless to say it takes some time, but eventually they get the hang of things and most of these individuals begin to excel at what they’re doing and more often than not, a certain level of performance is achieved.

However, after some time passes, I step back, loosen the strings and some begin to dwindle. Those that could once excel at something can no longer do it. They just simply can’t. As a person that prides himself on his ability to guide and mentor, this is a point of massive frustration for me. How does someone that has spent an immense amount of time and energy learning the steps and procedures just forget them?

This is an occurrence that has come about in almost every business of mine. Case in point, in my insurance life, as a single unit manager, out of 27 insurance agents, I had 20+ MDRTs and 2 COTs in a single year. After successfully teaching them all the processes and knowledge needed to achieve results, I take a step back. One would think, with such knowledge and in depth experience, they would be able to easily replicate similar results…that did not happen.

Is it because they are unable to do it on their own or is it because they lack the motivation? As far as motivation is concerned, it is for their own self-interest, their own livelihood. They know how to sell; from waking up early, making calls, pitching to certain clients and prospects, they have learnt and mastered every single skill and yet they can no longer manage to produce similar results. Similarly, I have had people I have worked with for over 5 years, for the first 4 years, they do it well and the following year they no longer can. Individuals who I once used to teach, suddenly become unteachable.

I’ve asked myself repeatedly, “why”? and the conclusion I always come to is simple, they have become too arrogant. Arrogance is an attitude of superiority or confidence, when your abilities do not match that assumed state of confidence. They start to forget the time and work they put in to get those results. Somewhere along the way, their logic fails them and they begin to lack consistency and humility. I ask myself, how long do I have to keep these individuals from falling off the right path? Is it my responsibility to keep them on track?

My answer to this is; I’ve been down this road a few times. Since the early days of my career, I have believed in dedicating a lot of time and effort into mentoring and sometimes it feels like wasted effort. It begs the question; Is it because i’m working with the wrong people or that I’m trying too hard to keep those that don’t want to be helped on the right track?

Ultimately, mentoring is not a one-way process but rather it is a two-way street. It has the potential to change, even to radically transform a life, however this is only if the receiving party is willing and able to transform. While helping and giving represent character strengths, sometimes our helpful intentions can give way to dysfunctional helping. The solution to this is not to stop helping altogether, but rather to set boundaries when signs of unhealthy dependency begin to appear. 

It is obvious that too much help and assistance can foster dependency and irresponsibility, which means sometimes we have to realise that our good intentions can go bad. Under these circumstances, continuing to help and give is not only a waste of our resources but also is not healthy or helpful to the individual you are trying to help. 

It is important to remember that helping in moderation promotes growth, independence and the development of positive potential, while continuous dysfunctional helping has the opposite effect. Know when to stop. If an individual you are trying to help has required more than a few bailouts and has not learnt and used the help to do as promised, it is time to stop giving chances. However, if on the off-chance, you get strong evidence that they are ready to take on a more serious approach to use your help to progress in life, you might consider offering assistance once again. 

The important thing to factor in is, when an individual tries to escape responsibility over and over again, it is best to take a step back and loosen the strings.