Anyone can start mentoring using the resources at FLEXTALK.org – whether at home, at school, on a team or in the workplace. It takes 3 core commitments:
Commitment #1: Lead with the resources.
Mentors are not perfect, but they must be leadership material. That means they’re doing their best to practice what they preach, and they’re willing to admit it when they fail. And most importantly, you need to know the simple FLEX method with our tools: Find a topic, Learn about it on your own, and explore it together in your mentoring conversation.
[Related: The FLEX Method for Mentoring]
Commitment #2: Care about people.
Mentoring is about taking a genuine interest in the people you’re helping. Don’t become a mentor to wear a badge; do it for the good of others. Your goal should be to add value to another person’s life. That means you need to make a personal commitment to the people you’re mentoring.
Commitment #3: Schedule your meetings.
The most practical task of a mentor is to schedule your weekly or monthly conversations. Be clear about when and where you’ll meet, and make sure everyone knows the topic. If you don’t schedule it, the mentoring relationship won’t move forward.
There’s plenty more to mentoring, but these three core commitments are the starting place.
Talk About It:
- Watch the video together or invite someone to summarize the topic.
- What is your initial reaction to this video? Do you disagree with any of it? What jumped out at you?
- What do you think of with the word “mentoring”?
- Describe some of the typical conversations you have with people in everyday life. Now browse our topics to see if any of our resources could add value to those conversations.
- Describe the FLEX method. How can a simple a method and tools make the task of mentoring easier?
- Do you think any of your friends would be willing to have more intentional conversations using our resources? Why or why not?
- Write a personal action step based on this conversation.
