How do you stay relevant as a mentor in a changing world?

In my experience, your own growth and development is part and parcel to your relevance *and* your quality as a mentor. Those who look to you, as a mentor, are looking to you for your wisdom. Your wisdom is the result of your personal experience combined with your capacity to integrate your experience. This is what keeps you human; keeps you growing; keeps you deepening in your capacity for compassion. The most impactful mentors of my life have been deeply compassionate. They had the emotional depth and latitude to meet me wherever I have been at any point in my development with respect and understanding while holding the faith that made it possible for me to move past my limitations. This quality keeps you infinitely relevant as a mentor.

Be it being a mentor or a leader, one must be intentional with their personal development. The intent start from setting a side a budget yearly to up-skill oneself. Infact, this is the best investment made-invest in yourself. As mentor, you are being looked up to, hence one need to stay updated and not outdated.

Listening is the first and most important step to help others in mentoring, in coaching or in any other form of interaction where you want to give them value. Do you want to be a better listener? You don't need active listening tips and tricks like nodding, reformulating, mirroring, and so on. In my opinion these are for those who want to pretend that they are listening. The best way to appear that we are listening is really listen. Just develop a genuine curiosity for what the other person has to say, stop the internal chatter, and listen with the intention to learn and understand. All the rest will happen naturally: your body language will confirm that you are listening, good questions will rise, and you will both learn.

I noticed the older I get, the more perspective I have in which is a choice and I intentionally made this choice. Especially in today’s environment, change is inevitable. Embrace change. Always, always take a positive posture when dealing with change. Try it. You will be blown away of the outcome!

At Mind Box, we asked the question "is it possible to thrive even under Covid/times of high uncertainty. The answer is YES! We mentor based on 2 paradigms: change is always a given. Throughout history, humans have proven our adaptive skills. Here in Asia (I am based in HK) that belief sits still deep in the culture, less so in the West. And secondly, whatever the external reality throws at you, change and thriving happens in the human mind. Knowing how our minds cope with change, the fear of losses and not knowing is the starting point from where to build the skills to succeed, as an individual or a business. A bit of applied neuro- & behavioral sciences will help you a lot!

Mentors are life long learners, as are all members of the human race. Who mentors us? The answer has to be nature. Look to see how nature and its own growth and developmental processes (evolution) address challenges. Science is always adding answers to this! Natural changes have been going on long before humans and almost every challenge you could think of has been solved. Before you give advice or recommendations check to see if there are lessons to be learnt from nature. Even if you fail to find any parallels, nature is a fantastic resource for analogies. Analogies are a great means of communicating concepts in mentoring!

In a digital age, where information travels at the speed of light, and everyone is just a click away, something seems to be amiss. We've become too cool for mentorship and too impatient to learn from others. The Information Age has eroded our patience and inflated our egos, and while that may sound hyperbolic – over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed a significant uptick in those unwilling to learn under the tutelage of another professional publicly. The push to create “exciting” leaders at an accelerated pace has paradoxically created learning barriers for aspiring individuals who simply want to get in the game.