When Mentors Make Mistakes

The greatest role that teachers, coaches and mentors play in their student’s lives is to help them avoid major mistakes and coach them through challenges in order to achieve goals faster. But what happens when the mentor is the one who has made a mistake? Even worse… what happens when that mistake is at the expense of the mentee?

I was recently participating in a mastermind with a group of leaders. We were having a great discussion regarding our mentoring relationships. We all shared how much we have learned from our mentees and how those lessons have shaped us into better leaders, co-workers and even parents. But as we continued to talk, the conversation quickly got real.

One woman, Stephanie, confessed to the group: “I need some help! I did something which unintentionally hurt one of my mentees. I feel so bad!” Her eyes welled up with tears as she began to share her story.

By all accounts, Stephanie is a successful coach and trainer. She frequently conducts group workshops, webinars and training sessions. Her company is known for helping everyday workers, individual contributors and leaders deal with real life situations. Her trainings are highly valued and sought after, in large part because of her authenticity. Because Stephanie teaches from real experiences and not hypothetical or theoretical situations, she’s built up a lot of credibility and those she helps truly relate to her.

Recently, Stephanie had conducted a training class locally. During the session, she presented a case study and gave the class an exercise based on it. True to form, the case study was a real experience which she had helped one of her men-tees through. Stephanie was careful to change all names and even added a few details so that the original situation would not be identifiable. The class was very engaged and they rewarded her with positive, glowing feedback in the evaluation sheets. Stephanie felt really good about the session and the results.

But as it so happened, one of the people in the class felt that the case study was eerily similar to a situation a friend of theirs had shared with them, even though some details were different. The workshop student conferred with that friend. As it turns out, the friend was indeed Stephanie’s men-tee and the case study had been based on her situation. Read more...