Mentoring 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know
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About this ebook
John C. Maxwell shows how the best leaders in any organization learned to be successful by having a good mentor.
Through this essential and easy-to-read reference book, international leadership expert John C. Maxwell gives you the bottom line on mentoring--what it is, why you should do it, and how you can do it most effectively.
In Mentoring 101, Maxwell guides you in the art of mentoring by explaining:
- how to choose the right person to mentor,
- how to create the right environment for leaders to thrive and grow,
- how to help people become better,
- and how to overcome the most intimidating hurdle of all: getting started.
What if you spent your entire life achieving but never shared your wisdom with anyone else?
Mentoring is the key to creating a lasting legacy, and Mentoring 101 is your personalized key to seeing that journey through.
John C. Maxwell
John C. Maxwell is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, coach, and speaker who has sold more than 33 million books in fifty languages. He has been identified as the #1 leader in business and the most influential leadership expert in the world. His organizations - the John Maxwell Company, The John Maxwell Team, EQUIP, and the John Maxwell Leadership Foundation - have translated his teachings into seventy languages and used them to train millions of leaders from every country of the world. A recipient of the Horatio Alger Award, as well as the Mother Teresa Prize for Global Peace and Leadership from the Luminary Leadership Network, Dr. Maxwell influences Fortune 500 CEOs, the presidents of nations, and entrepreneurs worldwide. For more information about him visit JohnMaxwell.com.
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Reviews for Mentoring 101
11 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Leadership 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know is Maxwell's condensation of his major talking points in leadership. It's a short book filled with soundbites and a few anecdotes. But I gleaned a few things.
Leadership is influence, and we all influence people throughout our day. Hence, we can all be leaders. Having more people in reach of your influence is a function of your development as a leader.
Bill Hybels' book on leadership (he often partners with Maxwell) was influential in my life. Hybels requires everyone in leadership positions at Willow Creek to be actively reading about leadership. I have taken that to heart so that I include books on leadership (including biographies and memoirs) in my regular rotation. Maxwell espouses that continuous reading and learning as critical for leaders. In 1969, he sent letters to key leaders in whatever industry he was working in soliciting 30 minutes of their time for $100. He interviewed them and tried to learn what they knew.
Maxwell endorses the Pareto principle: 20% of resources generate 80% of the results, so invest most of your time in the 20% of activities that generate the most revenue, the top 20% of your workforce, etc.
Your influence will be measured by what happens after you leave, so not planning a succession means you are not succeeding. Maxwell learned that one the hard way, the first church he helped build fell apart after he left-- he hadn't prepared them to continue in his absence. I think this point falls under Covey's point to "begin with the end in mind."
Volunteer organizations like churches are the most leader-centric organizations; the director/pastor cannot offer monetary incentives for productivity, so people have to be responding to the leadership-- there is some intrinsic reward here. Hence, the leader should work hard to develop people in his influence so that those people find it worthwhile to follow.
I have to think: How does this apply to government (or a union situation), where workers may not face fear of firing and there are no monetary incentives or opportunities for advancement that can be offered? I think that's similar to the voluntary organization, the leader can motivate employees by investing in their own development as a reward. Perhaps that investment means they leave the organization for a better position, but that's just part of the cost of having employees' motives aligned with the goal of the organization.
This book is short, hence I recommend it with 3.5 stars. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This simple, but direct book, gives the foundation of what a leader should be, how he/she should act, and how to continue to develop one's self to become the best leader a person can be. I highly recommend that this book be read and re-read many times.
Book preview
Mentoring 101 - John C. Maxwell
© 2008 by John C. Maxwell
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Published in association with Yates & Yates, www.yates2.com
Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].
Portions of this book have been previously published in Your Road Map for Success, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Developing the Leaders Around You, The 360º Leader, and Winning with People by John C. Maxwell.
ISBN 978-1-4002-2075-5 (eBook)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Maxwell, John C., 1947–
Mentoring 101 : what every leader needs to know / John C. Maxwell.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4002-8022-3
1. Mentoring in business--Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title.
HF5385.M39 2008
658.3'124--dc22
2008026081
08 09 10 11 12 QW 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.
CONTENTS
Preface
PART I: GETTING READY TO MENTOR OTHERS
1. What Do I Need to Know Before I Start?
2. How Do I Adopt a Mentor’s Mind-set?
PART II: ENGAGING IN THE MENTORING PROCESS
3. Whom Should I Mentor?
4. How Can I Set Them Up for Success?
5. How Do I Help Them Do Better Work?
6. How Do I Create the Right Environment?
PART III: TAKING PEOPLE HIGHER
7. How Do I Help Them Become Better People?
8. What Should I Do If They Pass Me By?
Notes
About the Author
PREFACE
I’ve been passionate about personal growth for most of my life. In fact, I’ve created and pursued a plan for growth every year for the last forty years! People say that wisdom comes with age. I don’t believe that’s true. Sometimes age comes alone. I wouldn’t have achieved any of my dreams had I not been dedicated to continual improvement. If you want to grow and become the best person you can be, you’ve got to be intentional about it.
At the same time, life is busy and complex. Most people run out of day long before their to-do list is done. And trying to get to the bottom line in just about any area of life can be a challenge. Did you know that more new information has been produced in the last thirty years than in the previous five thousand? A single weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than most people in seventeenth-century England were likely to encounter in their lifetimes.
That’s why we’ve developed this series of 101 books. We’ve cherry-picked the essentials in subjects such as leadership, attitude, relationships, teamwork, and mentoring and put them into a format that you very likely can read in one sitting. Or you can easily toss a 101 book into a briefcase or purse and read here and there as time allows.
In many of my larger books, I go into my subject in great depth. I do that because I believe it is often the best way to add value to people. Mentoring 101 is different. It is an introduction to a subject, not the advanced course.
But I believe it will help you on your way to significant growth in this area of your life.
I hope you enjoy this book, and I pray that it serves you well as you seek to improve your life and achieve your dreams.
P
ART I
GETTING READY TO MENTOR OTHERS
1
WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW BEFORE I START?
If you want to succeed as a mentor, first seek to understand yourself and others.
Most people who desire success focus almost entirely on themselves, not others, when they start to make the journey. They usually think in terms of what they can get—in position, power, prestige, money, and perks. But that’s not the way to become truly successful. To do that, you have to give to others. As Douglas M. Lawson said, We exist temporarily through what we take, but we live forever through what we give.
That’s why it’s so essential to focus on raising others to a higher level. And we can do that with people from every area of our lives—at work and home, in church and the clubhouse. That’s evidently what Texas representative Wright Patman did, according to a story told by Senator Paul Simon. He said that Patman died at age eighty-two while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. At his funeral, an older woman who lived in his district was heard to have said, He rose up mighty high, but he brung us all up with him.
WHY MANY PEOPLE DON’T MENTOR OTHERS
If mentoring others is such a rewarding calling, why doesn’t everyone do it? One reason is that it takes work. But there are also many others. Here are a few of the most common ones.
INSECURITY
Virginia Arcastle commented, When people are made to feel secure and important and appreciated, it will no longer be necessary for them to whittle down others in order to seem bigger in comparison.
That’s what insecure people tend to do—make themselves look better at others’ expense.
Truly successful people, on the other hand, raise others up. And they don’t feel threatened by the thought of having others become more successful and move to a higher level. They are growing and striving for their potential; they aren’t worried about having someone replace them. They’re nothing like the executive who wrote a memo to the personnel director saying, Search the organization for an alert, aggressive young man who could step into my shoes—and when you find him, fire him.
Raising up others is a successful person’s joy.
EGO
Some people’s egos are so huge that they have to be either the bride at the wedding or the corpse at the funeral. They think other people exist