Mentoring is quite the buzzword these days. It seems everyone has a mentor and isn’t limited to an office setting. Since it is so pervasive today, we need to discern between good and bad mentoring.
This cartoon shows what happens when it turns into a bad excuse for a gopher role.
I recently wrote an article for Church of God news on a California pastor’s effectiveness at developing leaders. It is good when someone takes a leadership role. It is even better when a person mentors others to be leaders as well.
This has got me thinking about how I can be more effective as a leader.
This pastor is making an impact in his community. I got a lot of great lessons from his example.
This morning, I get to teach kids about treating everyone as  VIP. The bottom line is that we need to honor others by putting them first.
I am so thankful I’ve had the priviledge to teach kids over the decades. Yesterday, my wife and I saw one of our former kids in children’s ministry that is now an adult. It’s so gratifying to see kids you once taught now having kids and teaching them life lessons.
Never forget the next generation. It can be frustrating to teach kids when you wonder if they are listening. It can be easy to write off a hyper seven-year old. But you never know how much they are listening. You never know if the lesson they hear today, could be the one thing they remember twenty years later when they are going through a tough time.
Always invest in the next generation!
It amazes me whenever it happens. Whenever I teach, I learn just as much as the students. I have seen it when I lead kids in large group on a Sunday morning. And I have seen it in the workplace as well.
For the last two weeks at work, I’ve had the opportunity to teach a person my duties. I’ve been in my role for under ten months and there are many things about my job that are still new to me. The person who taught me retired in late June. Since then, I have been applying what she taught me. Now I have the chance to do the same for another person.
As I have shown her the systems, the exceptions and the why behind the way we do things, I have been energized. Sure, I am not using the same words, and every experience is different. In fact, that is part of the teaching/learning process that thrills me. I can paraphrase what I was taught and see the results in a whole new way.
We have this tendency to believe once we are done with our formal schooling, we are done with education. This fallacy keeps us from growing. I have found it is much better to keep learning. And one of the best ways to learn is to teach others what we do.
Blogging is one way we can do that. And that is why I am going continue writing about my experiences and the lessons I’ve learned through being a writer, illustrator, and a graphics manager.