Mentoring FAQs

 

Are there any prerequisites for beginning mentoring?

Yes! Please review the video below to understand.

How do I get started mentoring with you?

The first step in mentoring is for the prospective mentee (you!) to initiate by reaching out to me via the free mentoring session form.

This not only alerts me that you’re interested but it also demonstrates one of the essential L.I.F.E attributes I speak of in the above video – initiative.

Once I receive your inquiry, I will promptly follow-up via email and schedule a time for us to get acquainted via a phone or Zoom call. This is a free 60-90 minute call and there are no requests or discussions about further commitment or financial investment. We will get to know one another and learn more about what brought each of us to this moment in time.

At the conclusion of our call, we’ll say our goodbyes and agree to our next step – a pause. This brief pause (1-2 weeks) is for each of us to consider if a mentoring relationship together should be pursued further. If that answer is yes, you must initiate contact once again and arrange a second call.

In this second call, also free and 60-90 minutes, we’ll discuss specific goals and objectives and determine together what we wish to achieve. Once we know what it is we want to achieve, we can then discuss what investment of creativity, time, and resources will be appropriate for each of us to achieve these goals. You will outline these in a proposal to me and we’ll discuss it until we reach a vision for a mentoring relationship that we each can’t wait to begin.

We formalize our agreement in a Mentoring Agreement (I will provide as an addendum to your proposal) which we each sign. This proposal and agreement become our mission, charter, and a signpost for beginning our mentoring relationship.

We then determine the date and time of our first meeting and get busy.

What does mentoring look like? What takes place?

Our one-on-one meetings are very personal conversations that will flow easily and organically. Like speaking together as good friends at a party, pulling off in a corner to catch up and share deeply with one another. We will always have our goals and objectives in mind, but as informal motivations, not rigid expectations.

Though cognizant of schedule, we won’t spend our time watching the clock but getting deep, vulnerable, and staggeringly authentic. Our conversation will be honest, transparent, and loving, listening intently to one another. Most often our conversations will be gentle, but lovingly firm when necessary.

As we converse, I will at times invite, challenge, and call you toward a new way to think, a new way to behave, or a specific task.

Between our conversations, you will practice mindfulness about what we have been discussing, try on new ideas, practice new behaviors or thought patterns and do so as a man who is living a L.I.F.E. During that time I may also send emails with follow-up questions, insights, or recommendations that will further enhance what we’ve been discussing.

Will there be assignments?

My mentoring is not school, not a job, and not the military. My goal is to help men become mature, strong, independent, masculine and attractive men.

To do so, each must learn the plain truth that they must exercise the initiative, effort, and follow-through to achieve what they desire.

Assignments given by me work against a man’s ability to lead himself in such a way, therefore, I do not give assignments. However, if a mentee wishes to give himself assignments, as all men should, that is welcome and encouraged.

Instead of assignments, I encourage and invite mentees to upward and onward – to think about their own mission and purpose, occasionally following up by asking if mentee acted on my input. It is not required.

If a mentee habitually does not accept and act on my inputs, I will discuss why this is and pursue whatever changes would best support our shared objectives.

In some cases, this may include ending or pausing the mentoring relationship but most often does not.

Will you keep me accountable?

The only level of accountability I provide to men is challenging them to be accountable to self.

Mature, strong, independent and attractive men must learn to be accountable primarily to self. A man who does so is naturally accountable in all other aspects of his life because he is drive by his values and non-negotiable principals.

Being accountable to others without accountability to self creates an unhealthy dynamic in which a man is driven to action by fear instead of character, integrity, and purpose.

This fear will ultimately cripple a man and its removal is a goal of my mentoring.

Why isn’t mentoring free?

Free is a very loaded word with many definitions. Let’s assume for a moment by “free” we mean this one:

not costing or charging anything

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/free

Mentoring is not this free because it results in a man that taking on false, non-productive mindsets that associate himself and others in a way that encompasses several other definitions of “free”:

relieved from or lacking something and especially something unpleasant or burdensome

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/free

and

having no obligations (as to work) or commitments

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/free

and

availing oneself of something without stint

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/free

Men are not relieved from lacking something unpleasant and burdensome. They avail themselves to obligations and commitments readily and with vigor and strength.

Mentoring is work. Hard work. It requires a substantial commitment of heart, mind, body, and time.

As a mentor, I help men understand their value and significance as a person. As valuable men, our substance, and what we create as men are also valuable. It costs everything to become and be a great man, not nothing.

Making ourselves and our resources available to others without commitment, stint, cost or charge devalues us and our resources as men.

How much does mentoring cost?

Until a man knows the value mentoring represents to himself, there isn’t yet a basis for beginning a mentoring relationship.

We are men of value and significance, and therefore worthy of investment. If we were to measure mentoring in “cost”, we could only say it costs everything to be such men. We’re all in or we are not in it at all. That’s not real question, is it?

Mentoring is a relationship that cultivates great men and requires investment, not a commodity measured in a cost. Cultivating anything requires resources; days, hours, tears, sweat, blood, miles, calories, and yes, sometimes even dollars.

A mentoring investment is best measured in value.

“What is my value and how do my investments reflect my value?”

“What do I want to accomplish and what is the value I place on accomplishing it?”

“What value do I place on others who can support me as I accomplish this?”

The real question then is: “What is the value of mentoring to me?”.

When that is understood, it is simply a matter of two men coming to an agreement on the value of a mentoring relationship together and what investments are required of each man to achieve be in such a relationship.

As part of my mentoring process, a mentee will take initiative and make a proposal to me that outlines what value he places on our mentoring and what our investments will be. If we agree, we make those investments and work together.

Do you mentor women?

As a man, I’m best equipped to help other men. However, as a human, there are at times ways I can help women as well. Please see the description of the typical woman I can help.

Ready to experience mentoring?
Let’s talk together!