Dr Richard Hodge

Mentoring is an ancient practice, and a crucial practice for the cathedral builders of past generations, where mentoring was practiced within a behaviourist paradigm, passing knowledge from master to apprentice.

Times have changed. Mentoring hasn’t.

Traditional ways of mentoring can be helpful to build functional knowledge and extend capacity but they’re not always necessary and never sufficient to meet today’s challenges. New knowledge and how you use it is crucial to organisational success (Drucker, ). Even more important when times are tight, is how you engage with your people.

Might better use of a leader’s time be to work artfully together to face challenges by engaging more deeply with your people to :

1. AMPLIFY new ideas *and* the person engaging the idea. Radical ideas need radical people to push and pull them into pragmatic form. They also need to see the light of possibility. 

2. Hold BELIEF in their potential to create value with new ideas. We all live with doubt so when you offer to “hold belief for [people] until they are ready to hold it themselves” (thanks to my mentor, Matt Church) you are giving an extraordinary gift of inspiration as we, who benefit, chase our aspiration. Many people might only experience this gift as a child. Few as an adult.

3. While the first two point reinforce each other, constant reinforcement risks a state of diminishing returns or plateauing. So, with care, CHALLENGE people as a means of raising consciousness. You’re opening cracks that help them create their identity, acting with compassionate attention to the needs of others. 

Richard calls these the ABCs of Response-able Mentoring. As the Mentors’ Mentor, Richard guides leaders to mentor within systemic frameworks. As you build trust in your people’s capacity to make time sensitive, safety critical decisions, you’ll meet that challenge with a uniquely human edge - a teacherly authority - that attracts and retains talent.

Fix Mentorship, You’ll Fix Leadership to Attract and retain talent.

#MentorshipIsLeadership

I’d welcome an opportunity to talk with you and explore if and how I might be of assistance to you and/or your members. I welcome your enquiry and look forward to hearing from you.