If you’re in the back half of your life and in a senior living community, or even if you’ve just had a lot of experience in life that other people could benefit from, you may be approached to become a mentor to someone. While this doesn’t always happen formally, if someone appears to want advice and guidance from you with you as their mentor, there are a few things that you can do to help ensure that you’re leading them down a good path and balancing your relationship well.
To help you with this new role that you might be filling, here are three tips for becoming a great mentor.
Find The Right Mentee Fit For You
Just because someone might come to you looking for advice or wanting you to be their mentor doesn’t necessarily mean that this is going to be a good fit for you. So before you agree to take someone on as a mentor, or even just give them guidance and advice on a regular basis, you should consider if this mentee is a good fit for you.
To help you determine this, you’ll want to think about the type of person that you want to come to you for advice and that you think you could help in their life or career. Not everyone who solicits advice from you or asks you to mentor them will be a good personality fit with you. But to ensure that you’re able to be a useful mentor to them, you’re going to want to find a mentee that listens to you and respects you. Someone that is teachable and willing to trust in your experience and expertise will also help to make things easier and more enjoyable.
Share The Positive And The Negative
Once you find someone that you think is a good fit for you to mentor, you should then make sure that you’re giving them guidance and advice that is going to be useful to them.
To do this, you’ll want to find a balance in sharing with them both the positive and the negative things about the topic they’re wanting mentorship on. While you might think only sharing the good things will help them stay positive, not helping them through the difficult times can make these things more shocking to them. And if you only tell them about all of the negative things they’re likely to experience, you may cloud their judgement about the great things they could also be experiencing.
Be A Good Role Model In All Areas
While you might only be tasked with being a mentor about a very specific thing, it’s important that you’re operating as a good role model in all areas of your life when you’re with your mentee. This person will be looking up to you and looking to you to see how to handle situations that they’re likely to face down the road. And if you’re not showing them a well-rounded person, this could set them up for future failures.
If you want to be the best possible mentor to someone, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you learn how this can be done.
