Mentoring Intelligence - What Effective Mentors Know About Reproducing Leaders by Phillip T. Jeske, PhD “In his latest book, Dr. Jeske looks at the barriers to becoming an effective mentor and explores what leaders can do to develop a mentoring culture within their churches and organizations.” $25 CDN/USD This is a great companion volume to the manual (Mentoring thru Intentional Relationships) he designed to help individuals mentor others.

About the Book
In spite of all the interest and discussion about mentoring, there remains a leadership crisis in the Church. The author believes that mentoring is the means to resolve the leadership crisis in the Church and several years ago wrote a manual designed to help leaders mentor others (Mentoring thru Intentional Relationships). This resource has been translated into several primary languages and is being used by leaders in many countries. In this, his latest book, Dr. Jeske covers new ground answering questions which are fundamental to the mentoring process: Do we as a leader have what it takes to be an effective mentor? And perhaps even less discussed, Is the culture of our church or organization encouraging or hindering mentoring relationships?

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is considered a necessary ingredient for a leader to be effective and Cultural Intelligence (CQ) is regarded fundamental in order to be effective in a cross cultural context. Dr. Jeske has coined the term Mentoring Intelligence (MQ) and shows the important role it plays in the leader’s ability to mentor others. Using personal examples from around the world, the author focuses on the key factors (Generational, Motivational, Leadership, Practical, and Organizational), that are indicators of a leader’s effectiveness as a leader. This is an empowering book that shows that our MQ – as with our EQ and CQ – is not fixed; we can increase our ability in this area. Using the principles from this book you will be able to make significant strides in expanding your own Mentoring Intelligence, which will increase your effectiveness as you are better equipped to mentor others.

About the Author
Phillip (Phil) Jeske grew up in Canada and at 17 went to a discipleship school in California. This was one of those pivotal experiences that was to affect the trajectory of his life. Then while on a missions trip to Mexico in 1980, God confirmed the calling he had felt as a young teen to minster cross-culturally to the nations.

His time in California was also pivotal in his journey in another significant way. In 1982 he married his college sweetheart, Nancy, who had grown up in the San Francisco Bay area. Their honeymoon “road trip” to Canada was the beginning of their journey together – which they are thankful continues to this day! After graduating with a BTh. Degree in the 1980s, he became a youth and CE pastor at a church in Canada. But his calling to the nations was never far below the surface – though the journey was anything but a straight line. The twists and turns included a near death accident in 1988 for Nancy and their daughter, Alysia (who was born in 1986). Then in 1989, Nancy’s father died from injuries inflicted by a troubled family member (these events are described in their first book, This Pile of Stones, 2002, which is an account of God’s faithfulness in the midst of suffering and tragedy).

In spite of these tragedies, in 1989 Phil & Nancy began the mission organization, International Christian Ministries (Canada), of which he is still president. In 1990 the Jeskes moved to Africa (Kenya) as missionaries, joining two other couples from the USA. Together, they began to develop on-the-job training programs for African church leaders and in the mid 1990s Phil completed an MA in Ministry. In response to the needs in Eastern Europe, by the late 1990s they were preparing to live in Berlin to establish the ministry of training in Eastern Europe.

It was while in Berlin that another pivotal series of events impacted the trajectory of the rest of his journey. In response to the need for a relational approach to leadership development, he developed the manual, Mentoring thru Intentional Relationships (2003), which is now in five primary languages and being used by leaders around the world. The ministry has also developed a multi-year training model (Ministry Coaching Network) which provides principles for healthy leaders and churches. Their team then provides repeated consultations to coach their implementation (these and other resources are available at www.icmcanada.org).

Phil and Nancy currently live near Vancouver, Canada as does their grown daughter. Phil continues to travel extensively between Africa, Europe/Russia and Latin America. His passion is to challenge leaders to be a “Barnabas.” He and his team teach leadership seminars and coach ministry teams, helping them align their ministries with the ultimate purpose of the Church.

Preface
With all the literature about mentoring in the last years, it would be a fair question to wonder if yet another book about mentoring is really necessary. Yet the basic premise of this book is that, in spite of all the literature about mentoring, there is still a crisis of leadership around the world. Though there has been renewed interest in the topic, there must be an explanation as to why the majority of leaders are not fully engaged in mentoring.

So while we may not need yet another book about mentoring, I would suggest that this book is necessary, as it is more concerned with why mentoring is not happening, rather than just the how of mentoring. It is my belief, based on my extensive study and experience, that relational mentoring is the key to developing leadership – and particularly Christian leadership. After years of teaching around the world, I also believe that this is truly a global condition. We do not need another book that makes us feel guilty for not doing what we know we ought to do, but rather one that helps us takes steps in the direction we all know is the right one. My purpose is to increase your leadership quotient, particularly as it relates to helping you develop others. The factors that affect our MQ or Mentoring Quotient will be our focus.

I began working with youth as a youth pastor in the mid eighties on the west coast of Canada. By the early 1990s I was in Africa training pastors and church leaders and ten years later training leaders in Eastern Europe and Russia. Throughout these varied ministries in various cultures, the common thread of my ministry life has been that of equipping church leaders. I first felt the call to intercultural ministry as a young teen and this was confirmed on a mission trip to Mexico when I was seventeen. Over the thirty plus years since then, I have noticed that there are key issues that are unique, and yet predictable, for all Christian leaders. So while living in Berlin ten years ago, I began writing down the issues that I had been discussing with emerging leaders since those early days in youth ministry. This developed into a twelve chapter, two hundred and fifty page mentoring manual that has been translated into five primary languages and is being used on several continents (Mentoring thru Intentional Relationships, 2003). This was not really a book about mentoring, but more of a resource to help someone mentor someone else. It provides a infrastructure for discussion for the mentoring process among leaders.

Over the last ten years, I have also developed several seminars for leaders to motivate and mobilize the current generation of leaders to mentor the next generation. I have now conducted this seminar with leaders in Africa, East/West Europe, Russia, Latin America, as well as North America. With this background, it is my goal to help you understand some of the key barriers or obstacles that I have observed and help you in your quest to invest in others through mentoring relationships. Several themes have emerged over the years that are reoccurring obstacles that thwart many of our good intentions. With all the training going on, I have often wondered, “Why were we still in a leadership crisis in so many parts of the world? Why were leaders, who believed in developing others, not actively engaged in this process?”

At the launch of the Mentoring thru Intentional Relationships manual in Nigeria a few years ago, an even more disconcerting question haunted me. I found myself before over fifteen hundred young adults, all who wanted to have a mentor to guide them in their journey of leadership. I was teaching them and motivating them to have the very thing they wanted, but could not find. I realized that I was preaching to the choir. I have since seen this same desire among the younger generation from Africa to Russia. Typically, a young adult comes up to me after one of my sessions and ask, “Could you be my mentor?” Well, as you will learn from my understanding of mentoring, this is not really possible, as I was often heading to get on a plane within a few hours. They need someone on the ground in their country, in their city. But often they find none. It seemed by teaching about mentoring I was raising the expectation level and setting them up for frustration.

I began to wrestle with the troubling question, “Where were all the mentors going to come from?” In many regions of the world, we have seen incredible growth in the church. The center of gravity of Christianity is not one day going to shift to the South (what were once called Emerging and Developing nations or more recently Two-Third World nations) – that has already happened! From Africa, where over fifty percent of the population claim to be Christians, to the incredible growth in Asia, to the decades of growth in South America, the strength of the Christian Church is no longer in the West or Northern Hemisphere. Over the last half of the last century it has shifted South and East. Yet, if we know anything about the sustainability and reproducibility of the Church, we know that we need trained leadership if we are going to have strong, healthy, reproducing churches spanning the generations.

It was within the context of these experiences, that I began working on my PhD in Organizational & Ministry Leadership, so that I could give some concentrated time to study this topic. My focus was on the central issue of how we were going to raise up enough leaders to meet the increasing global need. From my biblical studies, study of the business literature, as well as personal experience, I was convinced that mentoring was the key. Yet why has it become such a lost art? Why had mentoring become common in developing business leaders, but often nonexistent in developing church leadership? This book reflects both the process and some of my conclusions. I want you to join me on the journey so that you can draw your own conclusions. Our discussion will include examples from many regions of the world for, while there are sometimes different reasons for this lack of mentors, it is not limited to just one region.

Before we begin our study, let me just encourage you that God wants to use you to be part of the solution. Often this begins by asking the tough questions, but we don’t want to get stuck there. We want to then move forward and, within our own sphere of influence, make a difference. Like you, I am still on the journey, or as the Apostle Paul said, in the race. In the decades since those early days in Mexico and attending a discipleship school in California, this has been my focus. I hope that my study and experience will be of benefit for you in your ministry as you keep running the race. All of us want to leave more than we take for future generations and I believe that mentoring is central to achieving that goal.

Several years ago I was teaching my mentoring seminar in a mid-size town on the Volga river in Russia. I learned that in the late 1700s, Katherine the Great, the German empress of Russia, had invited German immigrants to farm that area. Along with the many who came were some of my relatives. At the time of publication, my father is ninety-six years of age and he related to me how my great great grandfather helped to build a Lutheran Church in that same region at that time. Several generations later, in the early part of the Twentieth Century, my great grandparents were caught up in the Bolshevik Revolution and were now on the wrong side of the political winds of change. They both died a gruesome death on the trains to Siberia. Years earlier, in 1910, their daughter (my grandmother) left Russia and returned to Prussia (present day Germany) at the age of 18, some 130 years since her ancestors first arrived.

It was through her influence that my father eventually came to faith several decades later (in the 1930s), when they were immigrant farmers on the Canadian prairies. Life has many twists and turns and none of us really know the generational effects of our lives during our lifetimes. My Grandmother, never learned English or how to drive a car, let alone a computer, but she impacted her son, who in turn became my father and influenced my life. Then in 2010, exactly one hundred years after my Grandmother had left this same region, and without forethought or planning on my part, I was now teaching my seminar in the same city in Russia. I was back sowing spiritual seed among the Christian Russian leaders of the Volga region, in which my family had previously been both immigrants and enemies.

You may not think that you are leader or that you have much to offer, but who knows what legacy your life has the potential to leave for future generations? None of us know for sure, but we can be intentional about passing the baton to them. This is a process and it is the purpose of this book to help you along your journey so that you can fulfill the purposes God has for you in your generation.