Description

In this sixth episode in the Mentoring Intelligence Series, Phil shares the importance of personal development through a mentoring relationship. Mentoring is not just about passing on skills but helping a person grow in the areas of their life that may not be seen by others. These fundamental tendencies are at the core of our Personhood and are often at an unconscious level. He points out that people get hired for their skills but fired due to their fundamental tendencies. He also outlines three different levels of mentoring: Passive, Occasional, and Intensive, as well as three different types of mentoring relationships characterized by three biblical figures: Barnabas, Timothy and Epaphroditus.

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Video Script

Episode 6 Intro: Mentoring for Life Transformation

We have been digging around hearts issues and reflecting on what Kingdom leadership really is and what it means to follow Jesus’ example of leading opposite to what we see around us. Now how does this apply to the specifics of an actual mentoring relationship? What does it mean to help someone develop in every area of their personhood and how is this rather unique to the mentoring process? In this episode we want to discuss how mentoring can be a vehicle to encourage and see life transformation.

Mentoring is About Others, Not Us

Mentoring is coming alongside of someone and helping them reach their goals, helping them become all that God wants them to be. It’s not about developing yes men who will help us reach our vision or goals! Now I hope that clicking is not the sound of people changing the channel! Hang in there with me, as I think you’ll find this helpful.

To finish well, as we mentioned last time, all leaders need those who will mentor them as well as offer the gift of mentoring to others. The reality is that as we invest in others, we will be challenged and grow in our own life and ministry. Remember, we are just one member of the Body, so we as leaders also need to change, not just dispensing truth to others.  Helping others grow will motivate us to keep up to date in our own spiritual, personal and ministry life.

But as we have said repeatedly, this does not just happen automatically. While it is very important, mentoring others will never seem urgent. It’s up to us to take the initiative. Perhaps it doesn’t need mentioning, but it’s important to remember that mentoring is not an event that occurs with the crowds, it happens out of sight, more in the background. This may explain why those who think that ministry is primarily a public activity don’t value it and don’t make time to do it.

Holistic Heart, Head, Hands Approach

Mentoring involves more than just teaching someone skills or how to do ministry. It actually should have a threefold balance between the Heart, Head and Hands. The heart signifies character development, instilling the love, values and passion of Christ in the leader. The head refers to knowledge acquisition, helping the mentoree develop understanding, knowledge and wisdom, finally there is also the hands, or some skill development. This should include life skills, not just ministry skills, so that they will be balanced as they seek to discover their role in fulfilling God’s plan for their life.

So then it’s about more than just skills or even theological training, rather it’s focus is the application of biblical truth in every aspect of a person – it’s all about life transformation—seeing the life of Christ formed in someone. This includes three different levels of Personal Development. Let me explain it like this. From the chart you can see three areas of personal development represented in the triangle. On the top are the Ministry or Career Skills. These are visible for others to see, signified by the red line. Everything above the line is visible to others, while everything below the line is not readably seen by others.

Visible Skills – Above the Line

The skills are the capabilities a person needs in order to be effective in their particular job or ministry. These are the abilities other’s see and they are specific to the job and not necessarily transferable to other jobs or ministries. Usually these are acquired through technical training and mentoring can play a role in helping the mentoree develop these skills.  However, as we know, it is possible to master the skills of a particular career  or ministry and yet fail in our relationships and other key areas of our life. Skills and gifting are seldom enough, or the best indicator of success.

Transferable Abilities – Below the Line

The first level below the surface  that we are not always aware of are what we call Transferable Abilities. These are the capabilities that we have that are useful in more than one specific job or ministry. For example, it could include skills such as listening, public speaking, making decisions, leading meetings and so on. Though a person may change jobs, these skills follow them to the next job because they are part of who they are. They are not even always listed in the resume. These are below the skill level and is an area of personal development that mentoring can be helpful.

Foundational Tendencies – The Deepest Level

At the deepest level of personal development are the Foundational Tendencies which we all have as part of our Personhood. These are habitual ways of thinking, feeling and behaving that we all have developed from our earliest days of childhood. They are at the essential level of personhood and are fundamental to the other two areas. They are the most hidden and yet the most powerful area to develop if we are going to be healthy and effective leaders.

This includes skills such as receiving constructive criticism, relating to authority, having self-awareness, responding in conflict situations, being self-correcting, how one responds when in control and not in control, and so on. They tend to be at an unconscious level and so are more like tendencies than skills. They explain why a person does what they do in the other two areas. This is the most important area in determining a person’s success in life and is seldom dealt with outside of a personal mentoring relationship. Not too many people know us at this level and yet most of what we do in life stems from these deep seeded beliefs and values.

The goal of the mentoring relationship is to not just deal with skills, but to help a person become self aware and grow at this deepest level of their being. The mentor does not need to be an expert as we will see, but they can function as a resource for the mentoree to help them grow in areas they need.

Hired for Skills – Fired for Tendencies

The reality is that in most jobs, people get hired for their skills, but fired due to their tendencies. In the  CV or resume, and even in the job interview, it is easy for the candidate to cover up these tendencies. They may not even be aware of them. The focus in the interview is usually on skills and everything above the line. Less time is spent dealing with the candidate’s self-awareness, emotional health, and teach-ability. As this is true in the marketplace, my experience has been that it is not much different in the church. Our human tendency is to focus on the outward, skill, charisma, giftings, not these deeper issues.

So when it comes to staffing or even getting volunteers in the church we typically gather resumes for the position and we may even spend a few days with the potential candidate, seeing if they can preach, teach, have the skills to lead in worship and so on. Usually little time is spent to discover some of their fundamental tendencies. This makes sense, as this is hard to do outside of a trusting relationship.

What Happened to Bob?

For example, let’s say that we are on the leadership team at a church. A bright young man – let’s call him Bob – has just given his life to Jesus and is on fire in his new faith. Then as an added bonus we discover that he is very gifted musically. Excellent, a blessing from the Lord. So we ask him to join the worship team and man he really adds to mix. I mean the guitar chords he uses are like out of this world…..we are convinced that with him on the team the worship experience is going to incredible!

So pretty soon, he becomes the lead musician, oh, and did I mention his voice! Wow, its gotta be heard to be believed. Now since his skill level is so much above the rest of the team, it’s not very long before we ask him to be the team leader. After all our gifts make room for us and this eventually leads to greater influence and finally more authority, right? In any case, things are looking great in the worship department of the church.  He is young, but we are sure his charisma and off the charts skills will make up for any deficits he might have.

Well if you have been around church for any length of time, you know there is a “but” or “however” coming. You are right. Soon after being team leader, we begin to notice that on Mondays our phone begins to ring. You see other members  of the worship team are calling us. Some are in tears, others frustrated and at first we just think they are adjusting to having such a skilled leader. But then a few people quit the team and fast forward six months and one Sunday morning we look up and it’s just Bob up front with his guitar. Now, the problem or pending crisis has hit our radar.

The Problem of Focusing on Externals

We begin to meet with all the previous team members and discover that yes he was skilled musically, but his perfection, anger issues and unwillingness to listen to others has driven everyone away. Which is why he is now a one man show. It is likely we will have to ask him to step aside (a nice way of saying firing, but as we know it’s hard to fire volunteers). Of course the danger of this is that it may cause a church split….people like Bob are usually too gifted to just fade away stage left, biding their time until their character grows to the level to sustain their giftings. Of course this is the genesis of many church plants. He was hired for his skills, but fired for the issues under the surface. And we all have issues, which is why we need others.

Now you can insert a different names and varied positions, but I am sure you can identify with some version of this story. What happened? Well we focused on skills and not fundamental tendencies. For to do that we would have had to spend time with Bob, before making him team leader and maybe even before he joins the worship team. Mentoring is the best way of doing this. If we would have walked with him discovering areas in which he needed to grow we could have saved ourselves a world of hurt. We would have found out if he was teachable before releasing a role to him that would naturally increase his influence and authority. And we  could have likely avoided losing the rest of the worship team in the process and perhaps watching half of our church walk out the door. But mentoring is never urgent, though important. Yet our lack of taking the time eventually will create crises that are urgent.

Now I have painted a worst case scenario picture, but we have all seen some version of this play out in life and ministry. And you know, it’s not really Bob’s fault. He just needed someone to mentor him for a while. In the rest of this series we are going to look at practical aspects of a mentoring relationship, but the goal is always to help someone grow as a person. Now we can’t grow for them, all we can do is create the right conditions for them to make the choice to grow themselves. That is the power of mentoring. Yes it takes time, effort and vulnerability as we have seen, but the impact in someone’s life and our ministry can be dramatic and long lasting.

Three Levels of Mentoring

Some have outlined three basic levels of mentoring. These are Passive, Occasional, and Intensive. No need for us to get into the weeds on each of these, but let me quickly outline them for you.

The one that requires the least amount of effort and accountability is passive mentoring. In this scenario we may never even meet the mentor, perhaps only influenced by reading a book or listening to a podcast. This could be a contemporary of ours or perhaps an historical figure that has inspired us. This is helpful, but not really an accountable relationship. And without accountability there often limited growth. For the purposes of our series here, I am not primarily thinking about this type of passive relationship.

Now Occasional mentoring refers to mentoring that is not as regular or intensive and yet is more proactive than passive. Often it is for specific times or purposes.  It could take the form of being a counselor providing advice for specific problems or challenges, or perhaps like a teacher passing on specific knowledge on a particular subject. It may even take the form of a sponsor who provides guidance and protection for the mentoree as they grow and progress in the organization. While we all need these types of mentors in our lives, this again will not be the main focus for our discussions.

This Series Focus

The most intentional and deliberate mentoring relationship is the Intensive mentoring relationship. This requires the greatest amount of engagement and accountability, but also produces the greatest opportunity for growth in the mentoree’s life. This personal relationship can include teaching a person the disciplines of following Christ, which we will talk more about in our next episode. For our purposes it will be used to describe not only helping a mentoree grow spiritually, but also in each area of their personhood, from ministry skills to foundational tendencies.

As we have briefly discussed in previous episodes, mentoring is never an emergency and so without developing some kind of wineskin or structures in our life, it will likely not happen. Add to this the energy it takes to break free from the inertia of negative leadership patterns that we have borrowed from the world, and the reason not much real mentoring is happening starts to become evident. We need to have a transformation of heart to see Jesus’ Kingdom leadership values and then we need to develop models in our lives to make that happen.

Mentoring thru Intentional Relationships  Model

This is why after teaching about mentoring I went a step further and developed a one year model called Mentoring thru Intentional Relationship which you can get from our website. This provides a one to two year guide to help someone mentor another person.  As we have seen, there are several types of mentoring relationships, but what we are talking about here is a particular type of relationship that has the main intention of helping someone understand and implement Kingdom principles in their lives – so that they can be effective and reach their potential.

Three Types of Mentoring Relationships

We looked at three levels of mentoring relationships, but we each also need three types of mentoring relationships in our lives if we are going to finish well. These can be characterized by three biblical characters: Barnabas, Timothy and Epaphraditus. Barnabas is a model of someone who saw potential in others  and encouraged them. In a future episode we will be discussing his contribution as a mentor of a young, at the time, unknown upstart.

Each of us also needs a Timothy, or someone with whom we can share and help them grow in life and ministry. And finally Epaphroditus, which was a friend of Paul and part of his early ministry team. These are peer relationships we can enjoy as learn from in our own life and ministry. We will look at these in greater detail, but do you have Barnabas in your life, an upward mentor that is investing in your life? How about a Timothy, someone who you are investing in, or an Epaphroditus, a peer mentor that you are walking the journey of life with?

In future episodes we will look at the dynamics of all these types of mentoring relationships, but at this point we just need to be reminded that we need a variety of mentoring relationships in our lives if we are going to grow and continue to be effective in the Kingdom. Our focus in this series will be an intentional personal relationship, but even this type of relationship has certain boundaries as we will see.

As I mentioned at the very beginning of Episode One, when a term morphs into meaning everything than it actually  often ends up meaning nothing. If we put the label “mentoring” on virtually any type of relationship it loses its real meaning and power. While these principles are transferable to other relationships, I want to share some of the dynamics of a specific mentoring relationship, which as the purpose of developing a potential leader. We all have it within our power to mentor others. We can make the effort by taking the time to develop others, even if we may never have had this opportunity ourselves.

In our next episode we are going to define mentoring by looking at what it is not, focussing on discipling and spiritual fathering. This will be helpful in understanding what we are looking for in a mentor and what we have to offer someone we are mentoring. As always, I hope you’ll join me.

Some Leadership Matters to Consider

But before then, I’d like to leave you a few leadership matters to consider:

How has the lack of focusing on the development of the whole person affected your ministry? What crises could have been avoided?

Do you, or have you had, Passive, Occasional, and Intensive mentoring relationships?

Do you have a Barnabas in your life? Do you have a Timothy? How about a Epaphroditus?