November 21, 2024 • 43 mins
Discover the transformative power of mentorship with insights from Dr. Deborah Heiser, founder and CEO of the Mentor Project. Join us as we uncover how mentorship can significantly enhance personal growth and happiness, especially during midlife, by addressing emotional development and civic engagement. Deborah, an applied developmental psychologist, sheds light on the barriers to embracing mentorship, such as imposter syndrome and societal pressures, while highlighting the profound impact mentors have in encouraging a culture of giving back.
Hear compelling stories that illustrate how mentorship can break cycles of limitation, particularly for those from challenging backgrounds, such as military members and individuals from less privileged families. By sharing personal experiences, including how a college professor changed an academic path, we emphasize the qualities that make mentorship effective—support, honesty, and trust. We explore the parallels between mentorship and friendship, urging listeners to pursue diverse mentoring relationships for a richer perspective on life.
This episode offers practical advice on finding the right mentor-mentee fit, stressing the importance of setting goals and understanding the distinction between mentorship and coaching. Deborah shares insights from her book, "The Mentorship Edge," providing guidance for those seeking to become or find effective mentors. Explore how mentorship plays a crucial role in transitional life phases, like moving from military to civilian life, opening up new possibilities and helping individuals discover unrealized goals. Stay engaged and informed as we highlight the significant impact mentorship can have across all stages of life.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Warriors fall in.
It's time for formation Folks.
Today I'm joined with thefounder and CEO and author of
the Mentor Project.
Deborah Hesser is joining me ontoday's podcast, and today
we're going to talk aboutsomething that I really feel
like we should underline morethan once, maybe twice, maybe
three times and it's mentorshipmaybe twice, maybe three times.
(00:22):
In its mentorship, debra hasactually been a TEDx speaker, a
consultant author and, again,she was the founder of the
Mentor Project, where theyreally suggest folks out there
should take a look at.
It's a really outstandingopportunity for folks to really
get inside the conversation withother professionals out there.
That might be where you want togo at some point at time in
(00:43):
your life.
And, debra, thank you forjoining me on the Morning
Formation podcast today.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thank you for having me.
I'm really excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
The honor is all mine .
I mean, I was looking at someof your experiences, your
education, your history overallwhen we matched up and I was
extremely impressed and I cantell you that I really feel like
mentorship is a lost art intoday's society, especially with
our younger generation, and Itruly blame myself, I blame, uh,
(01:15):
my generation, for not doing abetter job at trying to light
the torch, uh, so that they, theuh next group coming up behind
us, can actually see the path todo better than what I had done
and what we had done.
But before we get into that,Debra, I just want to give you
an opportunity to tell folks outthere that are listening a
(01:37):
little bit about you.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Sure, thank you.
I am an applied developmentalpsychologist.
That's a little bit differentthan what most people think of
as a psychologist, a clinicalpsychologist.
A clinical psychologist islooking at pathology and I look
at everything that we can expectin our lifespan and that's
usually good stuff, you know.
(02:00):
Like if you look at development, that's walking and talking and
part of that in the middle ismentoring, and I'll get to that
in just a second.
But for the most part, I'm aresearcher, I write, I write for
Psychology Today and I look atwhat we have to look forward to
in the second half of life.
So most of us look at our livesas a physical trajectory where
(02:24):
we look at walking and talkingand doing all of the things that
make us really strong andamazing physically in our early
20s and up to 30.
And then we all think of lifeas having a slow, steady decline
in the second half of life, oreven more than the second half
of life.
And I look at the emotionaltrajectory that we have, which
starts the same time at birthand it only goes up.
(02:47):
It goes up our entire lives.
This is why when you're youknow 10, you don't throw
yourself on the floor and have atantrum.
We're learning how to deal withthings throughout our lives,
and in the military especially.
You really do learn how to copewith things.
You have to it's necessary andso there's a great emotional
formation that happens with usas we get older.
(03:09):
By the time we're at the end ofour lives.
If you think of us as a treethat develops over time, we've
got all that fruit that'sfinally ready to come off and be
given as knowledge to others.
So our lifespan trajectory iswhat I look at.
I look at the midlife and howwe can look at our emotions in
(03:32):
our midlife, and that's reallythe point where we hit the
turning point, where we start toget happier than we ever were
and that only increases.
So that's a little bit aboutmyself.
That's where mentoring comesinto place.
Mentoring is that midlife thingthat happens to us.
We're built to want to giveback.
If we don't do it, we're likeEbenezer Scrooge.
(03:53):
You can have everything onpaper, you can be a millionaire
and have a mansion servantstaking care of all your needs,
but you will probably be unhappy.
It's not until you give backthat you start to feel joy, and
that's a little bit about what Ido and where I come from.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Do you think there's a lot of folks out there around
midlife?
You say that's around 40 yearsold.
Do you think?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Do you think there's folks out there?
Because I've noticed this overthe years Some folks have more
of a thirst or a hunger to dothat and I've ran into some
folks out there that have moreof like a 15 minute.
They'll just talk about it butthey really won't do anything
type of mentality.
But what are your thoughts onthat overall?
What would drive someone moreto want to give back versus?
(04:42):
This is kind of a five minutelike sounds cool conversation
but in reality I'm not going todo anything.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I have some thoughts about this.
There were a few things.
One is you know, when I'm in my50s, when I was young, we had
civic engagement that we gotinvolved in, where you had to go
outside yourself and give back.
Like there, I was at the tailend of when they had candy
stripers and people who would goin and volunteer in the
hospitals and go and volunteerto do other things in the
communities.
That sort of fell by thewayside and people are less
(05:12):
service-minded so we don't knowhow to engage in that.
It's harder to know if youhaven't been doing it for a long
time.
So the emphasis had been fordecades listen, go your own
route in a sort of a silo.
Don't help others, helpyourself, get ahead.
You need to see how you know wecan interact with others and
(05:48):
feel comfortable about it.
You're not.
You're not.
If someone else succeeds nextto you, it doesn't mean you're a
failure.
And getting that mentality backinto the our own spaces and how
we think about helping othersand mentoring.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Yeah yeah, sort of what you're talking about.
There is kind of impostersyndrome.
There's folks out there thatfeel like they're not a success
or they're not good enough tomentor or to offer any any kind
of mentoring to anybody else.
Like, who am I to tell anyone?
Uh, you know what is theblueprint, uh, on a professional
career or life in general, buthave you seen any type of
(06:27):
character trait or is thereanything specifically character
wise that a good mentor wouldmake?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I'm going to tell you , every single person is a
mentor, and they don't know it,so it's everybody's character.
It's just when it kicks in,even like Ebenezer Scrooge
became a mentor and they don'tknow it.
So it's everybody's character.
It's just when it kicks in,even like Ebenezer Scrooge
became a mentor.
He ended up doing it after along time of not having it kick
in.
But I'm going to give you someexamples because we're all doing
it and we never know.
I interviewed 45 people beforestarting the mentor project to
(06:59):
see what mentors look like.
I interviewed somebody like afour-star general to a grandma.
Every tradition that you everhave that you go to a holiday
meal and you eat the same foodevery time for that holiday.
It smells like the holidaybecause of the cooking and
whatever else is there.
That is mentorship.
When I go to make Thanksgivingdinner, I am making it off of a
(07:22):
card that my grandmother handwrote the recipe for everything.
If I leave anything out, itdoesn't feel like the holiday.
That is being passed downgeneration to generation.
My kids are going to get thatcard.
That will get passed down.
Religion is passed down forcenturies.
That's mentorship.
It doesn't get reinvented allthe time.
It's these sort of things thatwe take for granted in our lives
(07:45):
that we think are justhappening for no reason.
But it's really mentorship.
I just want to say one otherthing that when we talk about
imposter syndrome, so manypeople feel like, if they
haven't been exposed tosomething or that they aren't an
expert in it that somehow theyare unworthy.
I've had so many people thatsay to me well, I'm not a doctor
(08:07):
, a lawyer, I can't mentor.
Well, of course you can.
You've been doing things allalong that people are following,
and that can be values.
People don't think of values asbeing mentoring, but yes, that
is, it's values, it's our morals, it's our traditions, and one
of the biggest things that I'venoticed and it's in the book is
(08:29):
talking about the military andmentorship there.
It's a natural part of it.
You cannot get through themilitary without mentorship, and
mentorship is hierarchical inmany ways that we think about it
.
So in regular times, you havesomebody above you, you want to
raise in the ranks or whatever.
It's very hierarchical.
As soon as some trouble hits,there's a crisis, those walls
(08:54):
come down and now there's alateral mentoring.
You are looking to your leftand you're looking to your right
for other experts and otherdisciplines that might even be
other areas of the military orwherever you can find it to
solve the problem that's in thecrisis.
Once that crisis is solved,those walls go back up and
you're doing hierarchicalmentoring again.
The military is one of the fewplaces that engages in multiple
(09:17):
facets of mentoring that mostpeople don't talk about.
Nobody talks about lateralmentoring.
I write about that, I talkabout that extensively, and the
military is one of the few thatdoes that seamlessly, and so I
love I know that people who comeout of the military are born
mentors.
They are ready, they're ripe tomentor.
(09:39):
They may seem too young.
No, you're not.
You're a lateral mentor tosomebody else.
If somebody says, hey, give methe expertise that you have in
what you do, you're going togive it, you're going to help
somebody.
You're not even going to thinkabout it.
That's mentoring.
And so that person now holdsthat info.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
And so what are your thoughts or what is your message
to folks out there that thinkthat they're not good enough to
mentor because they've messed up?
They've screwed up, they made amistake, whether it was, you
know, in the military.
They got a UCMJ, which is auniform code of military justice
, punishment.
What is your message to thosefolks out there?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Go find somebody who hasn't messed up.
That's my first thing to say.
Find anyone out there in theworld who hasn't messed up.
You know everyone has messed up.
That's my first thing to say.
Find anyone out there in theworld who hasn't messed up.
You know everyone has messed upand that's just part of the
journey.
You pick yourself up and you go.
Of course, you can mentor.
You can mentor people and howyou got through messing up.
You can mentor people and howto avoid messing up.
(10:39):
There's a lot that you can do,but truly go out and find any
one person.
Come back to me and tell me,and I'll give you a load of
money If you can find somebodywho's never messed up.
There's no one who hasn't, sothat is not something that keeps
anybody from mentoring.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
You know, that's the number one thing that I think
I've learned in my professionalcareer is it's not necessarily
all about making the rightdecisions at the right times and
being a perfect human being,because that just doesn't happen
.
It's more about pickingyourself back up, brushing
yourself back off and gettingback on it and going forward and
keep moving, keep progressing,keep fighting and not giving up.
(11:18):
And you're right, there are alot of people out there who will
count themselves out, but theyneed to make sure that they find
that motivation to keep ongoing.
And for folks out there thatyou know, I really feel like a
lot of folks that join themilitary either come from
mid-income housing or less.
They're poor, they come frombroken homes, less than ideal
(11:48):
situations.
A lot of folks that joined themilitary.
For folks out there that maynot have been mentored growing
up and they're trying to figureit out for themselves, have you
ever had anyone or experiencedanything before where you had
someone that was trying to breaka cycle, whether it was
domestic abuse or it was justpoor mentoring?
(12:08):
Maybe mom and dad weren'treally in the picture?
What is your message to folksout there that are in the
military?
They have a difficult timeseeing themselves succeed, and
they really want to break thatcycle anyone can break that
cycle.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
I will tell you that a mentor is the best way to
break that cycle.
I broke it.
My parents didn't go to college, um, and when I got my PhD, my
mom said to me is a PhD the sameas an EMT?
And you know, that's just thatno one knew, like it wasn't
something that was talked aboutin my family.
Um, so does that mean you can'tgo do things?
(12:47):
No, is it a pipe dream to thinkthat you can, you know, do
something that you want to do?
No, but get a mentor.
Because that person, when I wasin college, for example, it was
a college professor who said tome you know what?
You're not doing great inanything right now.
And it was because I just itwasn't, I didn't know what I
wanted to do.
(13:07):
And she said either drop out ofschool or do your best and get
through it.
And I was like, okay, I'll domy best, you know, but it took
somebody to tell me that and tolay it on the line, and I don't
tell this story to people, buthonestly, I'm not alone in that.
I'm sure that people have beensomewhere where they're like
kind of muddling along insomething and it's because they
(13:28):
don't have a path that's clearahead of them.
I didn't know what I'd everwant to do with stuff because
there was nobody ahead of me inmy family that did stuff like
that, so I had to look outsideof my family for mentorship.
And that college professor,peggy DeCook, really turned
(13:48):
things around for me, because Ilooked at my future trajectory
as something I didn't even knowexisted before that moment.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yeah, that was kind of a personal question I come
from.
My father was pretty much theonly one that was around when I
was growing up for the most part, and everyone outside of that
was kind of in and out of mylife.
My siblings aren't doing toowell, and so now I talk to my
niece and the one thing I keeptelling her is you need to break
that cycle, find a mentor, putyourself in position to win Like
(14:24):
, unfortunately, you weren'tgiven the template on success.
You don't know what a goodpersonal relationship looks like
.
You're never challenged to dobetter.
But inherently she hassomething inside of her that
makes her want to do better, andthat's my consistent advice to
her is to find a mentor to helpher break that cycle, and I'm
(14:45):
one of her mentors, but sheneeds to find someone that is
somewhere where she wants to beeventually.
I guess and that was sort of apersonal question on my end and
it kind of leads me to this nextquestion of folks need to
really understand what is goodmentoring and what isn't good
mentoring.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
So I'm going to give you the five things that make a
mentor, and anybody can be agood mentor.
It's like saying what's a goodfriend?
Is a good friend somebody whotalks behind your back?
No, is a good friend somebodywho listens?
Yes, if we think of friend, wecan say what a good friend is or
isn't.
Without a doubt, it's in ourminds.
So think of mentorship as thisthere has to be somebody who's
(15:30):
generative.
That's the mentor.
Starting with that right, theperson has to want to give away
a bit of their knowledge tosomeone else and expect that
that person wants to receivethat knowledge.
So if I talk about generativity, people think that's being
generous sometimes, but it's not.
Generosity is you go to the icecream store, somebody gives you
(15:51):
an extra scoop of ice cream andyou say thank you, you eat it
and it's gone.
Generativity is you're giving alittle bit of your knowledge to
somebody that lives on in themforever.
It's a value, it's a, it's somekind of a skill, it's a talent,
it's whatever it is that youhave an in and giving them and
it lives in them.
So, in terms of being a goodmentor, you have to want to come
(16:13):
from that point.
You're not expecting to getanything from anybody else.
You're not getting paid, you'renot getting an award, you're
not getting a certificate orreward for this.
You are doing it because youwant to be generative.
The mentee, in that case, to bea good mentee, has to be
somebody who says I want it, Iwant this information that
somebody is giving to me.
(16:33):
Otherwise, it's like somebodyis giving you a gift and you're
like no, no, no, thanks, I'vegot enough gifts.
That makes the person feelterrible.
That tried to give it to you,right, and you know you're not
expanding that.
It's falling right on you andending.
The next thing you need isintrinsic motivation, and what
that means is that you'remotivated to do it without, like
(16:55):
I mentioned before, an award orreward or anything like that.
So again, it's not pay, it'snothing like that.
I ask my students when I teachhow many of you would work in a
soup kitchen for free giving outfood and beverages to people
who are hungry and thirsty?
And they all raise their hand.
I say how many of you would goto Starbucks instead and go
(17:18):
donate your time to give foodand beverages to people who are
thirsty and hungry?
And they all say no, I wouldn't.
That's crazy.
That's intrinsic versusextrinsic.
They have both very differentfeelings.
So if you go to your job andyou're getting paid you're not
going to do that for free youfeel like a sucker.
But if you go and you donateand give something to somebody
(17:39):
else, from your heart, from youknow, intrinsically, you feel
great about yourself.
So the next thing is that youneed to have a meaningful
connection self.
So the next thing is that youneed to have a meaningful
connection.
If I don't think very highly ofyou, I'm looking at you as
somebody who's just going togive me information.
This is what most people say.
They say go find a mentorthat's a nameless, faceless
(18:01):
individual.
That is not a meaningfulconnection.
If you're just looking to goget something from somebody, you
have to like the person.
You have to actually care aboutthem and not just the mentor
caring about the mentee goingforward, because mentors always
feel that.
But a mentee has to feel likethey are doing something with
(18:23):
their knowledge or informationthat the mentor wants them to do
.
They have to think of thatmentor and what the goal is for
that mentor and what they're arethey carrying that goal forward
?
Another thing is trust.
How many times do you not trustsomebody that is not a mentor?
Then how often do you not trusta mentee?
Are they going to steal youridea?
You know?
(18:43):
Are they going to?
You know, if you're in some kindof a tech industry, you have to
trust each other and this iswhy people think of hierarchical
mentoring as having problemswith it.
Because if you don't trustbeing able to say to your boss
or someone above you that youdon't know how to do something,
(19:03):
expressing a vulnerability, youthink they're going to say I'm
never going to promote them ifthey don't know how to do this,
that trust is a barrier tomentorship.
And in that case is where I saygo to lateral mentoring
somebody who's not your boss andget it that way.
And then, finally, there has tobe a goal.
If somebody is just shooting abreeze with somebody, that's not
(19:24):
mentoring.
There has to be a goal with itand that goal can change.
You can be mentored by somebodyfor decades, but and that goal
will change with time.
But that's what makes a goodmentor and a good mentee.
And I put them together the wayI did, because if you separate
it, people will say I'll do afew of these things and you
might not have a matchup withthe mentor and the mentee and
(19:46):
you could be the best mentor outthere, but if you have a crummy
mentee or a mentee who's notengaged, it's not going to work.
And the other thing that I liketo say about being a good
mentor or mentee is it's notalways going to work, just like
friends.
Have you ever gone and metsomebody and you're like not my
person.
They could be a fine person,they're just not somebody that
(20:07):
you.
You don't get their humor orthere's just something that they
that isn't interesting aboutthem.
That's the same thing thathappens with mentorship and we
put so much pressure on it andthink it's a failure if it
doesn't work out.
No, it's like meeting somebodyand you're like if I see him,
I'll say hi.
That's the same with mentorship.
You should not be puttingpressure on it and you shouldn't
be thinking you should not beputting pressure on it and you
(20:30):
shouldn't be thinking you shouldjust have one mentor.
You should have a millionmentors.
You should have as many as youcan have.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
So sorry that was a long answer for that question,
but very, very developed answerno, and I certainly agree with
with a lot of what you said.
Mentoring is a two way street.
I mean it's you have to be andI've told people this before in
order for me to mentor, you haveto be a good mentee, um, it's
not just a one-way street whereI'm just feeding you and you're
just taking it.
Um, it's really a conversation.
You do have to have apersonality match to some extent
(21:00):
.
Um.
Do you have any idea why itseems like most of the time,
family members um, are not goodmentors?
Like, why is it that a lot oftimes, if something comes out of
a family member's mouth andanother person that's outside of
the family says the same thing,it sounds better?
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Oh, please.
I mean, I'm a parent, you knowmy, that's how it is.
That's why I don't includeparents as mentors, because you
know you're expected to be doingthat with your kids.
You're really not expected.
That's an expectation, right.
But I do include grandparentsand aunts and uncles and those
sorts.
There has to be a degree ofseparation, because when you are
(21:41):
trying to get through thebasics of life, you know a child
or a parent that gets blurryand fuzzy what's mentorship and
what's parenting, and so thatcan be removed if you go one
degree away.
So I will never say, hey, canthere be mentorship within that
family?
You know immediate familyparents and siblings, yes, but
(22:02):
there's a whole lot of otherstuff going on, good and bad,
and families.
That makes it so thatmentorship is a little tricky
and diluted and muddy in thatrespect.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah, no doubt about that.
And in order for folks outthere to seek mentorship,
especially in their youngprofessional careers, what's the
best way to get them to eitherrealize the importance of it or
to simply come to the table toseek it?
Speaker 2 (22:35):
The first thing I suggest to people is go do
something outside of yourselffor somebody else, because then
you can understand the positionof the mentor.
So if you are donating yourtime to you know, volunteer at a
soup kitchen, midnight runmaybe, and do it regularly like
not once you're not going to getit from that, but go do
something for somebody else andand don't do it when anybody
(22:59):
knows you're doing it.
Just go do it and then you'regoing to understand why a mentor
wants to help you, because itfeels unbelievably good to help
somebody.
So if somebody's young, I tryto get them to see how important
and good it feels to go helpsomebody out in some way,
whatever that is, whatever thatcivic engagement is, to get
(23:20):
involved in that.
That's where I've seen thedisconnect happen.
You know is not being civicallyengaged, so people don't
understand why a mentor wouldever want to give their time.
So if you are young, firststart with your friends that you
already trust them and likethem and ask them.
You know how would you solvethis?
(23:41):
How do you do this?
Most of our most explosiveimpact that came from all of our
big tech.
You know explosive things thathave happened were two friends.
So I'm going to tell you anexample of Steve Jobs and Steve
Wozniak.
Neither of them did anythingalone.
They did it with each other andthey were friends.
(24:01):
They didn't seek originallyadvice from somebody above them.
They sought it laterally fromeach other and then they moved
up.
So if you're seeking a mentor,go to the person you feel most
comfortable with and that'slikely somebody who's lateral to
you and then you can use thoseideas to find the person above
you that you say.
That's somebody I'd like toreach out to, and it's easy
(24:23):
enough.
It doesn't have to be somebodyyou know.
People respond to emails.
They respond to social mediarequests.
They are people in your schools, they're people in the
workplace that aren't in yourdivision or your department.
They can be anybody anywhere.
The world is a nice small placein that way that you can reach
out to people.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, that's really, really, really great advice.
Um, and for folks out therethat are mentors and have a
tendency to get frustratedmainly because, uh, their advice
is not, I guess what it is is,I've tried to mentor folks
before and I'm trying to thinkabout how to phrase this
(25:07):
question, but I've tried tomentor folks before and have
become very frustrated, likeoverall, with trying to get this
person to consider doingsomething else.
And then instead they do.
They only take certain parts ofthe advice they don't.
They like to pick and choosewhat they like and what they
don't like.
And me as a mentor, like I'vebeen very frustrated before with
(25:30):
that, with that overall concept, trying to convince them and
then later down the road findingout that, yeah, I probably
should have done it that way.
Instead, what do you, what doyou suggest?
How do we cope with that, likeas mentors, to overcome that
frustration?
Speaker 2 (25:44):
You know that's a tricky one.
I think that there's a lot oflevels to that.
The first thing I would say isthat yes, there's a goal that
we're working on.
Was that goal established first?
Was there a goal or was it anopen ended thing?
I'm going to give you thisinformation and hope you do what
you need to do with it.
Like if I'm going to go asksomebody for help, I'm going to
(26:05):
say, hey, I'm looking to solvethis problem.
I may not know how to get there.
Do you know any route that Ican get there?
And then there's a goal that'sstated there.
That's one thing that may nothave been stated.
Maybe it was and somebody isonly taking a little bit.
Are they making progress?
Are they still moving in theright direction?
If they are, then you're doingyour job.
(26:29):
You know we don't have controlover how quickly people absorb
our information that we'regiving and utilize it.
We have to just make sureyou're still going in the right
direction.
Are we working towards thatgoal that we had?
Number two is it might be a badfit.
Maybe that person isn't ready.
Two is it might be a bad fit.
(26:52):
Maybe that person isn't ready.
Maybe you're the person that'sgoing to be good for them in six
months, a year or maybe never.
That's hard for mentors to seeSometimes.
That's why I tell mentors andmentees to have many mentors and
mentees, because it feels likeall your eggs are in one basket.
If you have only one and you, Ibet that everyone who's
(27:12):
listening and that you can thinkof a lot of different people
who've helped you along the way.
Imagine if you only had one.
Your eyes get open to so manythings when you have multiple
mentors and mentees so that ifone person has taken a little
bit longer, you can feel reallygood about, maybe somebody else
is moving in.
One person is taken a littlebit longer you can feel really
good about.
Maybe somebody else is movingin a little quicker, at a little
(27:33):
bit of a quicker pace withsomething it makes.
It takes that pressure off thatthere should never be when
you're mentoring.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah, that that totally makes sense.
I mean, getting differentperspectives from different
people can only amplify youroverall.
I guess mental lateral movementinto thinking bigger and
thinking outside the box To be agood mentor, in your opinion.
Do you think that you need tobe a little bit confrontational?
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Some people are confrontational and some people
are not.
I think it has to be yourpersonality style and that
should be matching up with yourmentee.
So in certain situations look,if you're in the military and
you're not confrontationalpeople have to all get to the
same place.
You know, at a certain timepoint you're going to need to be
that way and there are certainareas that really resonate with
(28:25):
that.
That could be sports, thatcould be all kinds of different
areas, but you have to knowwhat's going to work with you
and your mentee.
If you're confrontational witha friendship and a friend
doesn't like that, it's notgoing to be a really close
friendship.
You have to match it up, justlike you would with friendship.
Friendship and mentorship arenot the same thing, but I like
(28:47):
to talk about them similarlybecause everyone knows how to go
make a friend and what feelsgood in a friendship and what
doesn't, and when you feel thatfeeling, that's the same feeling
you get with a good mentorshiprelationship.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
No, that makes a lot of sense and I've actually
described people like thatbefore.
Well, I think that's a greatguy, I think that's a lot of
sense, and I've I've actuallydescribed people like that
before.
Well, I think that's a greatguy, I think that's a great gal,
but at the end of the day, like, they're just something, yeah,
that I don't personally reallylike all right and it's just.
It's not that they're bad, it'sjust something that that I
don't personally whatever, likemy own value system or my own
(29:27):
beliefs don't match up with that.
And overall, you talked aboutgood fit.
Maybe, if you're mentoring ormentee or whatever, whichever
side of the road you're on, howdo you know?
Like, how do you know if youare a good fit?
Is there like a test you couldtake or a questionnaire you
(29:47):
could take, or is it justsomething that you inherently
feel when you're conversatingwith somebody, sort of like you
know, you and I, or whenever I'mtalking to a guest?
I guess is that how it goes?
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Yeah, it's exactly like that.
You don't give your friend aquestionnaire and say, let's see
how good our fit is, and wedon't do that with mentorship.
A lot of places try to do that.
They try to quantify mentorship, and if somebody tried to
quantify my friendships it wouldbe a disaster.
You know, I like who I like,because there's some kind of
chemistry there.
(30:20):
And that's the same withmentorship.
So you could look at somethingand on paper, a relationship
would look great.
This is why, if you go througha dating app, do you look at the
dating app and the first personthat comes up you go oh, we
were matched, we're a fit, andif it doesn't work out, it's a
failure.
No, that's not how life works.
(30:41):
So there's no tests that youcan take, there's no
questionnaire, it fits.
It's like putting on a shoe.
If you wear a size eight andyou put on a size six, it's
going to feel uncomfortable.
If you put on a size 12, it'llfeel uncomfortable.
You really need the right fit.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Right, that totally makes sense.
I wish life came with aninstruction manual.
It'd be so much easier, rightfor everybody just to read and
follow the instructions.
But it doesn't quite work thatway.
And there's one more thing Iwanted to ask too, because I've
kind of talked about this beforewith other people, but for
folks out there who especiallylike parents and things like
(31:23):
that, if they haven't gone tocollege, do you think that there
are times where certain peopleneed to be very careful about
offering advice or mentoring tofolks, because they might be
giving the same blueprint to thenext generation and the
blueprint may not be a blueprintof higher achievement be a
(31:53):
blueprint of higher achievement.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
No, I, I, some of our mentors don't have college
degrees and they've done worldchanging things and so I don't
look.
This is me personally.
I do not look at a degree asmaking a person a higher
achieving person.
I couldn't have done what I dowithout you have to have a PhD
to do what I do.
I had to go that far, whether Iwanted to or not.
If I wanted to do this, I hadto do it.
But there's a million thingspeople do that don't require a
(32:18):
college degree and you can besuper successful and achieve
great things.
So I caution against that.
Everyone can be a mentor,no-transcript, and a degree may
(32:55):
not be the answer to it.
So am I saying don't go get adegree?
I'm saying get a goal.
That's what I'm saying Get agoal.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
You know, and I made that, I made that mistake.
You're talking to someone rightnow.
I have two graduate degrees andan undergraduate degree and I
don't use any of my degrees.
I mean I don't want to say Idon't use them.
I'm sure it's helped me alongthe way, but like a ship in the
night, I kind of got a.
I got a degree in MBA, inproject management, msa, in
(33:27):
organizational leadership, andthen my undergrad is in criminal
justice.
So it's one of those thingswhere I just thought that
getting degrees was like goingto make me successful.
And in reality I know a lot offolks out there that run
businesses that don't havedegrees, that didn't get higher
education.
You know, and that's and that's.
(33:50):
I'm glad that you mentioned that, because I tell folks that all
the time I'm like you're lookingat someone right now who
thought that that was themeasurement of success and in
reality it's not.
So I really try to impress uponpeople to do exactly what you
just said.
Don't look at that as something.
Look at a goal.
Where do you want to go?
What do you want to do someday?
Where do you want to be in life?
(34:11):
But, debra, I want to give youan opportunity to talk about the
mentorship edge, which is,which is your book, who, who is
it for and who?
Who should be the folks outthere that buying it and reading
it?
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Thank you.
You know the Mentorship Edgewas written.
It was something that I feltcompelled to write because I've
been seeing mentorship used inthe wrong ways.
People are trying to quantifyit or make a checkbox for it and
it's not working in a lot ofplaces.
So people are thinkingmentorship is something that you
can fail at or that it can onlybe done in certain situations.
(34:51):
So the mentorship edge is foranybody and everybody.
It really is showing how we'rebuilt to mentor and it's from a
mentor perspective.
In many ways, we are built towant to do this and I give
examples of people who havementored successfully and been
in mentoring situations.
(35:11):
I also show what it's not.
It's not coaching.
People who are coaches often saywell, I'm a mentor to, you're
paid, you're not sorry, that'show it is.
There are certain things thatit's not, but you can use
mentorship in conjunction withall of these different things.
So it's what it is, what itisn't.
It's a lot of stories from youknow people like who've had
(35:32):
their lives saved frommentorship.
And it talks about lateralmentoring, not just hierarchical
mentoring.
So if you want to have betterconnections with people in work
and in personal life, this isfor you.
If you want to mentor, this isfor you.
If you want to have a mentor,this is for you.
It comes from looking at thementor project and how things
(35:56):
worked.
We were told I was told in thevery beginning, when we only had
10 people who you know, a smallcore of us who just wanted to
give back locally to schoolsthat no one who's really
successful will ever have thetime or want to give back.
We went from 10 to 60 to 80 to100.
We have a waiting list now andthe top people in the world ask
(36:19):
to become mentors because theywant to give back.
And so we've been able tounderstand that people who are
really high level often feel thesame disconnect from others.
So an example is Bill Cheswick.
He was a guy who said I'mleaving Bell Labs, he's a famous
inventor and he was moving to afarm and retiring.
(36:42):
And he said I can't go to apark and say, hey, kid, do you
want to learn quantum mechanics?
You know he he didn't.
There was a disconnect.
So this book is here to showhow you can make the connections
in both directions.
How people doesn't matter howsuccessful you are.
You want to give back.
You're driven to.
So if you're feeling like I am,I'm not worthy of asking a
(37:04):
question.
This book shows why you are,because people want to feel
useful, they want to feelrelevant, they want to feel
productive, they want to feelhelpful.
Um, the same way we all feelwhen we give back.
So that's what the book is for.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Yeah, and you know, when I, when I read your, your
bio and your background andeverything, I thought, wow, this
is the perfect person for mypodcast, cause I really want to
focus on adapt, overcoming andseeing further than the end of
your, your own neighborhood, andI really feel like mentoring is
a lost art in today's societyand I really, if you'd asked me,
(37:41):
like you know, 20 years ago,where we would be as a society,
I thought by now we would havemastered this whole mentoring
thing and we would understandhow to better serve each other
by passing the torch onto thenext generation and helping them
make better decisions.
And here we are still trying tofigure it out.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
And with that I just wanted to ask you, in your
opinion, why do we stillstruggle business-wise and even
military-wise with before theyexit?
Because in any transition thatwe make, if you get married you
know there's the whole.
It can be anything you wantmarried, but that you know
there's this whole transitionthat happens, that makes it
(38:47):
stressful, that makes it feellike there's some stress
involved.
Retirement is like that too,and when you're transitioning
from the military to anycivilian role, I really, truly
believe that all of theopportunities that are available
that somebody may not know theymay not even know that the
questions to ask or what isavailable, that should be made
(39:11):
available to them.
They should have as manymentors as possible, not just
one, but people who are gonnaopen their eyes to every single
possibility that's out there andhow they can get to the goal
that they may not even know thatthey have set for themselves
yet.
So that's really what I thinkis so important for the military
, and it can be done.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah, and I think sometimes people tend to be a
little hardheaded about thatstuff.
I know, when I transitioned outof the military, I kind of
palmed a lot of resources in theface and I was like I got this
get out of my way.
Like I, I know how to do aresume, I know, like I, I know
how to do a resume, I know howto interview, I know how to do
all these things and really Ididn't know any.
(39:54):
I didn't know Jack, I knewnothing.
So looking back at myself backthen, uh, I could have utilized
those extra resources and thoseextra voices and those extra
conversations.
Um so, this is fantastic.
I have so many more questionsfor you, but I understand that I
shouldn't extend podcasts verylong, but I'd love to have you
(40:15):
back on the show again to talkmore about mentoring and to dig
deeper into this.
But before I finish off today'sshow, is there anything that
you wanted to mention oranything that I might have
missed during our conversationtoday?
Speaker 2 (40:30):
No, the only thing I want to tell everybody is to
look to your left and look toyour right.
You're likely looking at amentor or a mentee, and you
don't have to only be looking toget help for yourself.
If you see somebody that youhave an expertise that they may
benefit from, you become theirmentor.
Your life will be much betterif you have a really strong
(40:51):
network around you.
As you lift up others, you'relifting yourself up too.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Yeah, if you have those good intentions to help
out the pave the path for thenext generation or for folks
that you truly care about, oreven just a group of folks,
whether it's military folks,service members, military
spouses I definitely highlywould recommend to get in touch
and contact Dr Deborah Heiserand check out the Mentorship
(41:21):
Edge, which is her book.
I know is it available onAmazon.
Everywhere you want to buy abook, and in libraries
Everything's available on Amazonnow so want to buy a book, and
in libraries, everything'savailable on Amazon now.
So, yeah, I'll definitely makesure that I put the link down in
the show notes for folks toclick on if they want to order
your book, and then also to anyof your social media
(41:41):
availabilities out there.
So I really appreciate you forgiving me the opportunity to
pick your brain today.
I know you have a huge, huge,vast background.
I really appreciate you forgiving me the opportunity to
pick your brain today.
I know you have a huge, huge,vast background and I was
extremely impressed and I'mhonored to have talked to you
and have this conversation.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
I'm honored to be on this show, and, boy, I learned a
lot from you today, and it's aprivilege being here, thank you.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
And folks, that's it for today.
I hope I can have Debra back onthe show at some point in time.
It's been a very insightfulconversation, as always.
Folks, I want you to stay tuned, stay focused and stay
motivated.
Warriors fall out.
Warriors fall in.
It's time for formation Folks.
Today I'm joined with thefounder and CEO and author of
the Mentor Project.
Deborah Hesser is joining me ontoday's podcast, and today
we're going to talk aboutsomething that I really feel
like we should underline morethan once, maybe twice, maybe
three times and it's mentorshipmaybe twice, maybe three times.
(00:22):
In its mentorship, debra hasactually been a TEDx speaker, a
consultant author and, again,she was the founder of the
Mentor Project, where theyreally suggest folks out there
should take a look at.
It's a really outstandingopportunity for folks to really
get inside the conversation withother professionals out there.
That might be where you want togo at some point at time in
(00:43):
your life.
And, debra, thank you forjoining me on the Morning
Formation podcast today.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Thank you for having me.
I'm really excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
The honor is all mine .
I mean, I was looking at someof your experiences, your
education, your history overallwhen we matched up and I was
extremely impressed and I cantell you that I really feel like
mentorship is a lost art intoday's society, especially with
our younger generation, and Itruly blame myself, I blame, uh,
(01:15):
my generation, for not doing abetter job at trying to light
the torch, uh, so that they, theuh next group coming up behind
us, can actually see the path todo better than what I had done
and what we had done.
But before we get into that,Debra, I just want to give you
an opportunity to tell folks outthere that are listening a
(01:37):
little bit about you.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Sure, thank you.
I am an applied developmentalpsychologist.
That's a little bit differentthan what most people think of
as a psychologist, a clinicalpsychologist.
A clinical psychologist islooking at pathology and I look
at everything that we can expectin our lifespan and that's
usually good stuff, you know.
(02:00):
Like if you look at development, that's walking and talking and
part of that in the middle ismentoring, and I'll get to that
in just a second.
But for the most part, I'm aresearcher, I write, I write for
Psychology Today and I look atwhat we have to look forward to
in the second half of life.
So most of us look at our livesas a physical trajectory where
(02:24):
we look at walking and talkingand doing all of the things that
make us really strong andamazing physically in our early
20s and up to 30.
And then we all think of lifeas having a slow, steady decline
in the second half of life, oreven more than the second half
of life.
And I look at the emotionaltrajectory that we have, which
starts the same time at birthand it only goes up.
(02:47):
It goes up our entire lives.
This is why when you're youknow 10, you don't throw
yourself on the floor and have atantrum.
We're learning how to deal withthings throughout our lives,
and in the military especially.
You really do learn how to copewith things.
You have to it's necessary andso there's a great emotional
formation that happens with usas we get older.
(03:09):
By the time we're at the end ofour lives.
If you think of us as a treethat develops over time, we've
got all that fruit that'sfinally ready to come off and be
given as knowledge to others.
So our lifespan trajectory iswhat I look at.
I look at the midlife and howwe can look at our emotions in
(03:32):
our midlife, and that's reallythe point where we hit the
turning point, where we start toget happier than we ever were
and that only increases.
So that's a little bit aboutmyself.
That's where mentoring comesinto place.
Mentoring is that midlife thingthat happens to us.
We're built to want to giveback.
If we don't do it, we're likeEbenezer Scrooge.
(03:53):
You can have everything onpaper, you can be a millionaire
and have a mansion servantstaking care of all your needs,
but you will probably be unhappy.
It's not until you give backthat you start to feel joy, and
that's a little bit about what Ido and where I come from.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Do you think there's a lot of folks out there around
midlife?
You say that's around 40 yearsold.
Do you think?
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Do you think there's folks out there?
Because I've noticed this overthe years Some folks have more
of a thirst or a hunger to dothat and I've ran into some
folks out there that have moreof like a 15 minute.
They'll just talk about it butthey really won't do anything
type of mentality.
But what are your thoughts onthat overall?
What would drive someone moreto want to give back versus?
(04:42):
This is kind of a five minutelike sounds cool conversation
but in reality I'm not going todo anything.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I have some thoughts about this.
There were a few things.
One is you know, when I'm in my50s, when I was young, we had
civic engagement that we gotinvolved in, where you had to go
outside yourself and give back.
Like there, I was at the tailend of when they had candy
stripers and people who would goin and volunteer in the
hospitals and go and volunteerto do other things in the
communities.
That sort of fell by thewayside and people are less
(05:12):
service-minded so we don't knowhow to engage in that.
It's harder to know if youhaven't been doing it for a long
time.
So the emphasis had been fordecades listen, go your own
route in a sort of a silo.
Don't help others, helpyourself, get ahead.
You need to see how you know wecan interact with others and
(05:48):
feel comfortable about it.
You're not.
You're not.
If someone else succeeds nextto you, it doesn't mean you're a
failure.
And getting that mentality backinto the our own spaces and how
we think about helping othersand mentoring.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Yeah yeah, sort of what you're talking about.
There is kind of impostersyndrome.
There's folks out there thatfeel like they're not a success
or they're not good enough tomentor or to offer any any kind
of mentoring to anybody else.
Like, who am I to tell anyone?
Uh, you know what is theblueprint, uh, on a professional
career or life in general, buthave you seen any type of
(06:27):
character trait or is thereanything specifically character
wise that a good mentor wouldmake?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I'm going to tell you , every single person is a
mentor, and they don't know it,so it's everybody's character.
It's just when it kicks in,even like Ebenezer Scrooge
became a mentor and they don'tknow it.
So it's everybody's character.
It's just when it kicks in,even like Ebenezer Scrooge
became a mentor.
He ended up doing it after along time of not having it kick
in.
But I'm going to give you someexamples because we're all doing
it and we never know.
I interviewed 45 people beforestarting the mentor project to
(06:59):
see what mentors look like.
I interviewed somebody like afour-star general to a grandma.
Every tradition that you everhave that you go to a holiday
meal and you eat the same foodevery time for that holiday.
It smells like the holidaybecause of the cooking and
whatever else is there.
That is mentorship.
When I go to make Thanksgivingdinner, I am making it off of a
(07:22):
card that my grandmother handwrote the recipe for everything.
If I leave anything out, itdoesn't feel like the holiday.
That is being passed downgeneration to generation.
My kids are going to get thatcard.
That will get passed down.
Religion is passed down forcenturies.
That's mentorship.
It doesn't get reinvented allthe time.
It's these sort of things thatwe take for granted in our lives
(07:45):
that we think are justhappening for no reason.
But it's really mentorship.
I just want to say one otherthing that when we talk about
imposter syndrome, so manypeople feel like, if they
haven't been exposed tosomething or that they aren't an
expert in it that somehow theyare unworthy.
I've had so many people thatsay to me well, I'm not a doctor
(08:07):
, a lawyer, I can't mentor.
Well, of course you can.
You've been doing things allalong that people are following,
and that can be values.
People don't think of values asbeing mentoring, but yes, that
is, it's values, it's our morals, it's our traditions, and one
of the biggest things that I'venoticed and it's in the book is
(08:29):
talking about the military andmentorship there.
It's a natural part of it.
You cannot get through themilitary without mentorship, and
mentorship is hierarchical inmany ways that we think about it
.
So in regular times, you havesomebody above you, you want to
raise in the ranks or whatever.
It's very hierarchical.
As soon as some trouble hits,there's a crisis, those walls
(08:54):
come down and now there's alateral mentoring.
You are looking to your leftand you're looking to your right
for other experts and otherdisciplines that might even be
other areas of the military orwherever you can find it to
solve the problem that's in thecrisis.
Once that crisis is solved,those walls go back up and
you're doing hierarchicalmentoring again.
The military is one of the fewplaces that engages in multiple
(09:17):
facets of mentoring that mostpeople don't talk about.
Nobody talks about lateralmentoring.
I write about that, I talkabout that extensively, and the
military is one of the few thatdoes that seamlessly, and so I
love I know that people who comeout of the military are born
mentors.
They are ready, they're ripe tomentor.
(09:39):
They may seem too young.
No, you're not.
You're a lateral mentor tosomebody else.
If somebody says, hey, give methe expertise that you have in
what you do, you're going togive it, you're going to help
somebody.
You're not even going to thinkabout it.
That's mentoring.
And so that person now holdsthat info.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
And so what are your thoughts or what is your message
to folks out there that thinkthat they're not good enough to
mentor because they've messed up?
They've screwed up, they made amistake, whether it was, you
know, in the military.
They got a UCMJ, which is auniform code of military justice
, punishment.
What is your message to thosefolks out there?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Go find somebody who hasn't messed up.
That's my first thing to say.
Find anyone out there in theworld who hasn't messed up.
You know everyone has messed up.
That's my first thing to say.
Find anyone out there in theworld who hasn't messed up.
You know everyone has messed upand that's just part of the
journey.
You pick yourself up and you go.
Of course, you can mentor.
You can mentor people and howyou got through messing up.
You can mentor people and howto avoid messing up.
(10:39):
There's a lot that you can do,but truly go out and find any
one person.
Come back to me and tell me,and I'll give you a load of
money If you can find somebodywho's never messed up.
There's no one who hasn't, sothat is not something that keeps
anybody from mentoring.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
You know, that's the number one thing that I think
I've learned in my professionalcareer is it's not necessarily
all about making the rightdecisions at the right times and
being a perfect human being,because that just doesn't happen
.
It's more about pickingyourself back up, brushing
yourself back off and gettingback on it and going forward and
keep moving, keep progressing,keep fighting and not giving up.
(11:18):
And you're right, there are alot of people out there who will
count themselves out, but theyneed to make sure that they find
that motivation to keep ongoing.
And for folks out there thatyou know, I really feel like a
lot of folks that join themilitary either come from
mid-income housing or less.
They're poor, they come frombroken homes, less than ideal
(11:48):
situations.
A lot of folks that joined themilitary.
For folks out there that maynot have been mentored growing
up and they're trying to figureit out for themselves, have you
ever had anyone or experiencedanything before where you had
someone that was trying to breaka cycle, whether it was
domestic abuse or it was justpoor mentoring?
(12:08):
Maybe mom and dad weren'treally in the picture?
What is your message to folksout there that are in the
military?
They have a difficult timeseeing themselves succeed, and
they really want to break thatcycle anyone can break that
cycle.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
I will tell you that a mentor is the best way to
break that cycle.
I broke it.
My parents didn't go to college, um, and when I got my PhD, my
mom said to me is a PhD the sameas an EMT?
And you know, that's just thatno one knew, like it wasn't
something that was talked aboutin my family.
Um, so does that mean you can'tgo do things?
(12:47):
No, is it a pipe dream to thinkthat you can, you know, do
something that you want to do?
No, but get a mentor.
Because that person, when I wasin college, for example, it was
a college professor who said tome you know what?
You're not doing great inanything right now.
And it was because I just itwasn't, I didn't know what I
wanted to do.
(13:07):
And she said either drop out ofschool or do your best and get
through it.
And I was like, okay, I'll domy best, you know, but it took
somebody to tell me that and tolay it on the line, and I don't
tell this story to people, buthonestly, I'm not alone in that.
I'm sure that people have beensomewhere where they're like
kind of muddling along insomething and it's because they
(13:28):
don't have a path that's clearahead of them.
I didn't know what I'd everwant to do with stuff because
there was nobody ahead of me inmy family that did stuff like
that, so I had to look outsideof my family for mentorship.
And that college professor,peggy DeCook, really turned
(13:48):
things around for me, because Ilooked at my future trajectory
as something I didn't even knowexisted before that moment.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yeah, that was kind of a personal question I come
from.
My father was pretty much theonly one that was around when I
was growing up for the most part, and everyone outside of that
was kind of in and out of mylife.
My siblings aren't doing toowell, and so now I talk to my
niece and the one thing I keeptelling her is you need to break
that cycle, find a mentor, putyourself in position to win Like
(14:24):
, unfortunately, you weren'tgiven the template on success.
You don't know what a goodpersonal relationship looks like
.
You're never challenged to dobetter.
But inherently she hassomething inside of her that
makes her want to do better, andthat's my consistent advice to
her is to find a mentor to helpher break that cycle, and I'm
(14:45):
one of her mentors, but sheneeds to find someone that is
somewhere where she wants to beeventually.
I guess and that was sort of apersonal question on my end and
it kind of leads me to this nextquestion of folks need to
really understand what is goodmentoring and what isn't good
mentoring.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
So I'm going to give you the five things that make a
mentor, and anybody can be agood mentor.
It's like saying what's a goodfriend?
Is a good friend somebody whotalks behind your back?
No, is a good friend somebodywho listens?
Yes, if we think of friend, wecan say what a good friend is or
isn't.
Without a doubt, it's in ourminds.
So think of mentorship as thisthere has to be somebody who's
(15:30):
generative.
That's the mentor.
Starting with that right, theperson has to want to give away
a bit of their knowledge tosomeone else and expect that
that person wants to receivethat knowledge.
So if I talk about generativity, people think that's being
generous sometimes, but it's not.
Generosity is you go to the icecream store, somebody gives you
(15:51):
an extra scoop of ice cream andyou say thank you, you eat it
and it's gone.
Generativity is you're giving alittle bit of your knowledge to
somebody that lives on in themforever.
It's a value, it's a, it's somekind of a skill, it's a talent,
it's whatever it is that youhave an in and giving them and
it lives in them.
So, in terms of being a goodmentor, you have to want to come
(16:13):
from that point.
You're not expecting to getanything from anybody else.
You're not getting paid, you'renot getting an award, you're
not getting a certificate orreward for this.
You are doing it because youwant to be generative.
The mentee, in that case, to bea good mentee, has to be
somebody who says I want it, Iwant this information that
somebody is giving to me.
(16:33):
Otherwise, it's like somebodyis giving you a gift and you're
like no, no, no, thanks, I'vegot enough gifts.
That makes the person feelterrible.
That tried to give it to you,right, and you know you're not
expanding that.
It's falling right on you andending.
The next thing you need isintrinsic motivation, and what
that means is that you'remotivated to do it without, like
(16:55):
I mentioned before, an award orreward or anything like that.
So again, it's not pay, it'snothing like that.
I ask my students when I teachhow many of you would work in a
soup kitchen for free giving outfood and beverages to people
who are hungry and thirsty?
And they all raise their hand.
I say how many of you would goto Starbucks instead and go
(17:18):
donate your time to give foodand beverages to people who are
thirsty and hungry?
And they all say no, I wouldn't.
That's crazy.
That's intrinsic versusextrinsic.
They have both very differentfeelings.
So if you go to your job andyou're getting paid you're not
going to do that for free youfeel like a sucker.
But if you go and you donateand give something to somebody
(17:39):
else, from your heart, from youknow, intrinsically, you feel
great about yourself.
So the next thing is that youneed to have a meaningful
connection self.
So the next thing is that youneed to have a meaningful
connection.
If I don't think very highly ofyou, I'm looking at you as
somebody who's just going togive me information.
This is what most people say.
They say go find a mentorthat's a nameless, faceless
(18:01):
individual.
That is not a meaningfulconnection.
If you're just looking to goget something from somebody, you
have to like the person.
You have to actually care aboutthem and not just the mentor
caring about the mentee goingforward, because mentors always
feel that.
But a mentee has to feel likethey are doing something with
(18:23):
their knowledge or informationthat the mentor wants them to do
.
They have to think of thatmentor and what the goal is for
that mentor and what they're arethey carrying that goal forward
?
Another thing is trust.
How many times do you not trustsomebody that is not a mentor?
Then how often do you not trusta mentee?
Are they going to steal youridea?
You know?
(18:43):
Are they going to?
You know, if you're in some kindof a tech industry, you have to
trust each other and this iswhy people think of hierarchical
mentoring as having problemswith it.
Because if you don't trustbeing able to say to your boss
or someone above you that youdon't know how to do something,
(19:03):
expressing a vulnerability, youthink they're going to say I'm
never going to promote them ifthey don't know how to do this,
that trust is a barrier tomentorship.
And in that case is where I saygo to lateral mentoring
somebody who's not your boss andget it that way.
And then, finally, there has tobe a goal.
If somebody is just shooting abreeze with somebody, that's not
(19:24):
mentoring.
There has to be a goal with itand that goal can change.
You can be mentored by somebodyfor decades, but and that goal
will change with time.
But that's what makes a goodmentor and a good mentee.
And I put them together the wayI did, because if you separate
it, people will say I'll do afew of these things and you
might not have a matchup withthe mentor and the mentee and
(19:46):
you could be the best mentor outthere, but if you have a crummy
mentee or a mentee who's notengaged, it's not going to work.
And the other thing that I liketo say about being a good
mentor or mentee is it's notalways going to work, just like
friends.
Have you ever gone and metsomebody and you're like not my
person.
They could be a fine person,they're just not somebody that
(20:07):
you.
You don't get their humor orthere's just something that they
that isn't interesting aboutthem.
That's the same thing thathappens with mentorship and we
put so much pressure on it andthink it's a failure if it
doesn't work out.
No, it's like meeting somebodyand you're like if I see him,
I'll say hi.
That's the same with mentorship.
You should not be puttingpressure on it and you shouldn't
be thinking you should not beputting pressure on it and you
(20:30):
shouldn't be thinking you shouldjust have one mentor.
You should have a millionmentors.
You should have as many as youcan have.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
So sorry that was a long answer for that question,
but very, very developed answerno, and I certainly agree with
with a lot of what you said.
Mentoring is a two way street.
I mean it's you have to be andI've told people this before in
order for me to mentor, you haveto be a good mentee, um, it's
not just a one-way street whereI'm just feeding you and you're
just taking it.
Um, it's really a conversation.
You do have to have apersonality match to some extent
(21:00):
.
Um.
Do you have any idea why itseems like most of the time,
family members um, are not goodmentors?
Like, why is it that a lot oftimes, if something comes out of
a family member's mouth andanother person that's outside of
the family says the same thing,it sounds better?
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Oh, please.
I mean, I'm a parent, you knowmy, that's how it is.
That's why I don't includeparents as mentors, because you
know you're expected to be doingthat with your kids.
You're really not expected.
That's an expectation, right.
But I do include grandparentsand aunts and uncles and those
sorts.
There has to be a degree ofseparation, because when you are
(21:41):
trying to get through thebasics of life, you know a child
or a parent that gets blurryand fuzzy what's mentorship and
what's parenting, and so thatcan be removed if you go one
degree away.
So I will never say, hey, canthere be mentorship within that
family?
You know immediate familyparents and siblings, yes, but
(22:02):
there's a whole lot of otherstuff going on, good and bad,
and families.
That makes it so thatmentorship is a little tricky
and diluted and muddy in thatrespect.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah, no doubt about that.
And in order for folks outthere to seek mentorship,
especially in their youngprofessional careers, what's the
best way to get them to eitherrealize the importance of it or
to simply come to the table toseek it?
Speaker 2 (22:35):
The first thing I suggest to people is go do
something outside of yourselffor somebody else, because then
you can understand the positionof the mentor.
So if you are donating yourtime to you know, volunteer at a
soup kitchen, midnight runmaybe, and do it regularly like
not once you're not going to getit from that, but go do
something for somebody else andand don't do it when anybody
(22:59):
knows you're doing it.
Just go do it and then you'regoing to understand why a mentor
wants to help you, because itfeels unbelievably good to help
somebody.
So if somebody's young, I tryto get them to see how important
and good it feels to go helpsomebody out in some way,
whatever that is, whatever thatcivic engagement is, to get
(23:20):
involved in that.
That's where I've seen thedisconnect happen.
You know is not being civicallyengaged, so people don't
understand why a mentor wouldever want to give their time.
So if you are young, firststart with your friends that you
already trust them and likethem and ask them.
You know how would you solvethis?
(23:41):
How do you do this?
Most of our most explosiveimpact that came from all of our
big tech.
You know explosive things thathave happened were two friends.
So I'm going to tell you anexample of Steve Jobs and Steve
Wozniak.
Neither of them did anythingalone.
They did it with each other andthey were friends.
(24:01):
They didn't seek originallyadvice from somebody above them.
They sought it laterally fromeach other and then they moved
up.
So if you're seeking a mentor,go to the person you feel most
comfortable with and that'slikely somebody who's lateral to
you and then you can use thoseideas to find the person above
you that you say.
That's somebody I'd like toreach out to, and it's easy
(24:23):
enough.
It doesn't have to be somebodyyou know.
People respond to emails.
They respond to social mediarequests.
They are people in your schools, they're people in the
workplace that aren't in yourdivision or your department.
They can be anybody anywhere.
The world is a nice small placein that way that you can reach
out to people.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Yeah, that's really, really, really great advice.
Um, and for folks out therethat are mentors and have a
tendency to get frustratedmainly because, uh, their advice
is not, I guess what it is is,I've tried to mentor folks
before and I'm trying to thinkabout how to phrase this
(25:07):
question, but I've tried tomentor folks before and have
become very frustrated, likeoverall, with trying to get this
person to consider doingsomething else.
And then instead they do.
They only take certain parts ofthe advice they don't.
They like to pick and choosewhat they like and what they
don't like.
And me as a mentor, like I'vebeen very frustrated before with
(25:30):
that, with that overall concept, trying to convince them and
then later down the road findingout that, yeah, I probably
should have done it that way.
Instead, what do you, what doyou suggest?
How do we cope with that, likeas mentors, to overcome that
frustration?
Speaker 2 (25:44):
You know that's a tricky one.
I think that there's a lot oflevels to that.
The first thing I would say isthat yes, there's a goal that
we're working on.
Was that goal established first?
Was there a goal or was it anopen ended thing?
I'm going to give you thisinformation and hope you do what
you need to do with it.
Like if I'm going to go asksomebody for help, I'm going to
(26:05):
say, hey, I'm looking to solvethis problem.
I may not know how to get there.
Do you know any route that Ican get there?
And then there's a goal that'sstated there.
That's one thing that may nothave been stated.
Maybe it was and somebody isonly taking a little bit.
Are they making progress?
Are they still moving in theright direction?
If they are, then you're doingyour job.
(26:29):
You know we don't have controlover how quickly people absorb
our information that we'regiving and utilize it.
We have to just make sureyou're still going in the right
direction.
Are we working towards thatgoal that we had?
Number two is it might be a badfit.
Maybe that person isn't ready.
Two is it might be a bad fit.
(26:52):
Maybe that person isn't ready.
Maybe you're the person that'sgoing to be good for them in six
months, a year or maybe never.
That's hard for mentors to seeSometimes.
That's why I tell mentors andmentees to have many mentors and
mentees, because it feels likeall your eggs are in one basket.
If you have only one and you, Ibet that everyone who's
(27:12):
listening and that you can thinkof a lot of different people
who've helped you along the way.
Imagine if you only had one.
Your eyes get open to so manythings when you have multiple
mentors and mentees so that ifone person has taken a little
bit longer, you can feel reallygood about, maybe somebody else
is moving in.
One person is taken a littlebit longer you can feel really
good about.
Maybe somebody else is movingin a little quicker, at a little
(27:33):
bit of a quicker pace withsomething it makes.
It takes that pressure off thatthere should never be when
you're mentoring.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah, that that totally makes sense.
I mean, getting differentperspectives from different
people can only amplify youroverall.
I guess mental lateral movementinto thinking bigger and
thinking outside the box To be agood mentor, in your opinion.
Do you think that you need tobe a little bit confrontational?
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Some people are confrontational and some people
are not.
I think it has to be yourpersonality style and that
should be matching up with yourmentee.
So in certain situations look,if you're in the military and
you're not confrontationalpeople have to all get to the
same place.
You know, at a certain timepoint you're going to need to be
that way and there are certainareas that really resonate with
(28:25):
that.
That could be sports, thatcould be all kinds of different
areas, but you have to knowwhat's going to work with you
and your mentee.
If you're confrontational witha friendship and a friend
doesn't like that, it's notgoing to be a really close
friendship.
You have to match it up, justlike you would with friendship.
Friendship and mentorship arenot the same thing, but I like
(28:47):
to talk about them similarlybecause everyone knows how to go
make a friend and what feelsgood in a friendship and what
doesn't, and when you feel thatfeeling, that's the same feeling
you get with a good mentorshiprelationship.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
No, that makes a lot of sense and I've actually
described people like thatbefore.
Well, I think that's a greatguy, I think that's a lot of
sense, and I've I've actuallydescribed people like that
before.
Well, I think that's a greatguy, I think that's a great gal,
but at the end of the day, like, they're just something, yeah,
that I don't personally reallylike all right and it's just.
It's not that they're bad, it'sjust something that that I
don't personally whatever, likemy own value system or my own
(29:27):
beliefs don't match up with that.
And overall, you talked aboutgood fit.
Maybe, if you're mentoring ormentee or whatever, whichever
side of the road you're on, howdo you know?
Like, how do you know if youare a good fit?
Is there like a test you couldtake or a questionnaire you
(29:47):
could take, or is it justsomething that you inherently
feel when you're conversatingwith somebody, sort of like you
know, you and I, or whenever I'mtalking to a guest?
I guess is that how it goes?
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Yeah, it's exactly like that.
You don't give your friend aquestionnaire and say, let's see
how good our fit is, and wedon't do that with mentorship.
A lot of places try to do that.
They try to quantify mentorship, and if somebody tried to
quantify my friendships it wouldbe a disaster.
You know, I like who I like,because there's some kind of
chemistry there.
(30:20):
And that's the same withmentorship.
So you could look at somethingand on paper, a relationship
would look great.
This is why, if you go througha dating app, do you look at the
dating app and the first personthat comes up you go oh, we
were matched, we're a fit, andif it doesn't work out, it's a
failure.
No, that's not how life works.
(30:41):
So there's no tests that youcan take, there's no
questionnaire, it fits.
It's like putting on a shoe.
If you wear a size eight andyou put on a size six, it's
going to feel uncomfortable.
If you put on a size 12, it'llfeel uncomfortable.
You really need the right fit.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Right, that totally makes sense.
I wish life came with aninstruction manual.
It'd be so much easier, rightfor everybody just to read and
follow the instructions.
But it doesn't quite work thatway.
And there's one more thing Iwanted to ask too, because I've
kind of talked about this beforewith other people, but for
folks out there who especiallylike parents and things like
(31:23):
that, if they haven't gone tocollege, do you think that there
are times where certain peopleneed to be very careful about
offering advice or mentoring tofolks, because they might be
giving the same blueprint to thenext generation and the
blueprint may not be a blueprintof higher achievement be a
(31:53):
blueprint of higher achievement.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
No, I, I, some of our mentors don't have college
degrees and they've done worldchanging things and so I don't
look.
This is me personally.
I do not look at a degree asmaking a person a higher
achieving person.
I couldn't have done what I dowithout you have to have a PhD
to do what I do.
I had to go that far, whether Iwanted to or not.
If I wanted to do this, I hadto do it.
But there's a million thingspeople do that don't require a
(32:18):
college degree and you can besuper successful and achieve
great things.
So I caution against that.
Everyone can be a mentor,no-transcript, and a degree may
(32:55):
not be the answer to it.
So am I saying don't go get adegree?
I'm saying get a goal.
That's what I'm saying Get agoal.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
You know, and I made that, I made that mistake.
You're talking to someone rightnow.
I have two graduate degrees andan undergraduate degree and I
don't use any of my degrees.
I mean I don't want to say Idon't use them.
I'm sure it's helped me alongthe way, but like a ship in the
night, I kind of got a.
I got a degree in MBA, inproject management, msa, in
(33:27):
organizational leadership, andthen my undergrad is in criminal
justice.
So it's one of those thingswhere I just thought that
getting degrees was like goingto make me successful.
And in reality I know a lot offolks out there that run
businesses that don't havedegrees, that didn't get higher
education.
You know, and that's and that's.
(33:50):
I'm glad that you mentioned that, because I tell folks that all
the time I'm like you're lookingat someone right now who
thought that that was themeasurement of success and in
reality it's not.
So I really try to impress uponpeople to do exactly what you
just said.
Don't look at that as something.
Look at a goal.
Where do you want to go?
What do you want to do someday?
Where do you want to be in life?
(34:11):
But, debra, I want to give youan opportunity to talk about the
mentorship edge, which is,which is your book, who, who is
it for and who?
Who should be the folks outthere that buying it and reading
it?
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Thank you.
You know the Mentorship Edgewas written.
It was something that I feltcompelled to write because I've
been seeing mentorship used inthe wrong ways.
People are trying to quantifyit or make a checkbox for it and
it's not working in a lot ofplaces.
So people are thinkingmentorship is something that you
can fail at or that it can onlybe done in certain situations.
(34:51):
So the mentorship edge is foranybody and everybody.
It really is showing how we'rebuilt to mentor and it's from a
mentor perspective.
In many ways, we are built towant to do this and I give
examples of people who havementored successfully and been
in mentoring situations.
(35:11):
I also show what it's not.
It's not coaching.
People who are coaches often saywell, I'm a mentor to, you're
paid, you're not sorry, that'show it is.
There are certain things thatit's not, but you can use
mentorship in conjunction withall of these different things.
So it's what it is, what itisn't.
It's a lot of stories from youknow people like who've had
(35:32):
their lives saved frommentorship.
And it talks about lateralmentoring, not just hierarchical
mentoring.
So if you want to have betterconnections with people in work
and in personal life, this isfor you.
If you want to mentor, this isfor you.
If you want to have a mentor,this is for you.
It comes from looking at thementor project and how things
(35:56):
worked.
We were told I was told in thevery beginning, when we only had
10 people who you know, a smallcore of us who just wanted to
give back locally to schoolsthat no one who's really
successful will ever have thetime or want to give back.
We went from 10 to 60 to 80 to100.
We have a waiting list now andthe top people in the world ask
(36:19):
to become mentors because theywant to give back.
And so we've been able tounderstand that people who are
really high level often feel thesame disconnect from others.
So an example is Bill Cheswick.
He was a guy who said I'mleaving Bell Labs, he's a famous
inventor and he was moving to afarm and retiring.
(36:42):
And he said I can't go to apark and say, hey, kid, do you
want to learn quantum mechanics?
You know he he didn't.
There was a disconnect.
So this book is here to showhow you can make the connections
in both directions.
How people doesn't matter howsuccessful you are.
You want to give back.
You're driven to.
So if you're feeling like I am,I'm not worthy of asking a
(37:04):
question.
This book shows why you are,because people want to feel
useful, they want to feelrelevant, they want to feel
productive, they want to feelhelpful.
Um, the same way we all feelwhen we give back.
So that's what the book is for.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Yeah, and you know, when I, when I read your, your
bio and your background andeverything, I thought, wow, this
is the perfect person for mypodcast, cause I really want to
focus on adapt, overcoming andseeing further than the end of
your, your own neighborhood, andI really feel like mentoring is
a lost art in today's societyand I really, if you'd asked me,
(37:41):
like you know, 20 years ago,where we would be as a society,
I thought by now we would havemastered this whole mentoring
thing and we would understandhow to better serve each other
by passing the torch onto thenext generation and helping them
make better decisions.
And here we are still trying tofigure it out.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
And with that I just wanted to ask you, in your
opinion, why do we stillstruggle business-wise and even
military-wise with before theyexit?
Because in any transition thatwe make, if you get married you
know there's the whole.
It can be anything you wantmarried, but that you know
there's this whole transitionthat happens, that makes it
(38:47):
stressful, that makes it feellike there's some stress
involved.
Retirement is like that too,and when you're transitioning
from the military to anycivilian role, I really, truly
believe that all of theopportunities that are available
that somebody may not know theymay not even know that the
questions to ask or what isavailable, that should be made
(39:11):
available to them.
They should have as manymentors as possible, not just
one, but people who are gonnaopen their eyes to every single
possibility that's out there andhow they can get to the goal
that they may not even know thatthey have set for themselves
yet.
So that's really what I thinkis so important for the military
, and it can be done.
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Yeah, and I think sometimes people tend to be a
little hardheaded about thatstuff.
I know, when I transitioned outof the military, I kind of
palmed a lot of resources in theface and I was like I got this
get out of my way.
Like I, I know how to do aresume, I know, like I, I know
how to do a resume, I know howto interview, I know how to do
all these things and really Ididn't know any.
(39:54):
I didn't know Jack, I knewnothing.
So looking back at myself backthen, uh, I could have utilized
those extra resources and thoseextra voices and those extra
conversations.
Um so, this is fantastic.
I have so many more questionsfor you, but I understand that I
shouldn't extend podcasts verylong, but I'd love to have you
(40:15):
back on the show again to talkmore about mentoring and to dig
deeper into this.
But before I finish off today'sshow, is there anything that
you wanted to mention oranything that I might have
missed during our conversationtoday?
Speaker 2 (40:30):
No, the only thing I want to tell everybody is to
look to your left and look toyour right.
You're likely looking at amentor or a mentee, and you
don't have to only be looking toget help for yourself.
If you see somebody that youhave an expertise that they may
benefit from, you become theirmentor.
Your life will be much betterif you have a really strong
(40:51):
network around you.
As you lift up others, you'relifting yourself up too.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Yeah, if you have those good intentions to help
out the pave the path for thenext generation or for folks
that you truly care about, oreven just a group of folks,
whether it's military folks,service members, military
spouses I definitely highlywould recommend to get in touch
and contact Dr Deborah Heiserand check out the Mentorship
(41:21):
Edge, which is her book.
I know is it available onAmazon.
Everywhere you want to buy abook, and in libraries
Everything's available on Amazonnow so want to buy a book, and
in libraries, everything'savailable on Amazon now.
So, yeah, I'll definitely makesure that I put the link down in
the show notes for folks toclick on if they want to order
your book, and then also to anyof your social media
(41:41):
availabilities out there.
So I really appreciate you forgiving me the opportunity to
pick your brain today.
I know you have a huge, huge,vast background.
I really appreciate you forgiving me the opportunity to
pick your brain today.
I know you have a huge, huge,vast background and I was
extremely impressed and I'mhonored to have talked to you
and have this conversation.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
I'm honored to be on this show, and, boy, I learned a
lot from you today, and it's aprivilege being here, thank you.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
And folks, that's it for today.
I hope I can have Debra back onthe show at some point in time.
It's been a very insightfulconversation, as always.
Folks, I want you to stay tuned, stay focused and stay
motivated.
Warriors fall out.
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