Hi, Today I am gonna be writing about mentorship this is a topic we want to talk about actually did a brief interview with my senior pastor talked about mentorship he's got a life coach so obviously there's some real value in it I'm kind of amazed that so many people don't understand it but I posed the question on one of the Facebook groups I'm in on how important mentorship is and was interesting because a couple people said in essence well I've done pretty well so far so I haven't really seen a need for him
I just thought well okay I didn't quantify that I don't know where you're at financially how your business is done and all that but to me that seems like you're leaving a lot on the table you've figured it all out on your own and you've done good I guess we could get through life without a mentor but we're going to talk about that it's always humorous example but you know if you're gonna go through a minefield it's probably best to follow somebody who's been through there successfully okay and that's kind of what we're talking about mentorship as avoiding the mines we're gonna get into this a little bit now I want it to start with history on mentorship and I think at least one of the more well-known books by Napoleon Hill talks about this
I have not read this book for a while but mastermind Alliance you know the mastermind principle consists of basically two or more people working in perfect harmony for the units, Napoleon Hill wrote a whole chapter in his book Think and Grow Rich about it so the mastermind though you know two heads are better than one right yes and you can magnify that excuse me one of the things that we've been talking about lately is this idea of collective intelligence and what happens when you get a group of people together that are assembled around a mission and the power that is being created when there's alignment
I'll tell you that I am probably the most stubborn independent a rock headed person on the planet my wife would happily attest to that as well as just about everybody that's ever known me it is a like it's a well-known personality defect of mind all right admission right there's a time when I started hearing about all of these things and my response was this not just like what it's all warm fuzzy kind of kumbaya kind of stuff but I was so curious because the people that were sharing this information with me at the time now I went to so much college until I was thirty years old never had a class in mentoring there was some thing like you need a master's degree mentor or something that kind of thing but there was never any class on how to use mentoring to achieve your success and I built businesses I was on management teams of global companies, not bragging just explaining right I never heard any of this stuff and I was happily frustrated I was dissatisfied with what I was seeing in the corporate environment the kind of cultures that I saw there the family structures that were created from there and what I did was I was fortunate I had somebody reach out to me talked about mastermind and all that and I was like what on earth is that I had never heard about I went to college and got a degree Business Administration never heard anything about mentoring and if somebody approached me and was just sharing some ideas and some thoughts and and he said something to me he said talking about all these people that have made a lot of money had tremendous success and remember where my background was corporate sat sitting on boards of directors and I just said him I said can you introduce me to those people and he said sure that was the start and they basically talked differently they had different kinds of family relationships than in the corporate world I mean everything about these people was different they were positive they were excited and that was the first time that I started hearing about the concept of positive mental attitude and success principles and they started talking about mentoring.
I don't want to dominate this totally but I got a couple of things that I want to share that I think are the things that really hit me right between the eyes That is the one of the thoughts is that the reason why there is not more mentoring being practiced apart from the fact that it's not taught is the fact that the secret of mentoring is submission and in our society you just even mention the word submission and everybody throws up on their shoes and gets mad grabs their knives in their talk their battle axes and they're ready to go to war well and you think about it you know that goes against our grain it's our egos we always got to be our egos especially the male you go I think especially in the corporate world there's this idea of kind of dog-eat-dog you got to get on top and to submit to somebody a sign of weakness and unfortunately that's not when we could get take a rabbit trail and servant leadership but servant leadership is not weakness it is serving people but you have to be submissive to do that and that's not a popular term at least in the business world but probably in our culture as a whole I was in an auditorium full of people one time
I listened to a gentleman that came into tapped from the East Coast talk about this and completely opened my eyes about this he said you think power is in domination he said no power is in submission he said look at it this way during the Vietnam War they had prisoners of war that were tortured for years and would not give up information do you think you can force people to do anything? no you can't people there are a certain number field that will die before they will be forced to do something so the power then becomes in their willingness to say please teach me and to be under the mission and I thought I never heard that kind of an explanation before that the power is having a group of people under a mission and this is part of what we are talking about leadership this idea that somebody brings a message somebody brings an idea and shares it with people in a way that opens their mind and now those people come to you know by their own choice come under the mission and choose to come together as a group to accomplish something that they probably couldn't do individually or they definitely couldn't do easily in that process people then seek out a mentor somebody through whose experience they can benefit so they don't have to experience their own learning curve.
Lets go ahead share some one-liner I've got probably three or four questions, I'm in a state and I'm going to read a little bit about it which is a great article on ten reasons why mentor is a must it was from ink magazine but I think they're talking points, value and kind of interjection with outs humorously what i just said I was thinking that a man convinced against his will is of those things they maybe instill or you're the kid and your mom tells you go the room or whatever sit down you're sitting down but you're standing up mentally.
again real true leadership is not about power it's not about dominance it's not about being authoritarian we have this whole mindset in and I would call it corporate america in amerika with a k' I hate to say it but there's this dominance and that's totally counterproductive anyway quite number it's two question says mentors can see where we need to improve where we often cannot fix and movie maker George Lucas kind of noted that he said mentors have a way of seeing more of our faults that we would.
it's the only way we can grow and they will always be brutally honest with you and tell you exactly how it is rather than downplay the weaknesses…….. to be continued
I think this is enough for this post, Thanks for reading, let me know your ideas in comment section,
vscampbell.com
