#69 - Our World Needs More Mentors

Welcome to the Communication Mentor Podcast.

This is your host, Chris Miller.

A few weeks ago, I did a poll on Instagram.

I asked a question, do you have a mentor who is active in your life?

The three answers were, yes, I do have a mentor, no, but I wish I had one, and no, and I don't need one.

Looking at the results, I was quite surprised.

We're going to quickly go through what makes a good mentor, how to find a good mentor, and lastly, end with a good mentorship story.

A moment in my life that could have gone much differently had I not had a mentor.

What makes a good mentor?

First off, I didn't realize this, but there are three A's to a good mentor.

The first A is that you want a mentor who is an active listener.

We often talk on this podcast about the importance of talking to people, but rarely have we discussed the importance of active listening.

Truthfully, if you go through every single podcast title on each episode I've ever published, I don't think I've put listening in a single title.

Listening is powerful.

Communication is limited by the communication feedback model, which is where you send a message, you receive the message, you encode when you send the message, you decode when you receive the message.

Then you respond to the person, which requires you to encode a message in that person to decode that message.

And collectively, it creates a feedback loop.

This feedback loop symbolizes conversational turn-taking, something that we do all the time and we don't think about.

But inherent to this model, and 50% of it, and you have to have this for it to succeed, is the decoding, it's the listening.

We have to listen to what the other people are saying so that we know what to say next, so that we understand the conversation that's actually happening.

I'm currently reading Charles Duhigg's Super Communicator, and his main premise is that we all are having three conversations.

These three conversations, whenever we're talking to anybody, that's a substantial interaction, any interaction is gonna fall into one of these three buckets.

The first bucket is, is this a conversation about what we're doing, about a task, about events that need to take place?

Is this a conversation about who we are?

It's the second, it's identity conversation, or is it a conversation about how we feel, an emotional conversation?

More often than not, whenever you have miscommunication, it's someone not being on the same track or being in the same lane as the other person talking.

It's the stereotypical person coming home and saying, oh my gosh, you would never believe what happened to me at work.

The coworker did this, and then the person did that.

And then the person who's listening offers an action, offers a solution.

And the person who initially brought everything up says, I didn't come here for solutions.

I came here just for you to listen.

This is an example of someone who is having the how we feel conversation, but the other person on the other end is thinking the what are we doing conversation.

And it makes the what are we doing person seem like a bad listener, seem like they're actually not sincere.

But really they're trying their best.

They just weren't able to diagnose the conversation being had.

Listening is incredibly important.

We could go miles and miles deep into listening.

I have a professor at Wake Forest who taught a 16 week class on listening.

It'd be cool to be able to talk to her a little bit more.

Maybe I should get her on the podcast, just a virtual one, so that we can learn more about listening.

But you want to have a mentor who is an active listener.

The second thing is you want to have a mentor who's analytical, someone who's able to understand what you're going through, what you're experiencing, and then give you some advice or feedback.

Our lives seem incredibly complicated and overwhelming, especially in moments of stress.

But whenever you have someone who's an active listener and they're analytical, they're able to separate the wheat from the chaff, to separate the trees from the forest, and give us advice that we wouldn't be able to have.

The third A that I found, and I think this is one of the most important qualities of a mentor that goes overlooked, is that you need to have a mentor who has availability.

I can't stress this enough.

There's no point in having the coolest hot shot, top of their career person be your mentor if they aren't accessible, if you're not able to actually talk to them.

Whenever we think of the optimal mentor, I'm sure a lot of us think about Tim Cook, Casey Neistat, Steph Curry, LeBron James, people who are at the top of their field.

But unfortunately, these people have no time.

They are dedicated to what they do.

I listened to a conversation earlier today about someone who idolized Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, the founder of, Jack Dorsey founded a payment app, oh, Square, he founded Square, and he idolized Jack Dorsey.

He got to have a, it was on Colin and Samir, it was the Bucket List family, but he got to sit down with Jack Dorsey in a box for a baseball game.

He was so excited to be able to meet his idol, the person he's had as his virtual mentor for a really long time, and he wanted to ask him, what's your family like?

What are your kids like?

What's your favorite thing to do?

But all Jack could talk about was business.

And we know Jack's done incredible things.

He built these tech institutions that are well over billions of dollars now, but he was obsessed with business, and that's how he got himself there.

So, truthfully, he wouldn't be a good mentor.

It's okay finding someone who may not be at the top, may be the middle of their career.

They may not be dedicating their life to business.

And it's kind of hard to pass the people who dedicate their lives to business in the business world.

Look for the people who are actually assessable, the people who actually have the time to meet with you, the people who are investing time in other areas of their life in their career.

This really stuck out to me.

It resounded with me today.

As I was thinking.

And I think we can give ourselves a lot more grace on who we pursue as mentors.

It's okay to not have a CEO be your mentor, to have a director or a manager, maybe even someone who's on a line level.

It's okay to not have the entrepreneur, right?

To not have the senior pastor.

There are still so many incredible people out there who are wanting to mentor you and who actually have the time to do it.

The other thing about a great mentor is the four Cs.

You want to view a mentor who can be a coach, a confidant, someone who can counsel you, and someone who's a conduit.

They can bring you to opportunity or to development, thought patterns, revelations that you wouldn't have had without them.

The last thing is that you can have choice.

I'd recommend you have many mentors.

You can have a mentor for business, a mentor for family, a mentor for faith, a mentor for health, a mentor for exercise.

It's the jackpot when you can find one person to do all these things.

But I think many of us prevent ourselves from getting into pursuing wisdom from others because they're not checking all the boxes that we'd like to check one day.

That's not fair.

No one's wired exactly like you.

We are all wired in unique ways, and due to that, we can learn unique things from each person.

So finding that specific niche, that specific one thing you can learn could be really helpful to you.

I want to talk quickly about what it takes to find a mentor, and how do you find a mentor.

And I'll start at the beginning by confessing I'm not the best at this.

Many people say I know a lot of people or I'm incredibly sociable, which I am certainly socially wired.

I am extroverted.

I'm naturally curious about the people around me.

But one of the dirts in my life has been mentors.

And I think a little bit of that is on me.

I think I could be much more open and much more intentional about seeking out mentors, about borrowing wisdom from others.

I think we live in a very distracted world.

This past 10 days or so, I haven't been on social media.

I deleted it from my phone.

I deleted any swipeable video app.

So TikTok, I took it off my phone.

I've tried my best to be intentional.

I've been very intentional on only having one screen active at a time.

So if I'm watching basketball, I'm just watching basketball.

If I'm playing a game, I'm just playing the game.

Because I've noticed that very, very distracted boy.

I can be distracted so easily.

And I want to turn that off a little bit because it hurts my ability to connect with those around me.

My priority is to be able to become an incredible communicator so that I can help unlock things in the people around me.

And we can't do that in a distracted world.

It will lower the tide.

All boats, all ships will lower our ability to connect with those around us because we're all distracted.

We're not giving the people around us our time.

And I feel like I've been pretty distracted and I haven't really sought out mentors.

And I feel like also the people who could mentor are distracted as well.

So I think people on both ends need to step up and we need to step into this.

But what would it take to find a good mentor?

The first thing is we have to show up to where people are.

I think that virtual and digital mentors are great.

You can find the YouTuber who you really like.

You can find the podcasts that you really adore.

And it matters what content you consume.

It matters what you watch.

It matters what you listen to.

But there's something special about having the person who's proximal to you, the person who can sit across the table from you.

Maybe they buy your coffee or your meal, or they shake your hand or they give you a hug.

You are engaging more senses.

We as human beings have five senses for a reason.

And the more we engage in those, the more we're able to recollect and experience the moment.

So being in person, it's my opinion that you are going to have more impact that way.

I think sitting across the table from someone or being around from some shadowing someone, you can learn a lot more.

So you need to show up to places where people are.

The issue is our social infrastructure currently, it's eroding.

A lot of the biggest places where we would typically meet others, maybe the skeleton, there's a facsimile of what it used to look like, but churches, gratefully, I get to be a part of an active church, but there are less churches and not as many people are showing up historically.

So we need to get more people to show up to these places.

It's really not our fault.

A lot of cities aren't as walkable.

A lot of places closed down, be it COVID or be it rising costs of supplies and just constricted supply chain.

And many places that people used to go to, like parks, aren't as active because people are choosing to be inside with screens because the digital immersion is a bit more stimulating and satiating regarding our neuro-wiring, right?

So, all that being said, we still need to show up to where people are.

That way we can meet people.

The second thing is that we need to be intentional about asking questions, about seeking out advice or seeking wisdom.

The only way to get to know people is to peel back layers.

And sometimes people volunteer information, but a well-timed question can be a great way to get to know people.

I just did the podcast about 20 questions that could make any conversation better two episodes ago.

So, if you're interested in the questions, you can go back to that.

The third thing is volunteering information about yourself, being open, vulnerable, being aware of what you want to accomplish.

So, not only volunteering information, but being self-aware about your goals.

People love to see other people win.

Most of us are wired to help people reach their goals.

There's a really small amount of people who desire, like malice, what do they call it?

Schadenfreude, they take pleasure in others' misery.

But the majority of people want you to reach your goals, and they want to help you win.

You just gotta know what a win looks like.

You gotta know where you're going, what that success, visualize the success.

What is it?

Knowing that and speaking about it with the people around you, having an ear open, hearing how people think, hearing how they talk about certain things, seeing how they interact with those around them.

Fruit doesn't lie.

You see the tree.

The tree could be, there could be a sign on it that says potato tree.

And then you walk up to it and you see apples.

It's apple tree.

We know from the fruit of the tree, we all bear fruit.

And as we're looking for mentors, we can find the fruit of that tree.

And you're making it to the deep end here, as Colin and Samir say on their podcast.

And that is when we wrap up.

But I promised that I would share a story.

Whenever I was an undergrad, I had a mentor of mine who was really helpful for me.

And there's one moment that sticks out to me where I was leading a meeting, and I was beating around the bush like crazy.

I was supposed to be a leader of a group for a big university event, and people were dropping the ball.

And I would say things like, oh, well, you probably tried, and hey, no worries, and da, da, da.

Even though there were deliverables that need to be met, this was gonna go for the Children's Miracle Network.

Like, there were gonna be families who benefited from this event if it went well.

And I remember after this meeting, I felt so bad, because I just did not feel like an effective leader at all.

And she said, hey, would you mind popping into my office?

That way we could debrief.

I said, sure.

And she looked at me and she said, Chris, being direct is being kind.

You need to be willing to share what's really going on, and to help others understand the consequences of not meeting what they said they'd meet.

You don't want to let people off without knowing what's happening because it's actually going to hurt their future.

They're a sophomore in college now, and when they show up to their first job and they keep doing that, they may live a life that isn't as good, right?

Because they're not able to meet.

And for me as well, I need to be direct.

Being direct is being kind.

We will think that if we say things a certain way, the meaning changes, but we're still able to say what we wanted to say, and it's not true.

Sometimes we need to be direct and actually say what we need to say.

We can think about the packaging a bit later, but content matters.

So that mentor helped me a ton in that one moment.

I think back too often, and I'd like to share the message with you as a potential virtual mentor, and that is being direct is being kind.

If this added you any value, I'd love for you to go find a mentor.

I'd love for you to mentor someone.

I think we live in a growingly disconnected world that we need to intervene.

The systems aren't helping us.

The infrastructure isn't going to change immediately, but as individuals, we can make something happen.

So go find a mentor and go mentor someone else.

Without further ado, we'll see you next time, folks.