Good mentors will be ready for whatever their mentees bring their way. Great mentors will keep their proteges ready for the unforeseen.
2020 was... well... 2020. Oof. But now 2021 is here and as I was reminded today, we have 365 pages on which to write a new book called "2021" - we just have to determine the subtitle, the chapters, and the storyline.
Many of us weren't quite ready for last year. I mean, how could you be? There hasn't been a pandemic like COVID-19 since the Spanish Flu a century prior. Additionally, who could've predicted that we'd have a social justice crisis on our hands as well, which also garnered a global response? To top it all off, economic woes turned ankle biters into shark attacks, wreaking havoc across wide swaths of folks. EVERYONE was affected, even if they weren't infected or unfortunately invested.
However, maybe we should lean further into the discomfort for a second and ask "why weren't we ready?" There have been numerous opinions (like here, here, or here) that answer the question about our inadequate readiness regarding the pandemic. 2020's social justice movements built upon and were different than previous protests, even to the point of changing the way people were charitable. But the fact remained that we haven't done enough and didn't change enough to ebb the recurring tide of social injustice. Also, we have been through more than a few economic crises in the last two decades, but seemed to either sleepwalk right into or get sucker punched by yet another one. In all cases, we had the knowledge of past outbreaks and past circumstances, but we failed to connect the dots, acquire, review, update, and adhere to lessons learned, and avoid complacency. It is a hard pill to swallow, but a bit of this was our own doing, and most of it is because these are leadership issues.
Society is based upon building the collective good, requiring social contracts agreed upon by the citizenry that are ultimately entrusted to public leaders. Leadership, therefore, is not a private matter... it is, and will always be, public business. If leadership is based in one's character, as recently discussed by Dr. Mike Matthews and retired Lieutenant General Robert Caslen in their one of a kind book "The Character Edge: Leading and Winning With Integrity", it should be noted that there are aspects of both moral character and performance character - one's core being and one's outward action(s) (see multiple works by Lickona and Davidson). Leaders will seek to remain ready for the inevitable character tests that come with the autonomy and responsibility of leadership, as retired General Martin Dempsey so eloquently describes in his book "No Time For Spectators".
We need to be ready. The only way you can be prepared for tomorrow is if we were ready yesterday. Growing up I first came across this idea in the Scouts, as the motto of the Boy Scouts of America is "Be Prepared." It was codified as the Great War (which became WWI) loomed just over the horizon by an English soldier Robert Baden-Powell, who wrote that to Be Prepared meant that “you are always in a state of readiness in mind and body to do your duty.” He would go on to be a Lieutenant General and his sister Agnes would also establish the Girl Scouts. In more recent times there has been a quote that's been highly popularized through memes, songs, and social media, seemingly shared a million times over, which says "if you stay ready you ain't gotta get ready." Whereas this may seem overly pop culture-esque or simply a term du jour, there is some simple logic therein that is undeniable. As such, when you take a look back toward our military, many folks know the Marine motto of Semper Fidelis or Semper Fi for short, meaning "Always Faithful", but how many of us know the U.S. Coast Guard's Latin motto, Semper Paratus, or "always ready" (see this video where then Vice President Joe Biden discusses the motto at a U.S. Coast Guard Academy graduation)? There's something powerful in the sentiment regarding a focused adherence toward readiness in the military tradition, and since everything rises and falls on leadership (as noted by John Maxwell in "The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader") it is incumbent upon leaders to be ready. Ultimately, as stated by Samuel Huntington in his famed work "The Soldier and the State", the expertise of the military professional is the management of violence. Furthermore, a famed quote attributable to everyone from the Spartans to Winston Churchill to Norman Schwarzkopf to even Jocko Willink puts this need for readiness in the starkest of senses by flatly stating “the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.”
Mentors need to be ready. Good mentors will be ready for whatever their mentees bring their way. Great mentors will keep their proteges ready for the unforeseen. Everything written above still applies to mentoring. What did you do in 2020 to get ready for 2021? What professional development did you do last year to help a mentee this year? What personal development did you do yesterday that will secure your tomorrow, or the tomorrow of someone you are helping to develop? James Clear, in his book "Atomic Habits", states that if you genuinely care about a goal, you'll focus on the system. What methods, approaches, and systems for mentoring will you put in place in 2021 to help you get to your goals, help your mentees get to their goals, and you both to get to where you collectively want to be this year? There are a number of lessons learned regarding mentorship and systematically building mentoring relationships that can help us all be better mentors and leaders going forward, such as Lisa Fain and Lois Zachary's "Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring", Wendy Axelrod's "10 Steps to Successful Mentoring", Brad Johnson and David Smith's "Athena Rising" and "Good Guys", Tammy Allen and Lilian Eby's "The Blackwell Handbook of Mentoring", or Kathy Kram's seminal "Mentoring at Work". Don't be blindsided tomorrow because you weren't ready yesterday... be a good leader and mentor in 2021.
Happy New Year!
Chaveso "Chevy" Cook, Executive Director
Start a conversation. Spark a transformation.