I once watched a flower bud blossomed into bloom in mere minutes.
This flower, Wijaya Kusuma, is a rare plant that blossoms into bloom only in the midnight hours, starting around 11 pm, and by 2 am it would be wilted already.
The experience of watching the process of blossoming was awe-inspiring, humbling, and nothing short of magical, like watching greatness unfolding before your very eyes.
And for me, this is a similar experience to watching a protege blossom and grow into a more confident and accomplished person.
It is very rewarding…
I never had a Toastmasters mentor.
So rather than speaking about my experience being a protege, today I will share with you about Mentor-the-Mentor training, a training I authored based on the Pathways Mentor Program.
For those of you who started with the Legacy Program, you would be familiar with project 6 on Mentoring in the Competent Leader manual, right?
Do you remember how many pages the explanation was?
Yes, 3 pages of explanation.
I was never mentored, but I became a mentor out of necessity very quickly and soon in my Toastmasters journey.
And that was my only guidance on mentoring.
Now in the Pathways program, there are 4 manuals for the whole mentoring program, each with about 24 pages, that’s a total of about 100 pages.
I can never forget the very first time I read the 2nd manual:
Prepare to Mentor.
Do you mean one has to prepare to be a mentor?
It was a foreign concept for me.
What I knew was as long as there’s something you can help your mentee to become a better speaker, you are good to go as a mentor.
The one thing that struck me like a lightning was to not take credit for your mentee’s success, in other words, you need to let them shine.
Honestly, I was embarrassed when I read that because up to that point, I was not too inclined to share the limelight if my mentee achieved something noteworthy, I wanted the whole world to know my contribution to their success.
I wanted the credit for their achievement.
And now I had to allow them to shine without me being recognized?
Ugh, I cringe when I think about how I was as a mentor.
It was truly mind and heart-opening, and humbling.
Upon reflection, I realized that what’s written about a successful mentor were all the things I myself would have wanted in a mentor.
I would have wanted my mentor to want me to shine the brightest.
This prompted me to want to learn and understand more about mentoring and help others become mentors in this way because deep down we all want to shine, we all want to know that we matter.
So I completed the program to have the full experience. I loved it!!!
I fell in love with Toastmasters all over again
because of the Pathways Mentor Program.
At the bottom of it, is all about letting the mentees know that they matter, by supporting and guiding them to achieve the goals they set for themselves.
When people know they matter, they will naturally gain the confidence to do bigger and better things in life.
But there weren’t many mentors who knew or were trained to help and support their proteges in this way.
Now, how can we get up to speed with producing mentors?
The answer was:
Pathways Mentor group training.
I devised a group training for the clubs in Bali and later, at the division level, with a slight twist.
Ladies and gentlemen, In Toastmasters we learned best by doing.
We learn so much faster when we have the experience of what we’re teaching.
And for the mentor group training, that twist is buddy pairing, where each person becomes a mentor as well as a protege to their partner.
The program ran for four weeks where everyone studied the manual and practice being a mentor and a protege, and share their experience during the weekly meeting before going to the next manual.
The result was explosive…
The participants had such positive and beneficial results from doing the program.
Emboldened by the responses and the results, I decided to take the mentor training program to the district level.
The second mentor-the-mentor district training ended just last month.
Distinguished Desmond Chien, a past division S director said:
“This program changed my life; changed how I looked at mentoring and changed the way perceive myself as a person who mentors”.
Another participant said: “This program is magical.”
Powerful statements, aren’t they?
In summary, if you would like to have the right mindset, skills, and attributes to support and guide your mentees to the brightest as well as experience shining yourself, join the next district mentor-the-mentor training.
But even if you couldn’t start the mentoring program yet, just keep one thing in mind, let your mentee shine, and you’ll already shine as a mentor.
”Let them Shine”