I’ve added a new tab called ‘Interviews with Rick’. Dan Fewchuk has conducted and filmed these interviews, combining his skills as a videographer with his talent for asking great questions. I’m very grateful to Dan for making this project possible and delighted to make them available here for free.
Sometimes it is hard to find an experienced, competent mentor, or there are simply not enough to go around. If you’re in that situation then a group-mentoring model involving a modest number of peers may be attractive. Compared with a one-to-one approach, groups for mentoring among peers have both advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
Peer mentoring groups require strong values in order to remain healthy: honesty, suspension of judgement, activation of discernment, confidentiality and intentionality. You may wish to consider other values that you would find essential, and whether or not a group would need a facilitator in order to stay true to these values and to stay on track in terms of focus and time. These groups may adopt one or more of several approaches, sticking with one that works best for them, or mixing things up over time:
Mallison outlines several different applications for mentoring in the life of a church. For one of these he draws on the example of Rod Denton[2] whose practice, as a pastoral team leader, involved mentoring members of his staff as a group. Compare this with the observations I make in chapters 5 and 7 of my book Mentoring Matters[3] about the operation of power within mentoring relationships.
[1] Reese, Randy and Loane, Robert. Deep Mentoring: Guiding Others on Their Leadership Journey. Downers Grove, IVP, 2012, p. 170-171
[2] Mallison, John. Mentoring: To Develop Disciples and Leaders. Adelaide: Openbook/Lidcombe: Scripture Union, 1998, p. 156f
[3] Lewis, Rick. Mentoring Matters: Building Strong Leaders, Avoiding Burnout, Reaching the Finishing Line. Oxford, Monarch, 2009, p. 129-132 and 178-180.
What is your mind’s favourite time zone? When your brain switches off, do you tend to drift back to past days, remembering the good times – or maybe dwelling on past regrets? Is your typical mental state one of living ‘in the moment’, rooted in the things happening right now? Or do your thoughts float toward the future, considering exciting prospects or worrying possibilities? There are advantages and disadvantages in each time zone.
I would argue that Christians are, essentially, future-oriented people. Not to the exclusion of the past and the present, but it’s our vision of the future that shapes us. We have grasped hold of the good news of the kingdom of God – that God has a big project going on to restore the whole of creation under his rule. The completion of this fully-funded, 100% guaranteed project comprehensively dominates the future. This is our hope, our inspiration.
Biblical Encouragements and Warnings
Jesus gives us great encouragement to consider the future, for example in Lk 14 with his parables about setting goals for construction and combat. If you’re a leader in Jesus’ mission it’s critical that you pay sufficient attention to future consequences. Jesus himself was a future-oriented person who, because he could see joy in the future, endured the cross for the sake of that future (Heb 12:2).
Jesus also gives us a warning about future thinking in Mt 6:34. When we consider the future we should avoid doing so with a mindset of worry. Rather we should have a mindset of seeking God’s rule. Further, James warns us in Jas 4:13-17 not to think about the future with naivety or with the kind of presumption that becomes arrogance. Rather, consideration of the future should stimulate our desire to seek God’s will.
Future Discernment and Future Creation
None of us has a crystal ball but we do live in a world where the laws of cause and effect allow for a measure of predictability, provided we think about it. With serious consideration of current realities outside our control, we can discern how things are likely to unfold and take wise action in preparation. In addition, we can consider the likely impact of actions we take today. Careful choices will help to create the kind of future we would prefer.
A future time perspective is essential for ethical behaviour, because it’s is crucial to consider the likely outcomes of our actions. Failure to think about the future leads to the all-too-common question, “What were they thinking!?” If we are to avoid the trap of unintended consequences we must get better at developing our future perspective.
Drawing our attention towards the future moves us from a problem-focus to a solution-focus. There is proven strategic value in clearly identifying a preferred future then moving to prioritisation and goal-setting. But there’s more to it than strategy and performance. Future time perspective produces positive personal formation, helping with motivation, perseverance, delayed gratification, self-restraint, and the capacity to wait and be patient. It strengthens the joy of anticipation, the faith involved in expectation, and the peace that comes through accepting that painful and puzzling matters will one day be resolved.
Questions for Discerning a Likely Future
Questions for Creating a Preferred Future
It’s fashionable these days to be cynical about New Year resolutions, dismissing them as laughable, empty wishes to lose weight or finally get organised. But the beginning of a year is a great time to be hopeful and plan for personal growth! Mentoring sessions at the beginning of a calendar year usually have a ‘fresh start’ feel to them. It’s like we finish one chapter, start a new one and have a renewed sense of possibility and expectation.
Mentors have a part to play in helping mentorees effectively engage in this process of looking forward with positive intent. If that’s your role and you have a mentoring session coming up this month, what can you bring to the table? I’m going to assume that you have already listened very carefully to ensure you’ve understood the resolutions your mentoree wants to pursue, and that you’re not making assumptions or injecting your own ideas about what you think they ‘ought’ to be going after. Here are five areas for exploration around proposed resolutions.
As a Christian mentor, I’m going to approach each of these areas of exploration with God at the centre. I’m going to encourage this process to be prayerful, sensitive to the whispers of the Holy Spirit. I’m going to ask questions that refer back to my mentoree’s sense of their calling as a disciple of Jesus. I’m going to probe for how any proposed resolution might open a pathway for the kingdom of God to be more fully expressed in my mentoree’s life. I’m going to stir up faith and hope in the One who holds our future in His hands.
We can all use a little encouragement from time to time. But why is it that some attempts at encouragement fall flat while others really hit the spot? Think about the times when you’ve needed a lift and someone has said or done something that has been particularly effective. What is it about those sorts of interactions that set them apart?
I’ve been reflecting on this recently because I’d like to be more effective at encouraging others. I reckon that if I can figure what works for me, I’ve got a head start into understanding how I might become a better encourager. I’ve come up with a couple of lists which I’ll share here as a discussion starter.
My first list is of the elements that I think are crucial, almost essential to any example of effective encouragement. My second list is of things that might not be essential but I observe are very commonly present in occasions when I’ve felt especially encouraged.
Crucial Elements
Strengthening Elements
In my musing about how encouragement works I re-read an old book by Larry Crabb and Dan Allender called Encouragement: The Unexpected Power of Building Others Up. One particularly valuable insight I gained there was about how to target encouragement accurately. They point out that encouragement is needed at a point of discouragement, and discouragement occurs because courage is undermined by some sort of fear. If you can identify the fear that is unsettling a person, you can better direct your encouragement. I’ve found that helpful, when I notice that someone is feeling down, to think more carefully about what is giving rise to those feelings and direct my encouragement to the cause.
What do you think? Are the elements you would add to either of the lists above, or do you have further insights as to how effective encouragement works?
In the UK, no other Christian training institute takes mentor training more seriously than Cliff College, located in the beautiful Peak District National Park in Derbyshire. I have the great privilege of facilitating their week-long mentor training intensive 9-13 May 2022. Could you join us for this residential course? You can find out more here.
Participants gain a Cliff College Certificate by completing the required assessment work following the teaching week. Successful students will be invited to the Cliff College graduation ceremony. Students can choose not to do the assessment work by auditing the short course. This short course also serves as an entry qualification to the Postgraduate Certificate in Mission (Christian Mentoring) at Cliff College.
Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) is known as the father of social psychology. His thinking gave rise to so many processes we take for granted today such as action research, change process theory and sensitivity training. He coined the term ‘group dynamics’, did ground-breaking work in analysing organizational culture and gave us the psychological equation B = ƒ(P, E), meaning that human behaviour is a function of the person in their environment. That seems obvious now, but it took Lewin to make it clear.
Perhaps the most useful thing Lewin came up with for mentoring is his ‘Force Field Analysis’, a tool that I use all the time in mentoring sessions in an informal, unstructured way and occasionally as a formal exercise. The FFA provides a framework for identifying the factors that influence a situation:
Lewin originally designed this for use in social situations and corporate environments, but it’s also very helpful when working with individuals who have identified a goal for themselves and now need to figure out the practical steps they might take to realise that goal. Lewin noticed that people tend to focus on individual aspects of a situation rather than seeing things as a whole.
The genius of the FFA is that it draws people to consider all the forces already at play in their situation as they seek to make progress. We are never at a standing start as we address our goals; things are already in motion. And the FFA calls people to consider not only what they have going for them, and not only what they are up against, but all of those things together. I have developed a list of the sorts of forces that mentorees and I commonly identify:
| Category | Possible items |
| Personal forces | gifts, skills, experience, education/qualifications, other strengths and weaknesses, stage of life, health |
| Internal forces | motivations, desires, passions, fears, sense of identity |
| Spiritual forces | graces of the Holy Spirit, gifts fruit, empowerment, the Scriptures, prophetic words, healing AND ALSOthe works of the enemy, falsehood, discouragement, destructive thinking |
| Relational forces | people’s actions, attitudes, words, needs, demands, generosity, support or otherwise, the nature of relationships with family, friends and associates |
| Organisational/institutional forces | resources, structures, obligations, responsibilities |
| Cultural/sub-cultural forces | social expectations, attitudes and mores, opportunities/opposition based on gender, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation, social status |
| Material forces | financial, housing, location, tools and equipment |
Once the forces are identified – and there may be dozens of forces at play – it’s then on to the second step of the FFA. In this step a person considers what practical steps they may be able to take to strengthen the ‘helping forces’ and to overcome the ‘hindering forces’. This step can take quite a while and should not be rushed. But if you’ve ever struggled with the options generation stage of the GROW model, you’ll appreciate how helpful the FFA is in providing a framework for coming up with a wide range of possible actions. It’s like brainstorming on steroids!
In practical terms for mentoring sessions, the final step in using the FFA is to whittle all those possible actions down to a very short list of action steps that a mentoree commits to implement in the period before their next mentoring appointment.
If you already use something like this, I’d love you to comment on what you’ve discovered and what tips you’d have for mentors. If you haven’t come across this before I encourage you to give it a try next time you have a mentoree who needs to decide what they are going to do to make progress towards their goals.
By Rick Lewis
Introduction
Considering all three dimensions of time – past, present, future – there is benefit in engaging deeply with each dimension
It is this future aspect of time I want to address here. As mentors, in working to help others develop a more adequate grasp of their lives we may find our mentorees neglect to consider the future perspective at critical points, or their consideration of the future may be skewed in unhelpful ways. Why does consideration of future perspective sometimes fail? There are, of course, many possible reasons – laziness, poor judgement, wrong information. But I think the most common causes in our current circumstances are anxiety, worry and fear. These emotional responses flood the nervous system with adrenaline which closes up thinking processes, reducing flexibility, withdrawing generosity and shortening time horizons. With careful preparation, mentors might be able to help their clients overcome these limiting ways of thinking and develop a healthy future perspective.
Biblical encouragements and warnings
As a practitioner of Christian mentoring I find it significant that Christianity has a strong future orientation. The overarching metanarrative is that creation is broken but God is in the business of restoring all things, and this vision will be realised in the age to come, into which he invites us through faith in Jesus. Jesus gives us great encouragement to consider the future not only in the age to come but in the present age as well. For example, in Lk 14 he tells parables about setting goals for construction and combat. But in Mt 6:34 he also gives us a warning: when we think about the future we should avoid doing so with a mindset of worry. Rather we should have a mindset of seeking God’s rule and of faith and trust. Further, James warns us in Jas 4 not to think about the future with the kind of presumption that becomes arrogance. Rather, consideration of the future should stimulate our desire to seek God’s will.
Applicability to mentoring
Calling attention to and strengthening future perspective in mentoring is useful for both correcting a deficit and developing an asset – the deficit of problematic attitudes to the future and the asset of having an attitude towards the future that harnesses the transformative power of God-given hope.
Calling attention to possibly problematic attitudes to the future is relevant where
Calling attention to the future to harness transformational power emphasises
Future creation – working toward a preferred future
In order to take hold of positive future possibilities, a person must overcome explicit or implicit deterministic ways of thinking. Determinism insists that the future already exists; that it is locked in and unalterable, and that no decisions or actions on our part will make any difference to our fate or the fate of those around us. Without getting into the deep philosophical and theological debate around this, it’s fair to say that the Christian position is that today’s choices do make a difference to tomorrow’s outcomes and that we are called to join with God in his redemptive work.
A considerable body of research exists on what is called ‘time perspective theory’ with applications in psychology, adolescent development, education, sociology, cultural studies and more.[1] Enhancing future time perspective has been shown to promote focus, prioritisation and goal-setting with beneficial effects on motivation and perseverance. Dozens of studies have proved the strategic value of clearly identifying a preferred future. A key insight for mentors is that future orientation is required to move from a problem focus to a solution focus.
Future discernment – identifying likely future outcomes
None of us has a crystal ball but we do live in a world where the laws of cause and effect (VUCA notwithstanding) allow for a measure of predictability, provided we think about it. With serious consideration of the future we may develop and benefit from ‘early hindsight’.
Moral value
Drawing attention to the future helps with:
Practical implementation
In the first instance, mentors can begin to promote a healthy future perspective by crafting questions that stir up curiosity about the future. Here are some examples to start your thinking:
Questions for creating a preferred future
Questions for discerning a likely future
Beyond questions like these, there are also certain exercises that may help a mentoree start to get in touch with the future.
Standing in the Future[2]
Principle
Up-close, a significant challenge or aspiration can feel overwhelming and result in procrastination or not taking sufficient action. When you ‘stand’ or visualize yourself in the future however, a greater sense of possibility is generated that builds deeper certainty and commitment leading to sustainable action.
It is always in our best interest to be in connection with our vision. Vision is not simply a memory, but a living and specific awareness of your intention. It is a conscious integration of mind and heart and the best starting point for a complex ambition that requires learning and collaboration. It allows you to utilize all of your talents and capabilities, both explicit and implicit, and opens your awareness to emergent and unexpected resources and support.
When you practice the exercise below, be sure to see your vision as fully compete, if anything were possible and be sure to put yourself in the picture.
Exercise
Be in a reflective, relaxed and open state with pad and pen nearby.
It is now the year 2024 (or three years from the present)
You (and your team) have completed or made significant and tangible progress in realizing your vision or meeting your challenge. You are thrilled. You (and your team) have been asked to describe or tell the story of just how you achieved your goals. See your vision as fully complete, as if anything were possible, and put yourself in the picture.
Answer as many of the following questions as possible or that make sense:
The Miracle Question[3]
Principle
This is a solution-focussed therapy technique used to help people imagine a tangible future they can work towards. The exercise asks people to imagine, however fantastical it may be in their particular circumstances, that their life has already dramatically changed for the better. So instead of focusing exclusively on how insoluble their problem is, and how difficult life is because of it, it switches attention to what will happen after the problem is dealt with – focusing on the desired future rather than the undesired present. It jumps right over the mechanics of how, exactly, the problem will be solved into the mechanics of how will they live when it is solved. It’s a neat and rather fun way of bypassing rigid constraints, black and white thinking, and unshakeable beliefs that “things can’t possibly change!”
Exercise
The ideal is for people to feel the answer to the miracle question – to experience it and not just to think about it. This helps to make the imagined future more real to them, and not just a theoretical construct. So rather than getting someone to answer straight away, get them to ‘go inside’ for a few moments and really ‘see and feel’ the miracle. Ask them to imagine the answer rather than tell you in words. The miracle question can be worded slightly differently depending on the particular context. Here is one example:
Imagine this: tonight, while you are sleeping, a miracle happens and the problem that prompted you to talk to me today is solved! But because this happens while you are sleeping, you have no way of knowing that there was an overnight miracle that solved the problem. So, when you wake up tomorrow morning, what might be the small changes that will make you say to yourself, ‘Wow, something must have happened—the problem is gone!’? How does it feel to be in this new place?
When you’ve given them some time to carry out this process, you can ask your mentoree to tell you in detail what they have noticed and imagined. The response provides the image of a future possibility:
Caution
No exercise is appropriate in every circumstance. If a mentoree is grieving the passing of a loved one or struggling with an adverse medical diagnosis, this exercise is NOT the one to use.
Letter from My Future Self
Principle
You are probably aware of the oft-used exercise of having a person write a letter to their future selves. It’s a fun exercise that helps a person capture what they believe is essential and valuable not just for the moment but for the long-term. And you might have thought about what you would say to your younger self if you travel back in time and give them the benefit of your experience. You’d sure have a valuable perspective to share if this were possible! This exercise has you imagining yourself 10 years from now (or 20 if you’re really bold) writing back to your present self. It’s designed to help you extract yourself from the details of your present day-to-day life, to get up above that to discern what is truly lasting and what is temporary; what is valuable and what is cheap; what is real and what is illusion.
Exercise
Allow yourself plenty of time for this exercise. You might even wish to have a few stabs at it until you’re satisfied.
You’re 10 (or 20) years older now and you’re writing to yourself in 2021.
Write a paragraph for each of the following prompts:
Action-Consequence Matrix[4]
Principle
When we take action, there are consequences; and when we don’t take action, there are consequences. Either way, things happen. These may be good or bad for us, and good or bad for other people. While we often focus on ourselves, the effects on others can be significant.
We often pay closer attention to consequences that happen in the short term, where there is clear cause and effect between actions and what happens as a result. Consequences may also happen further out into the future, and perhaps with less clear causal relationship. An important point about this matrix is that it highlights considerations that we often do not realize we are making. Often, all we think about is ‘What will happen if I do?’, ‘What will happen in the short term?’ and ‘What will I gain from this?’ By making this unconscious process conscious, we can make and influence better decisions.
Exercise
Work through each of the questions allowing time to move freely between them.
| Action | |||
| If I do… | If I don’t… | ||
| Consequence | What will happen? | What will happen if I do? | What will happen if I don’t? |
| What won’t happen? | What won’t happen if I do? | What won’t happen if I don’t? |
When considering consequences in each quadrant, this sub-matrix may prompt insight.
| Effect | |||
| Positive | Negative | ||
| For… | Me | How will I benefit? | How might I be harmed? |
| Others | How will others benefit? | How might others be harmed? |
[1] See, for example, http://www.adrips.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/TPBook-Stolarski-Fieulaine-vanBeek_Content_intro.pdf
[2] Created by Robert Hanig, sourced from: https://www.academyforchange.org/2020/05/27/standing-in-the-future/
[3] Created by Steve De Shazer
[4] Created by David Straker, sourced from: http://changingminds.org/explanations/decision/what_happen.htm
Mentoring partnerships don’t always work out. It’s possible for this to not be the fault of either party, it’s just that things didn’t click relationally or circumstances suddenly shifted. It happens. But there are some very common reasons why mentoring becomes disappointing from the mentoree’s point of view and several of these are avoidable. Every mentor who desires to serve their mentorees well needs to keep an eye on these factors to make sure they are not falling into bad practices.
I’ve listened to hundreds of mentorees reflect on their experience and these are the top six reasons they identify as those that cause mentoring to fail.
Much of the responsibility for avoiding these pitfalls rests on the shoulders of mentors. But mentorees also must realise that they could be contributing to the very factors that make the mentoring partnership unsatisfying for them. Perhaps you could use this short list as a conversation starter in your next mentoring session.
Comparing mentoring women (of which I do a little) and mentoring men (of which I do a lot) I have found a great deal to be similar. Many issues are common to our shared humanity and mentoring processes tend to be more or less effective according to a range of factors of which gender is only one. Mentoring partnerships vary because of both the mentor’s and the mentoree’s age, personality, life experience, ethnicity, theological convictions, education and many other factors.
However, insofar as gender does, to some extent, influence a mentoring partnership, these are the items I have observed are more common in terms of content, and more effective in terms of process, when dealing with men. Bear in mind that I am writing as a male; the experience may be different for female mentors of men.
1. Content of mentoring conversations
2. Processes used in mentoring conversations