Blog
Mentoring as Transportation
It all started with a party game...those funny “what if” social games that get sillier with late night exuberance and adult beverages. “What fruit would they be if all pharmacists were a fruit?” asked one guest, a deeply serious pharmacist. “If lawyers were farm...
Who’s your favorite mentor?
Throughout your life and career, you've undoubtedly had a few mentors, even if they weren't officially given the title. Your parents, teachers, coaches, bosses, pastors. All mentors. I've written about a couple of my best mentors: my dad--Ray Bell, and Oren Harari. I...
What the Rules of Combat Teach Us About Open-Door Leadership
Hugh L. McColl, Jr. is the retired chairman and CEO of Bank of America. An ex-marine officer in the late fifties, his business leadership style was swashbuckling, colorful and focused. Wall Street analysts characterized him as a no-holds barred tactical genius who led...
The Mentor’s Message: Tell a Funny Story
Great mentors use effective humor, effectively. Fortunately, mentoring is not dependent on a comedic personality or most of us would be disqualified. But, knowing the construction of humor can sometimes turn a poor joke teller into someone who can bring an added sense...
Mentors Facilitate Memory Bubbles
The last movie that starred Natalie Wood was the 1983 movie Brainstorm also starring Cliff Robertson and Christopher Walken. The gist of the movie was the creation of “the hat”--a helmet-like device that, when worn, could tape an exact experience its wearer was having...
Great Mentors Don’t Wear Rank
Combat troops are generally better behaved in the field (where battle is likely to occur) than in the relative safety of the rear area. As an infantry unit commander in Viet Nam, I often wondered if it was related to the fact that military leaders remove all markings...
Mentoring Requires Being Elegantly Adaptive
Early one morning I was in my side yard and walked up on a huge elaborate spider web complete with its designer-tenant. As I approached the artwork, the spider began to vibrate the web sending early morning dewdrops everywhere. The next morning the web was gone...
If Mentoring were a Movie
Watching television was often the impetus for backyard play when we were kids. Watch a baseball game and you were looking for your bat and glove by the end of the ninth inning. If it was cowboys and Indians on the tube, we donned bows and arrows or cap pistols as we...
Mentoring as Summer Camp
Summer is always the season of summer camp! My nine year old granddaughter, Kaylee, went to her first overnight camp last July...for two weeks and in another state! Before she went, if she talked with her two sisters about summer camp, you could hear the apprehension...
Mentoring Mentors
What are the top critical success factors for making mentoring a part of an organization’s DNA? It was a question used to open a mentoring workshop with a group of senior leaders of a major corporation. Not one single participant mentioned a need for more forms,...
How Tabby Got Rescued
Tabby was a new kitten to the neighborhood. Escaping from her brand new owner’s side porch one afternoon, she climbed to the top of the tallest tree in the area. Neighbors advised the owner to let Tabby come down on her own. But after a night in the tree, the young...
Mentoring Eagles
An eagle got the neighbors talking. My backyard fronts a large lake with a cove wrapping around each side of the lot. Peering out the side window early one morning, we spotted a giant American eagle struggling to get out of the shallow water in the cove and up onto...
When the Mentor Gets Mentored
Tom Jones wrote the lyrics to a 1977 disco song performed by John Paul Young. The first few bars of this popular song go: “Love is in the air, everywhere I look around; Love is in the air, every sight and every sound.” Substitute the word, “learning” for “love” and...
The Perils of Corporate Lying
It was not Pinocchio who was my childhood lesson on lying; it was Aesop’s fable about the little boy who cried “wolf.” My grandfather was a master storyteller, always jazzing up stories. His version went more like this: Long time ago in a sheep village on the other...
Mentoring: The Awakening of Insight
Archaeologists excavating the pyramids discovered wheat seeds that dated back to around 2500 BC. As in the tradition of antiquity, the seeds were there for the dead pharaoh to eat if he got hungry. The find was important because it would enable scientists to determine...