Why Vulnerability Matters in Mentoring

The following is a guest post by Bill Mann, who writes and speaks on inter-generational mentoring.

When people approach me about mentoring, I usually tell them that one of the key ingredients to being a successful mentor is to put your pride in your back pocket and take a large dose of humility. Just like a vitamin, humility goes a long way to forge a relationship with the next generation.

Every relationship has at least four levels of communication. These levels are separate and usually are done sequentially. The levels are:

• Fact – sharing a fact such as “today is Wednesday”.
• Opinion – sharing your opinion about a topic such as “Wednesday is the worst day of the week”.
• Feeling – sharing your feelings such as “I hate Wednesdays”.
• Transparency – Sharing that “I have difficulty with Wednesdays because it reminds me of my father’s recent death”.

Rarely does one get to the transparency level. Women reach feeling much faster than men, and most men get stuck at communicating at the opinion level. Think about your conversations with your friends, and I think you will realize how accurate this is. Part of that, I think, is that we fear being vulnerable and admit our insecurities and mistakes.
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Why is this important? Well, one of the highest values of the next generation is that they crave authenticity. They want to interact with people who are real with them and willing to share their lives – both the good and the bad.  That, of course, requires mentors to develop an ability to be transparent. 

Regi Campbell writes a weekly blog for Radical Mentoring. In a recent blog, he observed that the intensity of young people increases when your stories are about failure you have experienced.  They don’t take well to what he calls “victory laps” which often looks like self-promotion than being authentic. I agree.

Regi ascribes the power of “failure stories” to the following (I have added one at the end):

• Authenticity – Your failures taught you lessons of what you did wrong and what you learned, as well as what you would do differently the next time. Mentees can’t get that information from any other source. They see you as real and authentic, and become more willing to listen to other stuff.
• Approachability – You drop your guard by telling them that you aren’t perfect yet you managed to succeed despite your own shortcomings. It is an expression of humility which goes a long way to being more accessible.
• Emotion – Regi suggests that all decisions are made at an emotional level. Most meaningful learning is the result of engaging ones’ emotions, including emotions of pain, embarrassment or remorse when things go badly.
• Value – Mistakes are costly, thus valuable because it leads to wisdom gained from a painful experience. There’s value in that.
• Believability – Most mentees won’t connect with your success stories – they can’t relate to your achievements, but they can relate to your shortcomings. They can see that their success can be accomplished despite setbacks and failure along the way.
• Challenging – Young people look up to a leader who shares his failures and shortcomings. It may be the start of helping them believe in themselves and realize their own potential. They also see “the chance to stand on the shoulders of one who’s gone where he wants to go.”
• Transparency – Sharing personal failures gets the level of communication past Fact, Opinion and Feeling in a hurry. If you are willing to show humility and transparency, your mentee will develop trust and be transparent in return.

 
The challenge is straightforward.  Mentors need to be willing to express humility and vulnerability to their mentees.  They want to know that you messed up, and that you learned from your mistakes.  They will make their own mistakes, but possibly not the same ones you did. In addition, you will develop an ability to communicate at a deeper level. 

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