[blox_row][blox_column width=”1/1″][blox_heading title=”Let’s face the hard truth. None of us has “arrived.”” size=”h3″ style=”style5″ animation=”none”][/blox_heading][blox_text animation=”none”]
In six decades of working on my life, I still have not become all I want to be, all I could be, all I need to be. That could be discomforting news.
There is good news: I am working on it. I know what areas of my life need change, development, improvement and continued work. I have good mentors in my life that check up on me regularly.
At LDG, excellent mentoring, after being Intentional is Deep-Change mentoring. Here are four reasons on what we mean by Deep-Change:
We need to become something other than we are.
Our working assumption is that all of us—every one of us—have corners in our life where we have not yet attained to the person we were uniquely designed to be and the person we want to be. We are on a journey of discovery and improvement. A healthy, vibrant, living person will remain on that journey until we step through the thin veil at the end of our days.
The best of mentors help those being mentored to understand this divide between who they are and who they are designed and desire to be. Deep-Change requires mentoring that probe and exposes this divide. Deep-change mentoring then designs ways to close the gaps.
We need to be aware of life’s impact: past, present, future.
Deep-Change begins in the present: who am I now? The best of mentors spend a significant amount of time helping their mentors explore and discover who they are in every dimension of their lives.
Understanding the present is the starting point. This is critical to Deep-Change mentoring.
Most mentorees are rooted in their past: family, social relationships, vocational successes or failures, any of the 8 Dimensions of their lives. These past events have shaped their core belief system. That goes for you and me, as well.
Uncovering those past events and issues can be painful. Recognizing them and helping a mentoree determine not to be trapped or defined by them is a liberating and joyous for both people in a mentoring relationship.
Understanding how the past has shaped the present is critical to Intentional, Deep-Change mentoring.
Change invites us into the future. Change implies we want to be different. We long to be other than we now are.
The best of mentors will help those they mentor identify their unique design. This Deep-Change mentoring will help a person come to grips with how they might be missing the mark in being the person they were uniquely designed to be.
A healthy mentoring relationship keeps the future in focus. This focus is important in every one of the 8 Dimensions of a mentoree’s life: encouraging and prodding; pressing and inspiring them from where they are to where they long and need to be.
Understanding and focusing on the mentoree’s preferred future is critical to Deep-Change mentoring.
We need to realize we are all uniquely designed!
Deep-Change is not “change for the sake of change.” Rather, it has an end, goals and outcomes, clearly in sight. Those goals are founded on the understanding of both mentor and mentoree, that he or she is uniquely designed with a purpose in life.
The objective of Deep-Change mentoring is to move a person from who they are—where they are—ever closer to that unique design and fulfillment of that purpose. There is freedom in living a life on purpose.
We need to be patient as we grow forward in our lives.
One final thought: Deep-Change is “crock pot change.” It is not “microwave change.”
Deep-Change requires slow, steady, dogged progress from who I am to the person I long and need to be. It requires the best of mentors who are willing to aid that kind of steady progress: mentors who probe and prod; who are persistent, but patient. It requires mentors who are willing to walk with you for the long haul.
How do you best deal with change in your own mentoring?
In what ways are you progressing with Deep-Change in your own life?
We at Leadership Design Group would love to dialogue with you on the subject. The fact that you are reading this blog gives us the hope that you, too, just may want to be one of those “best of mentors.”
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