Chip R. Bell's Blog, page 32

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 of joy to the mentoring relationship. Let’s examine two short jokes and then dissect their construction.

From Joe Weinstein: “My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to 99 cents a can. That’s about $7.00 in dog mon...

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 (sights, sounds, feelings…the whole works). If another person then wore the hat and played the tape he or she would have the precise experience as the person who taped it. You could borrow an adventurer’s tape and vicariously exp...

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 of rank while in the field. Enemy snipers seek to get battlefield leaders in their cross-hairs to strip their adversary of command. This left the concept of “leadership” less related to obvious authority and more with subtle infl...

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 without a trace. A bird had obviously flown through it. But, nearby was a brand new elegant web spread between two trees. And, the same spider situated in the middle seemed poised for action.

Great mentors are like spider-web builders....

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 headed out back to mimic what we had watched. As adults, we still do. Movies and TV influence our work life.

How many times at work have you heard lines like: “Make you an offer you can’t refuse” (from The Godfather), “Show me the...

Mentoring as Summer Camp

[image error]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 in her voice. But, when she was packing her camp trunk and looking at the camp website, she was super excited and ready to go…right now!

Camp is always all about meeting new friends and trying new things. There are typically skinned...

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, better procedures, or more effective policies. In fact, the word “program” was not even mentioned. What were referenced were the building blocks for mentoring as an outcome rather than mentoring as a program. “Time to mentor,” “recogn...

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 kitten seemed determined to not go kitty skydiving.

The fire department said there would be a $200 fee for a visit from the fire truck with the really long ladder. Tabby’s owner was going crazy with panic…and guilt. Then, she rememb...

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 the nearby sea wall. Our first reaction was the eagle was injured.

A call to the neighbors on the other side quickly produced a cheering section. It turned out the eagle was challenged with a very large fish he had caught but was no...

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 you have the precise objective of partnership-based mentoring. If your protégé gave you a grade for what kind of protégé you were to them, what grade would you get? Reciprocal learning is the objective of a learning partnership—we...