Mimi on national FOX Sports Radio, Sat. Aug. 29 - Details*

"Tactics for Tough Times" - Excerpts Index

Tactics for Tough Times: Mentoring

Times are tough, but now we have time—to engage in useful activities we haven’t had time to do. Explore new opportunities (even a new job). Here’s one way to do it. Have a mentor. Be a mentor. You learn and grow from both. Football players usually have a High School or College coach whom they look to as one of their first mentors. Sometimes, it’s a veteran player on their team they really admire, who’s taken them under his wing. Whatever our football player goes on to achieve, he will almost always cite this mentor whenever he’s thanking people, usually right up there with Mom and God. Good company.

Recently, at the Football Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, the honorees were moved to tears thanking these mentors in their speech. Several honorees chose a mentor to “present” them first before they spoke. More speeches, more tears, very schmaltzy. Yet another thing we women love about football.

Our football player also pays some of his success forward. He’ll start a scholarship fund for his High School football program. He’ll coach a local Little League team. He’ll set up a foundation to benefit people in need. Thus, he now becomes a mentor.

WE CAN DO THE SAME

To find a mentor, look for people who have what you want to have and do what you want to do. Identify someone you can look up to, who challenges you. It’s usually best to seek someone of good character, someone who shares your values and ethics. Mentors can be a support, and lend a listening ear. Meet them, talk to them, ask them questions. Most people respond to someone who is genuinely interested in them. To establish yourself with this mentor, don’t be a pest. Ask how you can help. Volunteer for tasks they need done. People tend to open up to someone offering to pitch in and help move the ball down the field.

As for mentoring, you rarely learn anything really well until you teach it. By sharing your expertise, you’re forced to analyze it in a way you may never have seen it. It makes you aware of your strengths and weaknesses. As a mentor, you control the process in the mentoring relationships. Set the agenda to include:

1. Get to know each other: this is trust building.

2. Discuss objectives of the relationship.

3. Set up agenda, time line and regular meeting times.

4. Always schedule time to evaluate pluses and minuses.

Mentoring gives you a new way of approaching your own pursuits. You are confirming something out loud to yourself as you tell someone else, which throws a whole new light on the subject. So when you’re giving, you’re getting at the same time.

And you never know where your mentee will end up: Hall of Fame, Academy Awards, Nobel Prize . . . and they may end up thanking you!

*Mimi's interview with Dan Moriarty and Lincoln Kennedy took place on national FOX Sports Radio (570AM in the Los Angeles area) on Saturday, August 29, 2009 at 3:05 p.m. (Pacific Time). She talked about her new book, Necessary Roughness: New Rules for the Contact Sport of Life.