The Mentorship Edge: Creating Maximum Impact through Lateral and Hierarchical Mentoring (Part 1)

Welcome to Readers, the podcast for the lifelong learner. Join us on our weekly dose of wisdom where we talk about the real-life lessons and applications of books. Enjoy! Welcome back to Readers, everyone. Today we are joined by a very, very special guest, developmental psychologist, the CEO and founder of The Mentor Project, TEDx speaker, and author of The Mentorship Edge, Unlocking Potential, Nurturing Growth, and Creating Explosive Impact. The one and only Ms. Deborah Heiser. Welcome to the podcast, Deborah.

Thank you for having me on. I'm delighted to be here. As you mentioned, I'm a psychologist and I am the CEO of The Mentor Project and I wrote The Mentorship Edge. I have been involved in aging research since the '90s and through the Mentor Project and the Mentorship Edge, I like to show people how aging and mentorship are related, how we're built to mentor. And so that's a little bit about me and why I'm doing this.

Yeah, I think that some of the work you've done within, you know, both realms of whether that's aging and, you know, growth over the, over the years, as well as your journey through mentorship, has been really impactful. And I'm really excited to get into this today. You know, as a, as a student in college right now, just trying to figure out my place in the world, whether that's in my career, socially, or even morally. And as someone who specialized in development and aging, you've uncovered profound insights into the role of mentorship in people's lives, and you found it to be a very vital part of human growth, which is exactly what you break down in this book. So, you know, without further ado, let's dive into part 1, which will be chapters 1 to 4. So in Chapter 1, or We Are Built to Mentor, you start this chapter off kind of with a conversation about, like you just mentioned, the inevitable process of aging. You talk about what most people's priorities are in different stages of their lives and how what we truly crave isn't the riches most people dream of, but rather of actually sharing them with those we love. And this is where you say that, and I quote here, we as individuals become mentors not merely out of duty or a sense of responsibility, but to experience the profound sense of being needed, useful, valued, and purposeful. Can you talk a little bit about what that statement means?

Sure. So most of us, when we're chasing some kind of fulfillment, we're seeking it, we're looking really for a way that we're connecting with others. And that's how we get to feel a sense of relevance and how we get to feel a sense of purpose. Think of whenever you've given a gift to somebody. And when it's exactly the right gift, and how good you feel when they say, "My goodness, this is the best gift I've ever gotten." Well, that is the same feeling that we get with mentoring. And when we're, when you're, we're, when we are in your age range in college, your job developmentally is to take in as much information as you can. And learn as much as you can about yourself. It's your identity stage. This is where you're thinking, gee, what am I going to do with my life? What kind of job am I going to get? Am I in the right major? Who are the people that I want to hang out with? You're figuring out all of this. By the time you hit midlife, you've already figured all of that out and you're at the stage where you— it's kind of like you have— you right now are pouring stuff into yourself like you're a Tupperware container. By the time you hit midlife, you want to open that lid and let it out and let people know, gee, I'm done checking all the boxes. I want to be able to share my wisdom with others and like, like giving that gift to someone that you are hoping it'll be exactly what they've been looking for.

Yeah. I also want to ask you about this concept of generativity that you bring up. What does that really mean and how does that play an important role whether that's in mentorship or in the process of aging.

So in the process of aging, this is a developmental milestone that is just the same as a physical one of walking or doing something like that. This is an emotional milestone that we hit in midlife. And so we are built through generativity to want to be able to give back a little bit of ourself, to care for others without expecting anything in return. And we do this as a way of leaving a legacy. We do this as a way of making sense out of everything that we've taken in. So, this generativity stage is a really important one for us emotionally in midlife. It's what allows us to feel fulfilled, happy, content, and like we're relevant and that we get to feel validated for whatever we've already become experts in. So, And that's not just work, that's culture, values, tradition. So through generativity, this is how religion has been passed down for centuries. If you have a family tradition that you do every holiday, or that you, you know, engage in some kind of a ritual or values or whatever that is, that is passed down through mentorship. That is another key part of generativity. Keeping those things alive for the next generation. So it's a super powerful life stage that most of us haven't heard about or that hasn't been talked about very much, but it's been heavily researched. It allows us to connect with others. It allows us to not become lonely later. It allows us to really engage rather than disengage.

Sure, that makes a lot of sense. But at the same time, you know, you mentioned that generativity is almost something that comes naturally to a lot of people. But at the same time, of course, there's people who, hearing you speak about something like this, would also think, how do I become more generative? You know, how do I exercise this quality and how do I grow in it? So I want to ask you, how do you— how would you suggest that people grow in that quality?

So most of us are already doing it and we don't realize it. And so, you know, think of yourself. Has anybody ever asked you in college, hey, can you help me with something? You know something really well. Can you help and give me some guidance or advice? And you might say to them, sure, I'd like to do that. That's you mentoring that person. We just don't label it as that. Every time you're asking for someone to give you guidance, you are asking for mentorship from that person. So mentorship doesn't have to be a lifelong, you know, sort of marriage with someone that you're calling your mentor. It can be a one-off. It can be several different, you know, iterations over a course of time. So if you're looking to find a mentor, you really need to say to yourself, who is it that holds what I want? And that may be somebody that's sitting right next to you. We see that with entrepreneurs who say, gee, I'm a hardware engineer, I need a software engineer to help me to get this company off the ground. We see this with other people who have, you know, marketing skills and somebody else has some kind of a, you know, writing skill or something like that, that they're able to put those together and make things happen. So really, if you are looking to get mentored, look to someone that you see in your inner circle. If you don't see anybody there, push it out a level. And you don't have to ask somebody, hey, be my mentor. Really what you need to do is say, hey, can I ask you some advice? Just like you would a friend. And likewise, if you say, gee, I'd like to be a mentor, but I don't know where to do that, you can say to yourself, is there somebody I know in my inner circle who could use my help? I've been seeing somebody struggling with something. Maybe it's, you know, some kind of a statistics issue, and you're great at statistics. Maybe you could say, hey, can I give you some guidance there? I can help you out. If somebody were to say to you, hey, can I pick your brain about podcasting? That would be one way. But you might turn it around and say, I know this person has been talking about podcasting. They don't know how to do it. I do. I would like to offer them my advice. And that's a form of mentorship. So keep it simple and keep it organic and you will be mentoring in no time.

Got it. And I really like the way you end this chapter 1 stating the fact that, you know, we're naturally born to be generative or mentors. And although we may go back through various phases, you talk about, you give the example of toddlers, you know, when they're learning to walk, but at the end of the day, our instinct does lead us to give back, to leave a legacy almost behind in the form of mentorship to others. You know, but, you know, thinking about concepts like these, what comes to mind is how do we cultivate ourselves to be effective mentors in the future and better mentees today? And that's kind of something you explore in Chapter 2, or 5 Key Components to Mentoring. So in Chapter 1, we already talked a little bit about the first component of mentoring, and that's generativity. However, the second component is a topic that seems a little difficult to cultivate. Most people believe you're either born with it in certain areas or not. And that component is intrinsic motivation. So I want to ask you, can you talk a little bit about the importance of intrinsic motivation in mentorship and how can one cultivate that over time?

So mentorship has 5 key components. As you mentioned, we already talked about the first one, which is generativity, where we're built to want to do that. The second one, as you said, is intrinsic motivation. So if you're getting paid to mentor, you're not a mentor. So if somebody says— and I hear this from students all the time, you know, they will see me as a mentor and I'll say, no, I'm, I'm getting paid to do my job with you. I do a good job. That is part of my job. I'm not mentoring you right now. That's on the clock. I'm advising you, and advising is different than mentoring. So here's an example of what intrinsic motivation is. Intrinsic motivation is where you would do something without any pay, without any recognition. Nobody may ever know that you've ever done it, and you would engage in it anyway. So an example is this. Imagine if I said to you, hey, would you like to go volunteer your time at a soup kitchen giving out food and beverage to hungry, thirsty people. You might say, yeah, that would make me feel really good. I'd love to do that. And what, what I could do, though, is say, as you're on your drive over to the place to go volunteer your time, I said, hey, turn left, and instead of going there, go volunteer your time at Starbucks. That feeling is very different. That's an extrinsically motivated place. You do not feel the same kind of goodness giving out food and beverage without pay to yourself at Starbucks. So when we are mentoring, we have to actually feel that we are doing this because we want to, not because we feel like if we don't, somebody's gonna judge us or something like that. Then it becomes something else. And that's why it's so important. And we do this all the time. This isn't something that you have to learn. How many times has somebody said to you, Hey, will you do this? Can you help me? Can you give me a hand? And you do it without any pay or praise. How often might you read a book and nobody pays you to do it? These are things we engage in constantly. And when we gamify it, that's when we sort of lose the real innate nature of mentorship.

Sure, sure. And I feel like— You know, intrinsic motivation is something that a lot of people are born with, and it's something that you can also develop, right? But at the same time, a lot of people are intrinsically motivated by many different things. And a lot of times, what motivates people intrinsically is our relationships. Most people will do anything for those we love, and those can even stretch beyond our nuclear families. A lot of us grew up with loving communities or friends who we share deep relationships with. And that's exactly what this third component is about, meaningful relationships. You know, although this sounds like a great way to induce a healthy mentor-mentee bond, I want to ask, how do you go about forming a meaningful relationship with a mentor? And what are the key aspects to making that happen? How do you leverage your relationships to make that happen?

It's really the same as you would have with friends or anything like that. You just said it beautifully, what you said right before the question. And that is that we have all of these meaningful connections. We'll do anything for family and friends, right? If a friend says, "Hey, will you help me?" you're probably gonna say yes, and that's because you're a good friend. They mean something to you. So in terms of this component of meaningful connections with regard to mentoring, if you do not feel meaningfully connected to somebody who you're saying, "This is my mentor," then they're not your mentor. You really need to feel meaningfully connected. And so that's why if you offer help to somebody, they'll say, oh, I like you. Yeah, I'd like to get your help. If you offer things to a stranger, sometimes they might say, oh, I don't know, maybe, maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure. You're not sure of that person. That's why the meaningful connection makes it so solid. That's why If you look at mentorship being carried for centuries with religion and values within the family and culture, that gets passed down, and that's because those are meaningful connections, passing those down. People are saying, yeah, I believe in what you're saying. You're somebody who means something to me and matters to me. I want to carry that tradition forward. And that's part of how that happens. So mentorship is something that really does require that relationship. Otherwise, it's just an exchange of information.

Sure. And I feel like one of the key components in any relationship, whether that's personal, professional, or otherwise, is honesty, right? And trust. It's difficult to depend on someone or be vulnerable or even enjoy their company if you don't have some level of trust in them. No one would, you know, disagree with that, I think. But one of the main components of a good mentee is also being able to be vulnerable and for the mentor to maintain respect and a growth mindset towards the mentor's growth. Regardless of their shortcomings. But again, this is easier said than done, right? So I want to ask, how would you say trust can be built in a mentor and mentee relationship? And what steps have to be taken in order for both people to feel comfortable being vulnerable with each other?

Sometimes it can't be, and then that's just not going to be a mentor-mentee relationship. Have you ever met somebody that you said, I don't trust that person? They will gossip about me behind my back. I'm sure of it. That's not gonna be your friend. You're not gonna say, you know what, let me let you in my inner circle. You don't trust that person. The same is with mentorship. It's just not mentorship if it's not, if that doesn't exist. So the first thing is to do is to test that out. Hey, do I trust you? And there are some people that you already know that you trust. So it may be that you have seen a person around, you know that they're gonna give you good information if you ask them for some advice. This can be lateral to you. This is where we often see the most trust. If you say to another colleague or to another classmate, hey, can you help me with this? You've seen this person around. You know that they seem like a great person. You trust them. The problem is if you are in a place and you say, hey, I'd like to engage with this person, but I am afraid they're going to steal my idea and run off and do something with that that I intend to do. That's what a mentor might feel with a mentee. Maybe they're not gonna— they're gonna take my information and undermine me in some way. Or maybe a mentee says, gee, I don't know that this per— this person might find out what my vulnerabilities are and tell people, or not give me a raise, or not give me a good grade, or not do something. So if you see those components are there where there's not trust, just don't engage in it. It's not mentoring. Just don't go there. The same way I would say that with a friend. If you see somebody that is making you feel like, hmm, I don't think that I can trust them, don't let them in your inner circle. They're not a friend that you want to have. So think of it similarly to friendship.

So what I'm kind of hearing is in order to actually have an effective mentor who you're able to have trust with or vulnerable, you know, be vulnerable with, the most important thing, I guess, is the first step to building that relationship or to, you know, having a mentor. Should be to have an existing relationship currently. Is that correct? Like, is it possible to have a mentor or, you know, be in a mentorship relationship with someone with whom you haven't been previously acquainted or you don't know that well?

You could have that because it might be something that you're asking for that you don't need a— you're not asking for something that is going to be— if it's plastered out all over that you don't know this, no one's going to care, you know. So you could have that where you reach out to somebody that you say, you know what, I have read this person's book. I really love what they're talking about. I want to ask their advice and see if they can walk me through maybe the publishing experience or whatever it is. But you trust that that person can have that information for you because you're not worried if they say no. Oh my gosh, I can't believe you don't know how to publish a book or do something like that. You're not going to care, right? So you could determine that within that conversation if you feel confident or not when you have that initial interaction with them. But people can do that. It depends on where your level of trust is and what you need from the person.

Got it. Got it. So I feel like from what you're saying, the main thing in any relationship, mentorship or otherwise, is really to start building that trust and a connection where, you know, it's okay to be vulnerable. And have trust in that person. And so far, obviously, we've covered these 4 components, and the last one is— it personally, it's my favorite, right? And everything sounds good and well, but in reality, nothing can happen without this 5th component, which is a vision. No relationship, no trust building, intrinsic motivation, or anything else will lead to anything without the 5th and final component of mentorship, which is goal setting. You know, Benjamin Franklin once said, "If you fail to plan, you're planning to fail." And the purpose of mentorship is not just to make another friend or expand your network, it's to learn, to grow, and to make real change, both in your lives and in the world. And none of that can happen without goals. Deborah, can you speak a little bit about how to set meaningful goals, follow up on them, and make long-term progress through goal setting, particularly in the setting of mentorship?

Sure. Most of us naturally do this, and I'll give you an example. I was a graduate student, and I was out at my externship, another fellow student contacted me and called me and she said, hey, I know that you know how to do CAPA statistics. I don't remember it and I have to do a project. Can you walk me through it? So I said, yes, I'll walk you through it. I helped her. She got it. She understood it and she went and did her report or project and she did great. That was a goal. Did she state, you know, that was stated out front, oh my gosh, I'm panicking, I need to learn this now, or I'm gonna, you know, I feel like I'm not gonna succeed in my externship. The goal was to get her to learn Kappa statistic at that moment. So we could have something as simple as a one-off. She never had to ask me again for that. We were done. Or it could be something where you set in the front of it, hey, I'd really like to learn something that's much more complex. Maybe it's some engineering that's gonna require a lot of time. I'd like to learn it for this purpose. I'd like you to teach me how to write a book. I'd like you to teach me the process of that. That requires a much longer set of goal, a much larger set of goals in it, and many more meetings. So really, you wanna come in with an actual, an actual ask or goal or vision for it. Sometimes in the workplace, it would be somebody saying to someone when they just start a new job, can you show me the lay of the land, to somebody who's already been there, and they show you the lay of the land. That's your goal. However, that's often an opening for future goals. Now that the person's showed you the lay of the land, you might say, now can you tell me how to, how I should negotiate or interact with different departments.

Sure.

Can you now show me something else about this company that I should know? And that can help you to rise in the ranks of the workplace. So, our goals, like you mentioned, is so exciting. It's that vision that you can see, this person might help me to get where I need to go. And, but you need to set that. Otherwise you're just chit-chatting and it's not mentorship.

Sure. From what you've, you know, said so far, it seems like mentorship can be a pretty broad range, right? It can be anywhere within your personal life, your social life, your professional life, your academic life. But at the same time, as important as it is to talk about what mentorship is, it's also important to talk about what mentorship isn't, right? And in Chapter 3, we move on to talk about everything that— everything from advisors to sponsors to networking connections. And actually, even coaching isn't mentoring. Can you explain a little bit about why you say this and what makes mentorship so different from the rest of these?

Sure. So I like to first start off by saying, if you're getting paid, you're not a mentor. Right. So I teach at a university and I have students and they will ask me all kinds of questions. They'll email me, we'll meet, do all of these things. And I'll say, I'm not your mentor. I'm your advisor right now. I'm telling you, I'm giving you advice. This is me doing my job. Um, can I be a mentor to those students? I often am after they have left my class and I'm not their professor in the class anymore, and I'm writing them recommendation letters to get into places, or we're working on projects that they're interested in outside of that class. It's when I'm not being paid that I become— that I transition to becoming a mentor. If you're a coach, you are paid oftentimes by the company or an individual to get you to a specific goal. Mentoring is an emotional journey. It's an emotional life stage. That is where you have like some meaningful emotional connection with somebody. Coaching, you're paid. So people will often say, well, I have a coach and I have a mentor and they're also my mentor. No, they're your coach. They're doing what they're supposed to be doing. Mentoring is, something separate. And the thing I caution people about is to say, you should never think that you have a coach who is a mentor or an advisor who is a mentor at the same exact time, because it'll limit you. You will then not go get another, a mentor. You should have multiple mentors. You should have one coach, one advisor, but you should have multiple mentors. So if you think you're getting it all in one, you're limiting yourself from seeing So much potential that you could be getting from others. Networking is not mentoring. A lot of people think that going out and meeting and connecting with people means mentorship. No, that's a fabulous entree to mentorship. That's a fabulous way to meet potential mentors. You bring them into your circle and you say, ooh, I resonate with this person. I could see myself asking this person for help. Or, ooh, no, no, no, they're not that person, red flag there. So if we look at— and sponsors, people who are sponsors are people who open the door for us when we're not, you know, when we're in the workplace or in another environment. They're people who speak well of us outside of when they see us. That is a different role from mentorship. They are also not paid generally to do that, but their goal is to get you through doors but not mentor you.

Got it, got it. And, you know, I wanna— I know we're in a bit of a rush now, our time is, you know, coming to an end, but— and I have a couple of questions still, you know, like, is mentorship and coaching— why does that have to be mutually exclusive, right? You see coaches that, although they're getting paid at the same time, they take the extra time out to, you know, help their students or to push them in other realms of their life, whether that's, uh, not just within the sport that they're playing or not just within a certain aspect, but also in their personal lives. But, you know, we can get into that in the next step.

You're right to make that distinction because I can't— like I mentioned with advising, once I'm out of my role as the advisor, I can mentor someone. If a person is a coach and it's a sport and they're outside of that, what they're doing for the training, for the sport, and getting mentored, yes, you can. OK, if you're in the workplace and you're hiring somebody to be your coach, that those components that are often thought of as mentorship should be done in that. Leaders in the workplace should be doing things that feel like mentorship. That's part of their job. Just like when it feels like mentorship when I'm providing guidance and other things to students, that's part of my job. I get paid to do that. That's why the distinction needs to be made between those two things.

Sure, sure. Okay, thank you for clearing that up. And I think by this point we've discussed a lot of things, right? We've talked about what mentoring is, what it isn't, and what makes it so unique. But from a basic psychological standpoint, why do we even mentor in the first place, right? In the fourth chapter, you break this concept down by talking about it from a historical standpoint. You bring up the religions of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and you even mention that the act of giving has been valued since the beginning of humanity. In addition to this, you also bring up other reasons, such as an innate desire to feel useful, to receive validation, and to leave a legacy behind. So my last question for today is, can you elaborate a little bit on these reasons, and can you talk about why they play such a massive role in why we mentor from a psychological standpoint?

Sure. We all need to feel like we matter. You know, when you have purpose, and that is gaining all the knowledge that you're getting when you're young and moving forward, you don't have time to reflect. But once you hit a certain stage, you have that time to reflect and you want to say to yourself, did I matter? I mean, they have movies like that are out there, you know, like It's a Wonderful Life, where somebody gets to see the impact they make on their community. This is what we want. We want to feel like people think, wow, good thing he or she was here on this planet. It's a better place because of them. So when we start to think of ourselves, we start to think outside of just our identity in terms of our job or our status in school or other places, and we start to say, who am I in the world? And how do I matter? Am I relevant? Am I somebody that people think, wow, good thing they are somebody I know, or they did something positive in the world? That's a very, very powerful thing, and it's also legacy. People want to know that they made an impact that got carried on with other people. So that's how it becomes so important.

Sure, that makes a lot of sense. You know, I feel like through our meeting time and, you know, us talking, I feel like we've really explored that mentorship isn't something that you have to consciously even want or really have to search out there for, because at the end of the day, everyone innately is looking to be a mentor to someone else and is looking for someone else to be a mentor to them. And I think that adds a lot more meaning to what mentorship truly is. So I want to complete this episode with your closing words in this chapter, which I think closes it out really well. Why do we mentor? It's more than a mere transaction. It's a value we hold dear. Mentoring reveals our purpose and motivation, the driving force behind our engagement in these transformative relationships. We mentor for myriad reasons and in myriad ways. Some styles are deliberate choices while others emerge organically from our interactions. So with that, part 1 of The Mentorship Edge comes to an end. Today we've talked about how we're built to mentor, the 5 key components of mentoring, what it is and isn't, and why we are genetically hardwired to do so in the first place. I want to give you a big thank you, Deborah. I really appreciate you joining us today.

Thank you for having me. It was delightful speaking with you today. I think you're a great mentor with your podcast.

I appreciate that. And a big thank you to all of our listeners. Looking forward to part 2. And until then, keep on learning, keep on changing, and keep on growing. We'll see you next time, everyone.