Mentorship and the 24x3 rule

Today I read an article in the Harvard Business Review titled "What the Best Mentors Do?" This interested me because of the structure of our class (having a formal mentor) as well as discussing character. One of the traits I think of when thinking of leaders I admire is stewardship. Its something that I have seen my Dad do with many younger hockey officials. It also interests me since I will have a preceptor this summer. The author, Anthony Tjan, actually wrote this two days ago. He interviewed 100 of top business executives, and found they all worked to "imprint their 'goodness'" on others. Tjan states, "Put another way, the best leaders practice a form of leadership that is less about creating followers and more about creating other leaders." I loved this quote because I think often times people confuse the path to leadership as a cut throat and trying to get to the top no matter what the cost. Instead it shows that building up others is essential to also building up ourselves. Here are the four things he says the best mentors do:

Put the relationship before the mentorship. All too often, mentorship can evolve into a “check the box” procedure instead of something authentic and relationship-based. For real mentorship to succeed, there needs to be a baseline chemistry between a mentor and a mentee. Studies show that even the best-designed mentoring programs are no substitute for a genuine, intercollegial relationship between mentor and mentee. One piece of research, conducted by Belle Rose Ragins, a mentoring expert and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, demonstrated that unless mentees have a basic relationship with their mentors, there is no discernable difference between mentees and those not mentored. All this is to say that mentoring requires rapport. At best, it propels people to break from their formal roles and titles (boss versus employee) and find common ground as people.
Focus on character rather than competency. Too many mentors see mentoring as a training program focused around the acquisition of job skills. Obviously, one element of mentorship involves mastering the necessary competencies for a given position. But the best leaders go beyond competency, focusing on helping to shape other people’s character, values, self-awareness, empathy, and capacity for respect. They know in the long run that there is a hard truth about soft matters and that these values-based qualities matter a lot more than skill enhancement. There are many ways to mentor people around these values and to build greater self-awareness.
Shout loudly with your optimism, and keep quiet with your cynicism. Your mentee might come to you with some off-the-wall ideas or seemingly unrealistic ambitious. You might be tempted to help them think more realistically, but mentors need to be givers of energy, not takers of it. Consider why an idea might work, before you consider why it might not. The best method I know for thinking this way is the 24×3 rule for optimism. I’ve written about this approach and tried to practice it for years, but it’s very difficult to master. Each time you hear a new idea, see if it is possible for you to spend 24 seconds, 24 minutes, or a day thinking about all the reasons that the idea is good before you criticize any aspect of it. It’s been said that the world prefers conventional failure over unconventional success; good mentors should encourage exploration of the latter. 
Be more loyal to your mentee than you are to your company. Of course, we all want to retain our best and brightest. We also want our people to be effective in our organizations. That said, the best mentors recognize that in its most noble and powerful form, leadership is a duty and service toward others, and that the best way to inspire commitment is to be fully and selflessly committed to the best interests of colleagues and employees. Don’t seek only to uncover your mentees’ strengths; look for their underlying passions, too. Help them find their calling. Most of us have experienced people, such as friends, religious leaders, and family members, who serve as our anchors and guides outside our workplaces. Why can’t we bring this same high level of trust and support inside the workplace? In a lot of cases, we owe it to mentees to serve as something more than just career mentors.

 I think that the most important of these four is the second, "Focus on character rather than competency." Especially in the health management field there are many paths we may take and different roles we may grow into. Going into a career that will likely lead to a leadership role, it is more important to have a solid foundation than simply mastering technical skills. This gets back to the argument that we have been discussing for a few weeks, EQ vs IQ. Development of EQ and character is just as important as training and development of technical skills. A really important point he makes is that mentorship is about "helping others become fuller versions of who they are." It is not about creating another version of yourself or molding someone in your image. It is about using your experiences and expertise to further the development of another person and allow them to become the best version of themselves that they can be.
I also found his 24x3 rule for optimism to be intriguing. It is important he creates the rule about thinking about why something CAN work instead of why it WON'T work. Criticism is important for learning and development but mentors can learn just as much from mentees. Everyone has a different way of thinking and new unconventional ideas can lead to successful outcomes for both parties. Mentorship is a relationship that should have give and take from both sides.  
There is much more beyond these four rules that make mentorship work. It is not a one-size-fits-all relationship. But I really enjoyed the article and thought Tjan made a lot of really valid points. Mentorship is really what makes our course so unique. No matter where my career takes me, I hope to be a mentor later in life. I find giving back is extremely important and very fulfilling.