Knowing that you have some life experience under your belt can be a real boost for those moments when you find yourself standing at the crossroads of your own development. Mentorship is a great way to learn new skills, build a support network of like-minded people, and bring out the best in yourself.
Mentorship can seem difficult to find, but with a little research you can find a mentor who will help you create your dream job, business, or even life.
Mentors are in high demand these days. A mentor is a person, who is willing to help you with your professional development and who can point you in the right direction to achieve your goals. As a new mentor seeker, you might not know where to start. Mentors are different for everyone, and what works for you may not work for someone else. In the following article, I will give you 7 important things you will gain from the right mentor.
So you want to be a great coach, maybe even a real super coach. But how are you supposed to develop and grow if you don’t know… what you don’t know? The right mentor can make a difference. Here’s how mentoring can enhance your career – and what to look for in a mentor.
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Imagine that you had no parents at birth.
Instead, you have a thick book called How to be Human.
And let’s say you can overcome some immediate obstacles (e.g., not being able to read, not being able to hold your head, not being able to hold a book in front of your eyes).
Let’s just say you could read this heavy book from start to finish as many times as you want.
All information about the person will be available to you.
But no matter how often you read this undoubtedly interesting and useful book, your education in the field of human existence will always remain a bit….. empty.
Mentors are to formal education what parents are to a heavy book.
You could find your way in the world just by reading.
But it’s much easier, much faster and much more fun to go through this life with the support of people who have more experience than you.
Of course, the right mentor could care much less if you wear a sweater or clean up your room, but like parents, they are living, breathing, three-dimensional keepers of experience, wisdom, and growth.
You, an intelligent reader, must have read many books. Maybe you have letters after your name to prove it.
I hope you had good teachers. Teachers, yes. But also less formal teachers, like your wise grandmother or your boss who tells you things directly because I know it’s good for you.
Now compare these two things:
- Books.
- People who care about you.
Both are good.
But what has given you more wisdom? Real wisdom. The wisdom that sticks with you. Wisdom that creeps into the cracks of your mind, your heart, your inner self and your soul.
In my opinion:
People, not sites, have had the greatest impact on you.
Real growth and development comes not from information, but from relationships.
In many cases, they were older, wiser, more advanced people who welcomed you into their world, figuratively took you under their wing and kicked your ass with experience and kindness.
But most importantly, these people reassured you and encouraged you to keep going when you had a scrape on your knee, a snotty nose and the words I failed on your lips.
In short, they cared.
Mentors are people who have done the work themselves and are willing to share their wisdom to help you climb the SuperJe Mountain.
Do not trust this stone. It looks solid, but when you step on it, it slides out from under your feet.
Stop by this creek. The view is beautiful and the water is clear. You’ll need it to perk you up in the next class.
Forget your lost compass. I will teach you how to find true north.
It doesn’t matter what field you’re in, whether it’s careerism or mountaineering.
Everyone benefits from having a guide who has been there and is generous enough and willing to enlighten your way.
(Yes, that’s you; you may need a mentor).
(This also applies to your clients, who will need your support).
Mentors have definitely made a difference in my career and I have seen the power of mentoring to help students, clients and other coaches.
In today’s article, I talk about 7 invaluable things you’ll learn with the right mentor. (These are also the things your customers will come to you for).
Use it as a guide in finding a mentor, benefiting from mentoring, and offering mentoring to others.
1. The right mentor will explain the real rules to you.
You know, all those unofficial, unwritten rules that aren’t in any book or handbook.
They will tell you who you can talk to about this and that and when. How things are really done.
For example, here’s what a good mentor would tell you:
Don’t do all the work for your clients. Don’t take away their pain. Teach them something, but also let them struggle sometimes. Wrestling helps build muscle. Fighting builds resilience. In the end, your customers will thank you.
Don’t make the customer dependent on you for life. Instead, provide results, teach them skills, and let them fly on their own. A satisfied and confident customer will widely publicize your excellent coaching. One satisfied customer is worth more than thousands of ads.
You can even learn things like:
Think you need to impress the big smart guy at the top? Listen, boy: The one you really need to impress is the quiet guy next to him who takes all the notes. By the way, the quiet guy takes coffee break at 11 and is obsessed with Seinfeld quotes. No reason.
Sometimes you don’t feel comfortable with the real rules you learn from your mentors. Your innocence will fade and your naive optimism will fade. Your romantic ideals will be burned and your forehead broken.
But that’s a good thing.
Once you free yourself from your illusions, your real training begins.
This is a real world education, and it may not work quite the way you learned in school.
So try to work with people who are honest and open with you. Mentor has the street smarts to balance your book smarts. Take a walk with them and get ready to open your eyes.
2. The good mentor will give you humility.
Look at the wall of my diplomas! You’ll say.
And my best test score in the class! And my textbook collection! I read them all and put in some great highlights.
But, uh…
Can you refer to this manual when your client, sitting across from you, cringes and cries tears, afraid of what will happen if he confronts his feelings instead of reaching for his food?
Can you hide behind your framed degree when your 80-year-old client tells you that his body doesn’t work like it used to and you can understand him?
Would you be willing to pass your A+ test to prove your ability to a client who doubts your ability because she hasn’t reached her unrealistic goals in two weeks of working with you?
A good mentor will tell you the truth.
They will prepare you for the inevitable hard cases and tell you how they overcame them.
They will also tell you that complex issues are different for everyone. A client that is easy for your colleague may be difficult for you and vice versa. There is nothing that makes a client difficult. (Mentors will tell you that YOU are usually the difficulty).
They will remind you of the need, as a beginner, to enter a coaching practice with an open mind, not a closed, all-knowing expertise.
Of course, mentors shouldn’t intentionally crush your dreams. But a good mentor introduces you to the difficult and surprising intricacies of reality, physiology, and human behavior. They will remind you, sometimes painfully, of the need to be humble.
Humility encourages us to grow. If we are not humble, we are stuck.
A good mentor can remind you that there is always room for improvement. And just be a witness and be there for the client’s difficulties. Chances are, you won’t be that customer’s savior after all.
Between arrogance and terrifying uncertainty, there is a soft space where humility and quiet confidence coexist in a symbiotic ecosystem. It is in this rich and precious microclimate – not in the dry, arid, lifeless space of expertise and patchwork – that craft thrives.
3. The good mentor will give you wisdom.
There is a knowledge of things. And then there is wisdom.
Wisdom is more like advanced pattern recognition combined with a deep understanding of the human condition.
Wisdom is like knowledge without understanding.
The customer comes in and you immediately have an idea of what they need and want. You can’t even say exactly how you know. They just do.
Wisdom is a way to know if a customer is cheating on you or not, such as when your customer desperately throws up his hands and claims he is doing everything right, but his belt buckle hasn’t moved an inch. And maybe it’s a twitch of the mustache, but something in your gut tells you there’s a hole in their story.
Wisdom is knowing when to take a client out of their comfort zone, like when you convinced a client she could finish a race and it turned out to be one of the highlights of her life.
Wisdom is also knowing when not to push, e.g. B. if you told your overworked client to rest, reuse, and not change anything until she was ready. And it turned out to be exactly what she needed.
A good mentor can help you develop this experience-based intuition.
They will share their practice stories and encourage you to think more deeply about your clients’ circumstances and put yourself in new coaching situations to practice and broaden your experience.
In this way, you will build an internal reference library of wisdom, based not only on facts or book knowledge, but also on intuition and deep insights.
This wisdom is the foundation of your wilderness survival training.
Wisdom will maximize your effectiveness and efficiency as a coach, transforming you from a smart coach into a coach who knows what’s on his mind.
Coach.
You’re not supposed to grasp all the wisdom on your own. Instead, take it from others.
Mentors have a wisdom account from which you can borrow without interest. We can add their insights to our own collective experiences. As if, instead of relying solely on our own lives, we now have millions of past lives to learn from.
If you are looking for a mentor, look behind the curtain and find true wisdom there. People who have already developed their own coaching intuition and gained a lot of experience are better able to help you develop your own wisdom.
4. The right mentor gives you the big picture.
If you are relatively new to a field, or even if you are an advanced practitioner, it is easy to get confused about the details.
How?
Q. How many grams of protein are in a serving? What about a specific amino acid composition? Do you like this serum brand?
Q. What is the optimal ratio of aerobic load to recovery time during a HIIT?
Q. I love spinach, but I’ve heard it contains too many oxalates. Should I eat it? What about broccoli? What about goitrogens in prairie plants – or do indoles keep them in balance?
Q. For maximum activation of the glutes, do you recommend weighted hip thrusts or pendulum hip stretches?
Q. Should I host a webinar series or group retreat to get the most out of my investment?
Because you are a beginner, you have no filter for the importance of details. They don’t know how to prioritize. They lack perspective.
You don’t have 10 or 30 years of experience giving you the answers:
A. Whatever, just take the protein.
A. Meh. Move your ass.
A. Eat your fucking vegetables.
A. Shut up and get over here.
A. If you’re interested, give it a try and see what happens.
A mentor will tell you when something is really important and when it’s not. And believe me, this way you save a lot of time.
Find a mentor to help you separate what you really need to know from what you don’t.
5. The right mentor will help you deal with ambiguity and uncertainty.
Mentors help you, as a student, to face the unknown.
This is important because no matter how many master protocols, clinical pearls and other insights you collect over the years, the fact remains: Every customer is new.
While the experience will help you recognize patterns and refine your intuition and knowledge, each client session is a human adventure in itself, with all the surprises, intrigue and mystery you can only dream of.
A mentor will never be able to give you the answer to every possible coaching riddle.
Life is too complicated and people are too mysterious to be predicted and defined.
Instead, mentors can teach you to be comfortable communicating problems.
They can provide you with approaches, tools and strategies that can shed light on the darkest and most mysterious matters.
It’s the difference between seeing the Golden Gate Bridge on a map and being able to navigate the hilly, winding, foggy streets of San Francisco without help.
Mentors will help you if you get lost.
Just when you think you’ve chosen the right path, new information, a paradigm-shifting revelation, or just a big barricade of resistance from the client appears, and your perfectly paved road becomes unusable.
The mentors will help you get back on the ground and explore the area in more detail.
They will help you find detours, show you where the ground is soft so you can dig tunnels, and how to build bridges. They will show you that there are endless ways to achieve your goal.
Here are some examples of problems a good mentor can help you with:
Is there a client who takes any suggestion of change as a personal affront? No problem. Here’s how to coach with positivity and encouragement while growing and moving your client forward.
Do you have a client who is suffering from physical pain and symptoms with no measurable medical explanation? Let’s get going. You will learn how to teach a client body awareness and relaxation techniques.
Do you have a client who has so many diagnoses and medications that his head is spinning and his tongue is hanging out? It’s all right, it’s all right. Learn how to build a strong referral network here.
In short, mentors can help you find solutions to difficult and confusing problems. Not a solution, but options, experiences, tips and practices. Many solutions.
They show you how to be adaptable, flexible, persistent and, yes, crafty. (You didn’t think good coaching could be sneaky, did you?)
Try working with a mentor who is already uncomfortable.
6. The right mentor will give you a map of the future.
Mentors are like a horizon:
You’ll be here… in five years. Or 10.
They are the flesh and blood of your potential. They will give you proof that it is possible.
Maybe your mentor won’t come out of an intense session with a difficult client broken and exhausted, but full of energy and vitality.
What if you could tackle the hard cases not by biting your nails, but by rubbing your hands delightedly?
Maybe your mentor has a practice where he works on the beach one month and in a cool cafe in Amsterdam the next.
What if you had built this flexibility, freedom and adventure into your career?
Or perhaps your mentor inspires you by reaching out to less experienced coaches for guidance, wisdom, and a no-nonsense approach to getting results for clients?
What if you were a coach that people trusted, admired and learned from?
Of course, it’s not enough to look and admire. Much of the work to achieve your vision will have to be done by you.
Because as a coach, your work is practical in nature. You learn by doing. Experiment. And, of course, make mistakes.
They will make a mistake, stray, or get caught up in confusion and distraction. And if, with enough sweat and perseverance, you finally find your way through the maze, a mentor can help you pinpoint exactly where you are on your career path.
Most of us learn by imitation and modeling. Having evidence of our dreams makes them more real, more attainable.
7. The good mentor cares.
The most important thing is the support of good mentors. ABOUT THE FERRY.
They probably have a general idea of how to promote your specific business area, but more importantly, they care about how you promote it.
You are interested in what makes you unique. It’s important for them to help you succeed. They care about you in that mysterious and inexplicable way we often care about people who remind us a little of ourselves.
They help you feel supported and understood.
A mentor can constantly assess your progress and what you still need to develop as a coach. They can hold you accountable and prevent you from coming to your senses.
As we like to say: Coaches need coaches too.
Just being coached teaches us in the most profound way to become a coach.
Mentors can see us more clearly than we can see ourselves.
This can mean a more accurate recognition of our shortcomings, but also a gentler and more supportive attitude toward them. This can mean recognizing our superpowers before we experience them ourselves, and drawing from them the unique potential that lies within us.
Your mentor should care about you first.
When someone you respect believes in you, it can be transformative.
Are you ready for this?
What to do next
Some advice from
Who you are today and who you will be in five years is determined by the mentors you choose. (And the one you choose).
Find out how to find the right mentor for you here.
1. Ask yourself Do you have a mentor?
If not, do you have any candidates in mind? Who would be your mentor in your dream world?
What would you like to see in a mentor? What kind of person would she be?
2. What areas of expertise do you aspire to?
- The science of nutrition?
- The psychology of coaching ?
- Business strategy?
- Professional development?
- The wisdom of life in general?
You can have a mentor or coach for anything. All kinds of things. Whether it’s how to dress, how to manage your time, how to cook chicken or how to tie your laces (seriously, there’s a lesser known but better way to tie your laces).
3. What – and who – do you need to become the best coach you can be?
Please specify exactly what you are looking for. Then start looking.
Look for people who are a little further along this journey than you are. People who embody the qualities described in this article.
Be quiet and listen as much as you can. Speak only to ask questions or explore ideas, not to make statements, try to impress your mentor, and/or say I already know this.
Be instructive. (It’s hard, isn’t it? Now you know what your clients are going through.) Be open-minded. Be willing to learn.
Do you want strategies to improve your coaching?
It’s no secret that master trainers develop over time, through training and constant practice, usually under the guidance of a mentor or coach.
The only company in the world that works with thousands of internal nutrition coaching clients and trains health, fitness and wellness professionals in our realistic methods of achieving results.
And here’s the good news: Our next Level 2 certification workshop begins on Wednesday the 22nd. September 2021.
Do you want to gain full confidence in your coaching skills? Attract (and retain) more customers? Develop and strengthen your practice? Then the level 2 certification is for you.
It is specifically designed for Level 1 students and graduates who understand that knowledge of food science alone is not enough.
Part masterclass, part graduate program, part coaching – this is the only course in the world that will help you master the art of coaching, which means better results for your clients and a better business for you.
Since we only allow a limited number of professionals and the program sells out every time, I highly recommend you sign up for our VIP list below. In that case, you will have the opportunity to sign up 24 hours before anyone else. What’s even better is that you get a significant discount on the total price of the program.
[Comment: The Level 2 Master Class is reserved for students and graduates of the Level 1 certification. So if you haven’t signed up for this program yet, start there].
Interested? Add your name to the VIP list. Save up to 37% and reserve your seat 24 hours in advance.
Wednesday the 22nd. In September, we will be freeing up seats for the next Level 2 certification workshop.
If you want to know more, we have put together the following VIP list for you, which offers you two benefits.
- Paying less than others. We want to encourage people who want to get started and are ready to achieve excellence in their coaching practice. That’s why we offer you a discount of up to 37% off the total price when you join the VIP Masterclass list.
- Sign up 24 hours before others and increase your chances of getting a spot. We only open a PN workshop twice a year. Due to the high demand and the very limited number of places, we expect the tickets to sell out quickly. But if you sign up for the VIP Masterclass list, you have the chance to sign up 24 hours before anyone else.
If you are serious about becoming one of the best trainers in the world, we are prepared to mentor you for a full year in a PN level 2 certification masterclass.The world of business, entrepreneurship and social change is filled with people who are good at what they do. However, many of those with the most potential remain stuck in their current position because they don’t have a mentor to help them reach their goals. The truth is there are mentors in all walks of life, and we’re going to tell you how to identify them and what to do if you want to have one for yourself.. Read more about who do you identify and accept as your mentor someone who has provided you career guidance and why and let us know what you think.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why finding a mentor is important?
Finding a mentor is important because it will help you connect to the industry by receiving guidance and experience from a more senior or better established member of the industry you wish to become a part of. It’s helpful to know someone’s thoughts on the path you’re trying to take in the industry and …
What makes a good mentor and how do you find one?
An effective mentor is somebody who brings the personal and professional qualities you don’t have but who can bring them to their role as a mentor. For example my mentorship started out with me asking my career accountant to be my mentor. I knew very little about how to find mentors. I’d never asked somebody. I was really concerned about somebody not being interested where I was in my career. Another fear of mine was I was going to be the worst mentee ever, not knowing how to ask people to help me. What ended up happening was somebody turned around and asked me to be their mentor. So we tagh each other on LinkedIn and talk once a week for an hour. It was an easy conversation because we knew so much about each other and what we wanted and needed from the conversation. You can always ask at career centers. You’ll find somebody who is a fan of young professional development and who wants to share what they’ve learned about their career experience.
What is an important thing a mentor can help you with?
The best mentors may use their positions and expertise to mentor a student on how to find and run a successful business, such as how to attract and manage the right employees, marketing, or making a product line profitable. They may also help students develop strategic partnerships, find the best avenues for success, and identify paths for growth.
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