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When I coach water polo, one of the first things I tell my team is: “Success doesn’t always end with a goal.” Players forget about the basics – not to mention teamwork and good sportsmanship – when they only think about scoring points. In the future, this actually reduces the effectiveness of the entire team. I want them to focus on the process as a substitute of focusing on the final result.
The result doesn’t really change my major responsibility as a coach. Win or lose, my job is still the same: to facilitate open and honest evaluation of what happened, including what went well and what didn’t. Winning a few games does not mean that the team has stopped developing.
I have the same view when I look after the employees of FutureFund, my SaaS company that provides: free fundraising platform for primary and secondary schools. In each cases, I encourage people to develop expertise in their field – showing them how to find winning solutions and discover areas for improvement no matter their results.
However, expertise cannot simply be given – it is something that can be earned and requires the ability to self-reflect. As a coach or business mentor, I do not provide answers. Instead, I lead people to find the answers themselves.
This means that my biggest tool as a mentor is the ability to ask questions. Here are the ones I find best.
– How do you think it went?
This is one of the first questions I ask when I’m coaching or mentoring someone recent. It shows me what a person can observe for himself.
Once I know what someone can see with their very own eyes, I better understand what skills and knowledge they are likely to apply to other endeavors. Let’s say a water polo player scores his first goal in three games – if he cannot tell me what he began doing in another way, I have no idea if it’s a coincidence or not. However, if they’ll discover a tactic that helped them rating a goal, I know I can count on them to use it again.
Here’s one other example: When I ask an engineer how the bug fix went, he may tell me that he thinks it went well because the bug was fixed. However, when I ask if they have gone back and looked for the same bug in other code, they often say no.
Again, results do not all the time indicate progress. If you want to get a better idea of your capabilities, ask people to tell you about the journey they went through to achieve those results.
“What would you do differently?”
Once people understand how to evaluate themselves, you can encourage them to make positive changes. When I ask someone to reflect on their past behavior, I all the time ask them to think about what they’d do in another way the next time a similar situation arises.
A player may know that he was slow during the game because he didn’t sleep well the night before – but why wasn’t he well rested? Did they drink alcohol or not sleep late? If so, would they do it again before the next game? What do they think would occur if they avoided drinking and as a substitute slept a full eight hours?
A mentor helps people answer these kinds of questions and helps them stay honest. Just remember that you don’t want it to sound like you’re scolding, because that makes people fear judgment and shut down. Mentoring is not about imposing actions; it’s about encouraging people to take responsibility for their very own development. This means you need to build trust with people so that they feel comfortable opening up to you.
Sometimes it’s helpful if a person’s mentor is not their direct manager, but someone who can as a substitute ask questions from an impartial place – corresponding to an external consultant. But when you’re caring for one of your employees, the best way to get an honest answer to this query is to show your personal vulnerability.
Try to lead by example. Tell a story about a similar learning experience you went through so they feel you are connecting with them and not under the microscope when you ask questions.
“How have you changed over time?”
Providing immediate feedback after a game or project helps people grow by reflecting on experiences while they are still fresh. But you also want them to be aware of long-term trends in their development – so I all the time like to ask questions that make people think about their performance over time.
If we’re playing baseball and I give immediate feedback every time the batter walks, he’ll grow – but I also needs to put him aside at some point and ask him to think about his previous 10 at-bats. This helps them see patterns or habits that go beyond their actions in a single game.
This is also great for helping people recognize the progress they have made after months or years of development. Some changes take much longer than others – corresponding to breaking lifelong habits, attitudes or addictions. Over time, it is simple to get discouraged and feel like incremental changes are now not enough – but when someone asks you to look back at who you were when you began, you get a completely different sense of how far you’ve come since then. And this may occasionally encourage you to take further motion.
Mentoring is like that too – ideally, you grow with the people you train or manage. Continue learning how to effectively mentor people in your life by learning about the different stages of mentoring in the article below.
Related: The importance of mentors