The topic of mentorship has always been important to me. While working with the federal government, I was a project manager of a student recruitment program that hired post secondary students for the summer to help them gain valuable work experience.
I was in role for approximately five years and took it very seriously. With a large number of the students hired never having worked before, it was important to me to ensure that their first experience was a positive one.
It may not have been included as part of my job description but I knew that I was their mentor.
Several months back I was contacted by a writer who was doing a piece on mentorship and was asked for my thoughts on the
topic.
In my view, the role of a mentor is very similar to that of a teacher but with a slight wrinkle.
The traditional model of a mentorship relationship has a more experienced and perhaps wiser individual imparting knowledge to a less experienced person.
The thing with mentoring that many don`t realize is that it can happen anytime or anyplace and isn`t designated to a monthly time slot or a discussion over lunch.
Our actions or how we live our lives can serve as mentors to others.
As we learn in John Wooden`s book,
A Game Plan for Life, it`s even possible for us to have mentors who we`ve never met.
The book is broken down into two parts. Coach Wooden identifies the seven mentors who had a profound impact on his life in the first half.
In the second half, he then shares stories about seven people whose lives he helped shaped. One of those seven is Bob Vigars, an elementary school teacher from Canada who life was profoundly impacted by Coach Wooden.
Oh yeah, they`ve never met before.
My good friend,
Don Yaeger co-authored
A Game Plan for Life and joins me on the next episode of
HCL Radio to talk about this very special project.
Listen as Don describes how this book came to be.
In addition, I`ll also be joined by Bob Vigars who shares exactly what Coach Wooden has meant to him.
Here part of what Bob had to say.
Thanks for reading!
