The Power of Mentorship
A tiny adjustment can unleash your full potential in an instant.
Twenty years ago, I first saw the transformative power of a mentor. The relationship was brief — really, it was one conversation that almost instantly helped me unleash an ability I didn’t even know I had.
I was warming up for a swim meet. I was always a mediocre athlete among swimmers that were competing in Junior Olympics, but that didn’t discourage me. I loved the water, and loved one of the most difficult strokes — the butterfly stroke. But I looked ridiculous and I was slow, and I knew it. But I kept plugging along, doggedly hoping that with enough effort, some day I might place in a meet.
As I pulled myself out of the warm-up lane, one of my teammates dad’s (who was also a coach for the elite Junior Olympics swimmers) said to me, “you’re pulling too much water. Make your stroke more shallow.” He had been watching me warm up.
That was the length of our relationship — a brief, insightful couple of sentences.
I placed for the first time at that meet.
I helped my team place in relays as well. My swim coach was shocked. They stopped making fun of my stroke. I lettered in swimming that year.
This is the power of mentoring and coaching.
It is the magical relationship between someone who has walked the path for years — the distillation of tens or hundreds of thousands of observations — articulated to the mentee in a way that it can be immediately accepted and applied.
A mentor is a practitioner that seeks to support and elevate the newcomer to a craft by offering up exactly the right technique, at the right time, in such a way that the mentee’s moment of epiphany is accelerated. They are able to achieve and fully realize that moment that they have been dreaming of for years. They can fully arrive to their power.
This is what we strive for with New Media Mentors. As digital tools become a seamless part of organizing, it’s important to think about ways to align tools with the purpose and mission of our organization’s goals. The tools New Media Mentors has built are the distillation of decades of work and tested methods that help us focus goals and move with purpose for maximum impact.
What does that really mean?
Let’s figure out better ways to plan our work. In the nonprofit and progressive space, so many of us move from one campaign to another, with a “my hair is on fire” tempo. Adding intentional planning to our work habits can help us make more strategic decisions, even if we’re in the middle of on-going battles.
Let’s find a way to share technique. New Media Mentors is developing a new approach to learning, where we’re pairing robust curricula with one-on-one mentorship sessions. That means the technique doesn’t just get delivered in a lecture. It means the technique is applied directly to your work as we come along side you to answer questions and help you call forward your own ability to solve problems for your organization.
Let’s remember that we’re in this together. One of the greatest things that I have found in the nonprofit world is the people I meet along the way. We’re motivated by a desire to make the world a better place, to help people we see as our sisters and brothers, even if we’re not related by blood or culture. The work is driven by compassion and altruism. And yet this work can sometimes be lonely. But technology can be part of the solution! While digital collaboration tools still have room to be innovated on, the ability to gather with other like-minded people without having to step on a plane is really pretty cool (and nicer to the environment, too.)
Join us for our first digital workshop focused on #GivingTuesday and learn the secrets of year-end fundraising.
We’re all in this, together!
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Tanya Tarr is a senior mentor at New Media Mentors, helping nonprofit organizations make the world a better place. She loves helping people find their purpose and use strategy to do more with less. She also has never met a cat GIF she didn’t love.
