Obstacles + Opportunities
Mentoring the whole person.
Jack + Andi
He cared and he challenged me. I don’t know how you balance those two things, but he did it.
Jack has spent his career working in high school sports administration. Over time, he became the executive director of the association governing high school sports for the state of Michigan. He began by mentoring as his own mentor had: He established a library in the office, and encouraged staff to be well-read. He continued to write, and encouraged others to write to clarify their own thinking, but he was learning to be different from his own mentor in many ways. Some staff, including Andi, initially found him “intimidating” and distant. Jack was willing to be a mentor, but Andi’s mentorship did not begin until she was ready.
Andi admitted she did not have much of professional direction when she came to work at the association as a 22-year-old intern. In her early professional years, she was more focussed on the social interests she had in college, rather than being the high-achiever she had been as a high school state champion. “I had no business working here,” she said.
She gradually discovered a hunger for her work. Her nine-hour weekly commitment turned into more as she became curious about the history and inner-workings of the association. So she found ways to talk to Jack. As she asked him questions, he told her about the library he established in the office. They talked about writing as a way to clarify thinking. She discovered not only their mutual interest in the music of The Eagles, but also Jack’s passion for staff to know the history and context of their work.
Andi recalls that, as she worked harder, she became impatient about opportunity and promotion. Jack stressed that there was a path forward for her, but that she needed to wait. As Andi became more engaged in her work, she and Jack formed a connection that became an unspoken mentorship. Her opportunities grew with their connection, as did Jack’s insistence that Andi understand more about how their organization worked and the history and rationale behind its structures and policies. Jack nurtured the relationship by coming by her office almost daily to check in, ask questions, or tell her about developments in his role as the association’s director. He shared wisdom, Andi said, but also his own struggles and questions, inviting her into his deliberations. That connection, even when it was just small talk, was reassuring to her: “It seems small, but it was big. You trusted that opportunity would come.”
A change in their mentorship came when Jack agreed to put Andi in charge of the association’s growing social media profile, a new area for them at the time. Jack recalls Andi having “untapped talents,” and perhaps being ready for the challenge and the responsibility. Jack had Andi work with their communications lead, Andy, to grow their social media presence. Andi proposed not only diving into social media, but also using these then-new platforms as a primary means of communicating with the public, including students.
Jack asked her to write up their ideas, and then to take the lead. Andi recalled, “He knew I had a tenacity, but I needed a focal point for that energy.” Andi stressed the level of trust Jack put in them: “He never micromanaged,” she said, but instead asked lots of detailed questions, required a written plan, and then stepped aside to let them dive into their work.
Communications changed, eligibility changed, and their workplace changed. As a result, Jack had to mentor and manage differently than he had been mentored. Andi recalls that work was changing for them as well, recalling that Jack needed a new kind of employee—more “utility players,” she called them—and she wanted to be one, even if she didn’t know how at first. Andi described Jack as excited to learn from younger staff, humble enough to ask questions and share things he was struggling with.
Over time, Jack had to challenge Andi in new ways. He asked her to take on duties outside of communications, which created a set of obstacles and opportunities that initially overwhelmed her. Suddenly, she was handling all of the postseason tournaments for the state, sorting out medals and trophies and ticketing and credentials and tournament sites. She was trying to get a grip on what felt like too many things at once, but Jack assured her she could handle it, and that this might lead to the opportunity she was waiting for: “Jack taught me the best answer was always ‘yes.’”
“He cared and he challenged me. I don’t know how you balance those two things, but he did it. He was always pushing me–gently, but he was pushing,” Andi remembered. Jack was there for her every step of the way, and he made sure others were, too.
In one meeting early in her career, Andi spoke out forcefully on a contentious policy question. She described herself as losing her cool, being out of line. For his part, Jack allowed a colleague to scold Andi in private. Then, he took her aside himself, and gently explained that there were softer, but more effective ways, to make her voice heard. She remembers these two conversations as important, the way Jack approached the misstep as “fatherly.”
As they developed a closer working relationship, Andi said she trusted Jack enough to broach a difficult, but important subject: she came out to him. This was difficult for Andi, one of few women in the office, younger than Jack and most of the other staff, and likely the only person in the association who openly identified as LBGTQ+ at that time. They had built such a rapport, however, that she trusted him and their relationship. Jack came to her wedding, and their spouses know each other.
In Jack’s retirement, Andi still goes to him with questions or for advice. As their work and the landscape of scholastic sports continues to change, Andi said she sometimes feels like she is not fully carrying the banner that Jack left to her. But he remains reflective, humble, and unemotional–reminding her some things will change, others will always be the same
As a mentor, Jack was doing many things at once: showing mentees the ropes, forging personal relationships with them, teaching them about their organization, advancing their careers, learning from them as they developed new areas of work.
Jack and Andi were adults when they met working at the association, but one mentoring theory that illustrates the complex way Jack approached their relationship comes from researcher Jean Rhodes at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her mechanisms of youth mentoring model captures how mentors can take a multifaceted approach as Jack did, by supporting goal-oriented development, personal growth, and connecting to other relationships that mentees have1.
Jack built a level of personal trust and rapport with Andi, connecting over shared music interests and a love of sports. This evolved into his efforts—sometimes in concert with others—to support her growth into a leader. It was not exclusively professional or personal, but a both-and approach. It was a Mean. Similar to Sam’s approach with Brian, Jason’s philosophy on plebe summer at the Naval Academy, or Jack’s experience with his own mentor. Finding the Mean in Mentoring means not making the focus either the relationship or the task at hand, but the whole person, including their growth, their goals, and within their web of other relationships. Professor Rhodes’s model describes how that looks with kids. Mentors like Jack or Jason show how a work mentor can take such a robust approach with adults.
Great mentors mentor the whole person, even at work. They mentor in concert with others, and on dimensions that are personal and professional. They mentor when the mentee is ready. They consider what they can take from their own experience of being mentored, what needs to evolve, and what other supportive people can bring to the mentee’s growth.
Rhodes, J.E. (2005) A Model of Youth Mentoring. In Handbook of Youth Mentoring; DuBois, D.L., Karcher, M.J., Eds.; Sage Publications Ltd.: Washington, DC; pp. 30–43.