Support + Cultivate
Help people become who they already are.
Great mentors help people grow into what the mentees were meant to be, not what the mentors once were.
Sam + Brian
Surachai, or Coach "Sam," was one of the most successful wrestling coaches in the history of high school wrestling, winning 18 Louisiana state titles and finishing runner up seven times in a 33-year career. His success included a run of 11 consecutive state championships from 1988 to 1998. He is a small, fiercely determined man, a coach who was extremely demanding. He expected nothing less than 100% effort from his athletes in training and competition. While driven and demanding, he could also be inquisitive, flexible, and supportive, especially if one of his top athletes needed him.
Brian was a wrestler, but describes his experience with Coach Sam as unique among his teammates. Brian was part of that championship run, and recalled his coach had “absurdly high expectations” for the athletes. Practices were legendarily long and excruciating. Coach Sam wanted his wrestlers to largely have a consistent approach to competition on the mat: to be aggressive grapplers.
Brian recalled that he was less a grappler and more of a judo-style thrower. Rather than coach him in a way that suited his coach’s obvious strengths and track record of success, Coach Sam allowed Brian to do more auto-didactive, self-directed training than other wrestlers. Practices were still intense for Brian. But Sam allowed him to work on the side, away from most teammates, usually with a partner who was suited to honing his unique style.
At matches, Brian recalls Coach Sam sitting in his corner throughout, less cheering than quietly instructing, and afterwards having a private word that was more a guided reflection than a fiery speech.
Outside of the gym, Brian remembers it was Sam who was there for him at a life-changing moment. Brian’s father died. As a high school student experiencing a monumental loss, he said many teachers tried to be supportive in their own way. But Coach Sam, he recalls, was ever-present, always dedicated to supporting one of his athletes. He showed support in the way a wrestling coach would—pushing and prodding, never giving up, always being there when Brian needed him most, on or off the mat.
Brian and Sam started connecting nearly every day during the school’s lunch period. Sometimes they talked about wrestling, sometimes about academics, sometimes about how Brian was making his way through the world. Coaching became mentoring, and their connection became not just about making Brian a better wrestler, but also helping through an extraordinary time in his life.
When they did talk about wrestling, Brian and Coach Sam would review matches, strategies, and ways that Brian might need to hone his approach to be successful using his unique talents. Sam asked as many questions as he gave instructions, often prodding Brian about what did not work in previous matches and what he should do differently in future meets. Brian could go his own way—Sam was just never going to let him give up, or give up on him.
In describing his relationship with his coach years later, Brian quotes Socretes, describing Coach Sam as the “midwife of other people’s ideas.” Brian appreciated for Coach Sam’s treating him as a unique athlete, recognizing his individuality, and challenging him with questions and discussion rather than just relentless, uniform team training. For being there at his time of greatest need, he appreciated someone who was always available and invested.
This individualized approach to coaching and mentoring paid off for Brian and Coach Sam. Brian twice made the state’s championship match in his weight class, in both his junior and senior years. In his senior year, Brian pinned every opponent except one. Brian’s individual success contributed to the team’s success, as they won state titles both years.
In her work as a researcher and mentor, professor Beronda Montgomery has written about cultivating unique individuals. Currently a Vice Present and Dean at Grinnell College, her academic background is in researching the biology of plants. In her essay on mentoring lessons drawn from plants and plant care, Dr. Montgomery suggests that just as humans can help care for plants by helping them adapt to their environment, mentors can be most effective by “by facilitating individual progress or advancement in a particular environment1.” In other words, great mentors do not assume that they need to fix a mentee, or turn a mentee into someone else in the same way that effective plant care doesn’t entail trying to make a plant grow into another species. Great mentors, she says, help mentees as “they move along a self–defined path.” They help mentees grow into what was always inside the seed, reaching for the light wherever it falls in their shared environment. Mentors know they do not need to change one and likely can’t change the other.
There are things mentors can model and teach but, ultimately, great mentors cultivate mentees. That is, they help them grow into the best version of who they are. This is another balancing act, or another Mean of Mentoring. In a previous post, I noted that Aristotle took this idea of a mean from mathematics: that virtues balance qualities that are neither in deficit nor excess2. For mentors, one way they do this is to balance between role modeling their way on the one hand and helping learners grow in their own way on the other. Great mentors help people grow into what the mentees were meant to be, not what mentors once were.
Sam taught and coached, but also guided Brian’s self-discovery. He coached him as an athlete on the one hand, and cared for him as a father figure on the other. It demonstrates a respect for the individual and the breadth of a coach’s knowledge of wrestling, that he could adjust his style of coaching to fit this particular, talented athlete’s style and strengths. It also demonstrates his commitment to an individual student who had needs beyond athletics, requiring his coach to see him as a full and complete human being.
Montgomery, BL (2018). From Deficits to Possibilities: Mentoring Lessons from Plants. Public Philosophy Journal, 1:10.25335/M5/PPJ.1.1-3
Aristotle. (2011). Nicomachean Ethics (R.C. Bartlett & S.D. Collins, Trans.). The University of Chicago Press.