- Excerpt
THE MENTOR'S SPIRIT:
Life Lessons on Leadership and
The Art of Encouragement
by Marsha Sinetar
INTRODUCTION
Marsha Sinetar
is the author of over 10 books including the classic best-seller "Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow." She
has had a long and varied career as a teacher, school administrator,
human resources consultant, entrepreneur, author, and public speaker.
Unlike most self-improvement instructors
and business gurus, all of Sinetar's works depend heavily on a sense
of spirituality. It is this combination of philosophy and practicality
that has endeared so many people to Sinetar. "The Mentor's Spirit" continues
in this tradition.
The excerpt below is taken from "The Fifth Lesson" of "The
Mentor's Spirit" and describes how Sinetar was inspired by mentors
to go to graduate school and beyond. It also discusses the concept of "vocation," which
can lead one into a position to mentor others -- even from a distance.
Fascinations Hold The Mentor's Spirit
by Marsha Sinetar
No family member guided me toward college. Conditions were
far too disruptive in my childhood for such responsible
nurturing. I can honestly report that I took myself to
college, determined to earn a degree, paid my own way, and
figured out alone where I was headed. The opinion of one
caring English teacher and one stewardly principal reinforced
my thinking. Glistening with pride over some test score,
those two insisted I was college material. Frankly, I thought
I was too, despite a kind of primary process (or creative)
thinking that made it nearly impossible to follow linear
directions. Their words bolstered my watery courage.
Later, as a self-supporting undergraduate toiling at minimum
wage jobs, I nearly flunked out of college for want of
regular meals and sleep. It was a wretched existence. All I
did was work. I was perennially exhausted and scared and
hungry. In that order. My fiance would bring me chicken
sandwiches on luscious homemade bread after his mother heard
that I routinely fainted in the library from lack of food.
She'd stack as many sandwiches as she could load into a brown
paper sack, along with heaps of freshly baked strudel. I've
never forgotten her generosity. Proper study habits and
graduate school were the farthest things from my mind. And
anyway, I didn't have the grades to be accepted.
One day when handing back an essay,
a professor said, "Study
skills aside, if you don't earn your Ph.D., you'll be
throwing away your life." His offhanded counsel grabbed my
attention. Something within heard a ring of truth, and I
consciously chose to listen. That casual comment from a
virtual stranger (the man hardly spoke to me again) nudged me
another step closer to my compelling purposes.
As it turns out, my work itself,
flowing as it has out of the tides of inner meanings and peak experiences,
became a luxurious self-educative dance, a true vocation. Vocation
is one vehicle for boundless growth, a means of imparting value
to ourselves and others through what we feel are sacred tasks
or archetypical images (long held in mind). My most sumptuous
options revealed themselves only after I left the public
sector for what C. S. Lewis calls the "utter east." At my
World's End a religious reality is made all the richer by a
contemplative existence.
Previously I'd suppressed restlessness,
convinced that my true interests didn't matter. Ultimately, to succeed
on my terms I had to listen inwardly, embrace my quirks and
differences, and learn to honor a creative disposition.
Artist Ben Shahn described that temperament, one that
characterizes artists, as "impatience, unwillingness to be
led, fear of being trapped in stable situations -- [even] an
arrogant belief in one's own authority . . . an intense
boredom with propriety and all its triteness" (John D. Morse,
ed., "Ben Shahn," New York: Praeger, 1972, p.198). Reading
Shahn I felt understood at last. That same relief hit me when
reading Thomas Merton and Evelyn Underhill, which shows you
how the mentor's spirit works.
In the corporate sector, everywhere
I looked I saw talented men and women discounting their truths and
finest tendencies while honoring a self-demeaning unreality. Smart,
idealistic adults seemed hampered by the same subjective constraints
that I'd let block me. Too many otherwise gifted adults
appeared constricted. Hesitation, misdirected ambition, an
inability or reticence to accept their own daring forbid
their saying, "This freedom, that love, that occupation is
what I want."
My rapport was instant with clients who glimpsed the
possibility of a vocation. For one thing, we fully
encountered each other, were somehow kindred spirits. In our
discussions, we divulged what we wanted. My new corporate
role was wonderfully multifaceted. Even as a novice, I
functioned as strategist and coach, was trusted as a
confidant and peacemaker. All that without benefit of titles
or position power. How refreshing...
With heightened commitment to our vocational pursuits comes
willingness to be distinctive, to stand alone, to be known.
So comes the probability of rejection. Our confidence or
inventiveness may alienate others, but this effect is more
than offset by the fulfillment, goodwill, and love of service
that emanates a genuine vocation. (I don't know a single
person engaged with a vocation who'd give it up for anything
else.) Service to others taught me to take prudent risks and
try out new leadership skills and tolerate discomfort.
Instead of squandering energy on what I feared might happen,
progressively I invested my inventive forces in each goal.
This is simply efficient.
Rather than dwell on the predicament, I embodied bits of my
solutions in low-risk prototypes as artfully as possible.
That practice revealed larger bits of the solution. First by
explaining that method, then by writing about it, I shared
the model with others while noticing a transcendent learning
taking place. These coaching sessions seemed to guide
executives' thought processes through educative explanation
yet left enough room for them to play with aggregates of
their solution independently. In other words, without me.
Our mentoring heart awakens with
maturity. First comes truth telling and sufficient self respect to
risk being real. It follows that we'll appreciate life enough to want
and trust others' success -- to wish them well as they set sail for
the depths of their unknowns. Those trustful attitudes can't be feigned.
Moreover, there's a developmental logic to that certitude: If our mentors
trust us with their truths and well wishes, we become animated by what
St. John of the Cross called "a
seed of fire": "very minute, burning and full
of power...like a vast fire of love and [the soul sees] that the point
of its virtue is in the heart of the spirit."
Copyright ©1998 by Marsha Sinetar. All rights reserved. Please do
not duplicate or distribute this material without consent from Marsha
Sinetar and St. Martin's Press. Thank you.
