Thank you for your interest and emails concerning this series on what questions I am commonly asked by leaders in mentoring relationships. While many have heard the term mentoring, lots of you are not quite sure what takes place in a formal mentoring relationship. Here is my next cluster of topics that I commonly speak to executives about. I welcome your comments or questions so please leave a note in the comments section at the end.

The development of men and women leaders is my calling, starting with my family. My work as an Executive Mentor is to come alongside leaders and their organizations helping them to be effective, well balanced and successful.

Often, I am asked, “What do leaders want to talk to you about?”. Some topics come up frequently and I shared examples in my previous posts in this series found here and part two here.

A mentor walks beside you and, in doing so, helps build your confidence and leadership ability. We help you discover insights, skills and solutions for your business, church, organization, or life. Our support and guidance helps you to draw your own conclusions and decisions guided by experience and passion for you to be a better leader.

1. How to confront an employee

So many leaders have an aversion to conflict and, because of this, do not hold their staff accountable properly. This fear leads to siloing and team members creating their fiefdoms within the organization. Our fear of conflict is usually grounded in our upbringing, and a therapist can be helpful if you want to understand more about your fear of confronting.

Usually, something from the past has created assumptions about how it will go, and you back off.You can’t change what you refuse to confront. Suppose leaders spend time avoiding arguments or difficult conversations. In that case, they are surrounded by people with poor job performance, staff who do not work well with others, a toxic atmosphere in the office, and status quo results.

A mentor can do several things to help also. I usually start with assisting the leader in realizing the “cost” of not being direct and reminding them that it is part of their job. If we consider what might be gained by being direct, leaders often reconsider assumptions holding them back.

There are MANY mistakes we can make when confronting others, and a mentor can help. Two quick tips are:

1. Don’t wait and always speak about it in person.

2. Never use email or voicemail for this leadership function.

One book I recommend is Jill Scott’s “Radical Candor” where she describes how she had to learn to be more direct as a leader.

If we confront someone we should have one goal in mind: restoration, not embarrassment.

Chuck Swindoll

2. Making difficult decisions

Leaders who postpone making decisions frustrate their teams and lose the respect for their leadership. Over time if you keep deferring making a decision, you will lose your best employees who want more action, and you will encourage those who love the status quo. With similarities to leaders who have trouble confronting employees, leaders who fail to make decisions share fear as the core of the problem. Mentors can help you face your fears and gain confidence.

Overthinking and perfectionism are common culprits with those who delay making decisions. Leaders in the relentless pursuit of perfection are afraid of deciding because they fear making the wrong decision. Only God knows the future, and therefore any decision we make is subject to variables that might happen in the future.

I make a decision. Then, if things don’t turn out like I thought, I make another decision.

Dave Ramsey

A mentor can help you develop the skill of making decisions and can also help you to evaluate your choices after implementation. You can grow in this area by experience, but experience comes at a cost – you are going to make some mistakes.

3. Identifying and solving problems. 

A mentor can serve as a safe sounding board for a senior leader to think aloud about identifying a problem. It is essential to discover what the real problem is.

A friend in Houston who was a bonafide card carrying rocket scientist with NASA told me, “The problem is NEVER the problem.”

There is a lot of truth in that nugget. How many of us have solved a problem only to find that it created several new problems. Finding solutions to complex situations requires help. I am always impressed with a leader who knows they would benefit from some mentoring when solving the root cause of some leadership issue. Often fresh eyes, like a mentor provides, can point out the obvious and save a great deal of time and potential loss.

If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions

Albert Einstein

One leadership tip: Don’t let yourself get enamoured with large amounts of data. It is only helpful if you can make sense of it.

4. Handling transition and change. 

The global pandemic of COVID, created change for leaders. I think of change as the shift of an external situation. As we have seen, it can happen fast and cause global upheaval. Transition is the reorientation people need to make in response to change, and that takes time.

Sometimes mentors can help leaders, or their teams, accept the need for change. It is easy to believe what they’ve been doing, and how they’ve been doing it, is the best possible way to do it. To be successful in both implementation, and helping people we need to manage both the change and the transition.

Similarly, succession-related factors should be on a leader’s radar. Often a safe discussion with a mentor, who does not hold power or position over the leader, is constructive to begin strategizing for the future.

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

Winston Churchill

5. Leading up and working with boards

I work with many not-for-profit organizations, which means their CEO, ED or President serve a governing board of directors. The operational leader reports to and works for the board, and a healthy, positive relationship with your “boss” makes your life much easier. However, no two boards are alike, and bad board governance is the stuff of legends. Those who serve on boards may need some leadership in working well with the CEO or lead staff person.

Leading up is more complicated than managing your team. It may involve offering your board a strategic insight, or a plan for a new initiative. I remind those I mentor that every member on a board has a day job. They do not live with the day-to-day operations of your organization, and they need leadership assistance to help understand what you and the staff do regularly. A mentor experienced serving on boards and who has worked for boards can assist both the board and the management team in working together.

Lots of times we are afraid to ask our board members to do too much because we’re afraid they will be scared off. I have long observed that more board members resign for lack of meaningful work, than from being overworked.

You and Your Nonprofit Board (Temkin, 2013)

Mentoring Associates

I have drawn together a team of associates to work with me in serving leaders. This new approach to coaching and mentoring has expanded our capacity to help leaders like yourself. Our team has a diversity of giftedness to mentor leaders in life, leading themselves, leading teams, strategy and marketing, all from a faith perspective.

If you would like to speak to me about how you might become more effective as a leader, spouse, strategist or influencer, please let’s talk. Here is my calendar, and you can choose a time that works for you.

Awhile back, I had a conversation with my therapist, Ahmad. I cannot stop thinking about it. Ok, so he is not really my therapist, he is my barber, but our conversations are always fascinating.

Ahmad and I talked about the summer holidays and a time when he drove his family pulling a trailer. As he was driving, he felt the trailer’s weight and momentum behind him as he held the wheel. On the other hand, his wife was chatting to him without any sense of the pressure and responsibility of towing a trailer.

The first time I drove a trailer that was not behind a tractor was towing a sailboat in downtown Vancouver. It was scary at first. Was it hitched properly? Would my brakes handle the extra weight? What about the extra height – would I make it under bridges?

There was a certain sway to the trailer as the sailboat seemed unbalanced. I knew I had to be careful, especially when backing up while having my brain wrestle with counter-intuitive steering in the opposite direction. No question, Ahmad was correct in identifying driving with a trailer as stressful.

In a survey by the Center for Creative Leadership, eighty-eight percent of leaders reported that work is the primary source of stress in their lives and that having a leadership role increases stress levels. No kidding!

..having a leadership role increases stress levels. No kidding!

Carson Pue

In all my years of mentoring leaders, I have never seen an intensity of stress faced by leaders, as during this COVID-19 season. Whether in business, non-profits, or churches, leaders are juggling many additional demands on their time, attention, and focus. This past month, even the most effective leaders I know are feeling emotionally and physically worn down because of the pandemic.

When we as leaders are under extreme stress, it affects us in many ways. Our decision-making is affected because we have trouble processing information, and COVID has caused extreme responses. Often leaders focus on the immediate and have been kept from thinking about the long-term implications of decisions.

Another stress response is to become very controlling. Leaders stop working with their teams and make unilateral decisions as they try to control the situation – a pandemic beyond our ability to control.

Leadership stress also drives men and women into isolation. They want to withdraw, to hide, to run. By shutting other people out of their lives, leaders are often left with only their own counsel causing people around them to lose trust while they lose perspective.

The most common question I ask leaders these days is, “How well are you sleeping?” Stress impacts the quality of sleep we are getting. Lack of sleep affects our behaviour, reduces confidence, and can damage relationships with those closest to us.

Do you know a normally calm and positive leader who is now showing signs of anger, irritability, and being overwhelmed? These are signs that your leader needs to be encouraged to take time to practice radical self-care.

A problem exists in that you and I can just be “along for the ride.” We are unaware of the stress involved in driving the leadership trailer. So let me urge you to reach out to a leader and encourage them. Let them know you understand the stress they must be feeling and encourage their practicing of self-care. Lower high expectations during this time, and recognize good things they have accomplished. Encourage them to recharge, recover, pray and practice restorative activities.

After over eleven hours in the air we were delighted to finally get to our hotel in Lima with the prospect of getting a real sleep. That was at 2:30am, so imagine my pleasure of being wakened by the sounds of hundreds of cars honking to one another.

They did awaken me, but amidst the roosters crowing and general traffic sounds, both Bob and I noticed how their honking is different from ours. We usually honk when we are angry. Here in Peru they honk just to say, “Heh, I’m here,” or “Hello”.

Peru is a country that is one tenth the size of Canada geographically however with almost the same population base. It is bordered by Ecuador and Columbia to the north, Brazil and Bolivia to the east, and Chile to the south.

Although Peru has rich natural resources and a booming economy almost 40% of the population live below the poverty line. Now, I have seen visible poverty before and what I always find difficult is in countries where there is such visible disparity between the rich and the poor. I am sure it is a complex economy here and I look forward to finding out more. Our hotel is surrounded by this very disparity – not that we are in a fancy hotel (more on that later) but the living conditions not far from here.

Yet the Latino people are friendly and helpful. Our background in French and Latin still comes in helpful in trying to communicate.

Tonight we are visiting and interviewing the pastor of Iglesia Bautista Betania a downtown church in the Lince district of Lima. Bethany Baptist Church as we would call it is connected to Christ for the City International.

The pastor called our hotel and Bob took the call. Bob commented, “He was very enthusiastic!” Much like their honking I assume.