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As a mentor, you are passionate about sharing your wisdom to support and encourage others toward their goals. You are generous, helpful, outgoing, uplifting, and people are naturally drawn to you. You have a strong desire to not only teach those you take under your wing but guide them on the path to success by sharing your life experience and freely giving helpful advice. You are the wind behind the sails that can carry others to great things.
You are a great leader and a valuable team member, especially when working with small groups or on a one-on-one basis. Your uplifting and persuasive personality shines brightly in leadership roles that require managing the wellbeing of others, and you genuinely care about them. You thrive in a teamwork-oriented environment as an empathetic leader who provides an excellent support system to your teammates.
Others are drawn to you when they are seeking advice, and you are always willing to impart wisdom when you see that someone is eager to learn. People who benefit from your teaching tend to place a large amount of trust in you because they can see that your desire to help them reach their full potential is very genuine.
You believe in leading by example, and you while wisdom is a powerful tool in your belt, you see the value in allowing others to work through a problem on their own. You find it important to not only share the correct answer, but guide others down the path to the right answer so that they learn how to get there on their own. You are invested in those close to you for the long haul and want to ensure that they find a desirable path to continue on with the wisdom that you impart.
You fear being unable to help, seeing your loved ones fail, and being forgotten. Fear is a healthy emotion that alerts us when it is time to get prepared. Fear alerts us to the fact that something needs assessing. When you live in the space of fear it can become paralyzing and confusing. The feelings of anxiety and overwhelm can present themselves as guarded and tense. The opportunity is to embrace the fear as your friend. Shift the shallow breath to a deep breath and ask yourself, “Is this fear justified?” If so, “What do you need to prepare for?” It is also an opportunity to shift your story. Are you telling the story of guiding vs forcing, empowering vs enabling, or imparting wisdom vs criticizing?
So, before you read the shadow side, I invite you to see this as an opportunity for growth. Feedback is often not your friend as your inner critic can twist it into something that is wrong or flawed. Your intentions are pure, yet they can create discord in your collaboration.
When the mentor is not serving you to be your best, your compassionate nature and your desire to keep others from failing may lead to hand-holding that can inhibit personal growth for your mentee. You have a lot of life experience, and it can be difficult for you to sit back and watch as someone you care about fails, but it is often through failure that we achieve the most growth. Your desire to keep others from making the wrong choice is rooted in kindness, but sometimes it is best to sit back and let them gain their own experience. Remember that there is more than one correct road to success.
You have a highly charismatic personality that draws others to you, especially when they need guidance. This bond that forms between teacher and student can make you a very influential figure in the lives of those you care about. While your goal is always to help others be the best versions of themselves, it is important to be aware of times when you may be influencing someone to take a path that differs from the one they want for themselves, even if you feel that another path would serve them better. Sometimes it is best to trust those you care about to make their own choices and simply support and encourage them, which you do very well.
Communication comes easily to you and there is a lot of value in what you have to say, but sometimes in your eagerness to help others reach their full potential, your words may be unintentionally harsh. A critical word can be especially painful when you place a lot of trust in the person giving it. A harsh critique from a trusted source can weigh heavily on a person and decrease their confidence in their own abilities, which is never what you would intend.
Life is not always easy for the mentor. You feel an overwhelming responsibility for the happiness of those around you not just in the present, but in their distant future. You selflessly give advice—uplifting and inspiring those around you, but in the end you cannot live another person’s life for them and you must sit back and trust the decisions they make will be the best for them. This can be stressful, and you may feel responsible for the mistakes that others make or wonder if you could have done something differently to help them, when in reality failure is simply a fact of life. Your endless ability to care for others can be a heavy burden, but those around you are deeply appreciative of your role in their lives.
Mentors make good teachers, coaches, counselors, school administrators, and human resources managers.
Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter series
Yoda in Star Wars
