Customer Reviews

Mentoring: Confidence in Finding a Mentor and Becoming One

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I liked the book because Biehl had many good ideas. Biehl believes that today's mobility has cut down on the amount of lifetime mentoring that goes on. One hundred years ago, this type of lifetime mentoring occurred often. Children on farms were mentored along side of fathers and mothers and entire families. These relationships provided instruction and encouragement over many years. Because we live in such a mobile society these relationships are becoming less frequent. In today's society people must make time to mentor each other. This requires commitment on behalf of mentor and the protege. Without this commitment to time and effort, the lifetime mentoring relationship will not survive. Many times people mentor for the good feelings they get out of helping someone else. Other times people mentor others because they are paid for it as part of their job. These people are mentoring because they get something out of it. Biehl believes mentoring is more about asking how can I help you, instead of what should I teach you. Mentoring should be a relationship with someone you like, someone you believe in, and someone you want to see succeed in life. The mentor takes on the attitude that they are there to help this person in any way possible. The mentor doesn't look to what the relationship can do for them, but what they can do for their protégé, the person they are mentoring. In ideal situation, the mentor and protégé will become friends. Biehl warned that two common problems mentoring relationships often occur are: opposite sex relations, and starting with unrealistic expectations. While mentoring relationships between the opposite sex are sometimes successful, they tend to have more problems. As Biehl states, "relations can get deep enough, fast enough that the love individuals give and receive can easily be reinterpreted into sexual dimensions. We can find ourselves attracted to a mentor or protégé of the opposite sex-even if the person isn't that physically attractive to us." I think one must remember here that Biehl is talking about a lifetime mentoring relationship. I believe that mentoring in a more common way where people only spend an hour or two together a week would not find as many problems with the opposite sex mentoring relationship. While I agree with Biehl that these relationships can open themselves up to some uncomfortable situations, I do not agree that these mentoring relationships should never be attempted. In regards to unrealistic expectations, Biehl states that many times proteges enter into the mentoring relationship with unrealistic expectations. Some proteges believe that the mentor will solve all their problems during their relationship. It can be helpful discuss expectations in the beginning of a relationship. Questions such as: What things will you talk about? How much time will you spend together, and where will you meet? By asking these questions up front, you can avoid a lot of problems with unmet expectations during your mentoring relationship.

My Overall Assessment: I agreed with Biehl that having a mentor in your business or professional setting gives the protégé a major advantage. "With a mentor's objectivity on your side, you are a bit surer that the direction you have chosen is the right one." A mentor can point you in the right direction so that many of obstacles that you would have had to learn the hard way can be avoided. "With a mentor's network on your side, you meet the people needed to get you where you are going". It is an old phrase, but I think it applies often that says, "it is not what you know, but who you know." Biehl did an informal survey of proteges for words that described successful mentors in their life. Some of the words people used were: consistent, stable, affirming, believed in me, accepted me where I was, saw me as a person of value, included me in their life, fun, a person of character, trustworthy, admired. I found that to be very telling. Notice what was not said: smart, genius,talented, or rich. It seems the people who make the most difference in our lives are the ones who care. I think I could summarize many of this books best points by saying, "when you mentor someone, the best thing you can do for them is to care about them."

Perhaps my view of this book was biased by my reading of "As Iron Sharpens Iron" by Hendricks. His book is also on mentoring, and is far superior to this one. This volume seems to come more from the standpoint of a mentoring enthusiast rather than a saint who is set on building godly, life-transforming relationships with members of the same sex.

While overusing the term "mentoring," Biehl does give some very helpful points for developing a mentoring program in the local church. Rather than appointing mentors to protégés, he suggests developing lists of persons willing to serve in each capacity. Personal chemistry and mutual attraction then would work to bring the two together.

Hendricks work is much stronger in its treatment of mentoring. I recommend it as a first choice in learning more about this important, long-neglected biblical practice.

This gives you a great base to do mentoring, lots of things to consider about being a mentor....You can easily go back to it and assess your current mentoring relationships.

I've read some other books recently on mentoring and have wanted to see more mentoring going on among the men at our church but have been stuck on the practical 'how to' of seeing this happen. Others were asking me how to be a mentor or find one, and what to do or study. Mentoring by Bob Biehl aims to address these issues head-on. The back-cover description of the book and comments on Amazon were positive, suggesting it would be a great tool for this situation. The chapter titles also look great, as they include: Why is Mentoring So Important, Anyone Can Mentor But Not Everyone Should, What to Look for in a Mentor, Finding and Approaching a Mentor, How to be a Great Protege, What to Look for in a Protege, Developing Leaders for the Next Century (and more). Biehl has spent his life doing this with passion and sees his purpose as helping others do the same. So what's the problem?

The issue with the whole book is in the definition of Mentoring itself: "Mentoring is a lifelong relationship, in which a mentor helps a protege reach her or his God-given potential." Sounds great actually, but the focus and approach of the book really hones in on the lifelong aspect. The timescale over which this happens is daunting. In addition there is a huge underlying "directional arrow" for mentoring - mentor and protege. I have no doubt that very long term relationships and protoges sitting at the feet of mentors soaking up their wisdom was highly effective in the past, but the further I went in the book the more I felt that what was recommended would never work today. One key reason is that society and working people are so transient. Relationships are far shorter term, and people have far less time to spend developing relationships than in past generations. Whether that's good or not isn't relative - that's the way it is now.

Also, the emphasis is on a protege having one mentor that is his go-to person for all things spiritual and practical. Books like Connecting: The Mentoring Relationships You Need to Succeed by Stanley take a far more practical approach in looking for a network or constellation of mentoring relationships. When you see a skill or character trait that you want to grow in and is highly evident in another person, you connect with them and learn from their words and example in that one area, for a fixed duration of time.

Second, after reading Reverse Mentoring: How Young Leaders Can Transform the Church and Why We Should Let Them (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series) by Earl Creps I was virtually hit upside the head that younger people seek mentoring but primarily as equals - two people (regardless of age) learning from each other, with neither in the role of 'master.' It's a stark contrast to the approach here in Mentoring.

There is much of value in this book, but for reasons above I was disappointed that I won't be able to apply much of Biehl's approach in my context. Check out Connecting and/or Reverse Mentoring if in your environment people would look for a shorter term 'team' of mentors and/or more of a peer mentoring approach.

My Church recently hosted a 3 day men's retreat in which I served as one of the keynote speakers. This was the very best of 5 books I researched on the subject of mentoring. It addressed both the Mentor and Mentee role, responsibilities and expectations extremely well.
The writing style and editing was exceptionally good and made for a very easy read with specific ideas and helps to get a mentoring relationship started.
I highly recommend this book to anyone.

Bobb Biehl does a phenomenal job is describing what a life-long mentor is and does. He makes the urgency of mentoring relationships very clear. His wisdom and insight challenged my thinking. Our churches need this book today!

Biehl leads his reader in the right direction. I used the book for a class in mentoring, but I was not overly impressed with the material. But Biehl shares a lot from his own life as a mentor and mentoree.

This book follows its own agenda from start to finish, mostly about mentoring's role in the "Church of the Future". Although the cover avoids mentioning Christianity, the author's stated mentoring mistakes include: "Having a non-Christian Mentor" or "Mentoring the opposite sex." The content mixes the author's bias and poor common sense. If I gave this book to an employee, I would be sued.