It’s great when you’re thinking about something, mulling it over, and then someone else comes up with the same idea, maybe ahead of you, and shares what they think on it.
That happened recently with this post about partial mentors from Scott H. Young.
For the past few months, I’ve been thinking about what it takes to find good mentors. You want someone far enough ahead to challenge you to move forward but not so far ahead that it’s hard to connect with them.
The idea of partial mentors then is that you can find a collection of people who help you move forward in various things. For instance, you might have one person who helps you move forward with your family life, another that helps with managing finances, and another that helps with spiritual guidance. Instead of trying to find that one perfect person who can help with all of them, three separate people might be more specialized at each.
A huge part about this, something I hadn’t fully fleshed out on my own, is that partial mentors might be better than the all-encompassing mentor because with a partial mentor, you can trade advice. Like maybe the person who helps me with my career could use my help knowing more about God. Or maybe the person who teaches me about raising a teenager could use some tips on starting a blog.
The idea is that the more you can engage in a reciprocal relationship, one where there’s give and take on both sides, the more likely the relationship will be healthy. Neither side gets burned out giving. Neither side gets stagnant taking.
