Mentors Revisited

Where have they all gone? When did we enter the world of assigning someone to be a mentor? Is this something people now put on their resumes? Do we really have a job description for Mentor?
As my Dad, and my first great mentor would say, "Another sign that the world is going to hell in a handbasket !". I'd probably respond with something like, "yeah, but the good news is that 50 years later, it's still going !" Dad was a "Road Dog".
Anyway, there are a few words that I do take seriously in their definitions, and this is one of them. I've been blessed throughout my life and career with some good ones. Of course none of mine had any formal training in mentoring, nor were they assigned to me (well, maybe my parents were...), but somehow these untrained mentors did a good job. At least I think they did.
Mentors in my humble mind, just sort of happen. They're the people who have influence on us, and I'm not sure they plan to do that. Mentors are the people that you keep in touch with because you want to, not because you're supposed to. You reach out to them like you would for comfort food. You trust them with your vulnerabilities, and you trust their words (whether you like them or not).
They're Road Dogs personified.
My parents, of course, mentored me in many of life's nuances. And, of course, I didn't fully realize that until it was too late to thank them in person. But that's okay too. I'd tell you that I still talk with them regularly; and they've been gone for over 35 years. Parents, as Mentors, are there in your "formative years" to show you good and bad... oftentimes without trying and through examples more than words. Mine taught me about hard work and love and sacrifice.
My Marine Corps drill instructors were some of the best mentors I could have asked for at the age of 18; but there's no way I would have called them "mentor". Consider my DI who looked at me and said, "Private Schrum, I can't make you do anything, I can only make you wish you did."
Seriously now, how profound is that as a mentoring statement? Isn't that the key to leadership... to parenting... to getting anyone motivated, and all of those things people spend millions of dollars trying to teach people?
Work-wise, I'd have to start with the CEO of my first healthcare facility. He put the first helicopter program in the world up. (Look it up yourself - Flight For Life, Denver). He didn't look for a lot of data-analysis and didn't form any committees, sub-committees, task forces or work groups. He didn't do any surveys and would have laughed if someone said "benchmark". We used to tease him about watching too many episodes of "MASH", but the truth is that he saw us losing a lot of patients coming down from the mountains via ambulance, and saw an opportunity to save some. He went to his Board and was called a lunatic, but he persisted and they gave him the go ahead to lease a helicopter and give it a go. Bingo. The rest, as they say, is history... and I got a great quote, "Every now and then the lunatic fringe becomes the cutting edge."
My work "mentors" all had one thing in common: they cared a lot more about the people and the relationships then they did about the finances, the data, the committees, and all of the other things you read about in business books. I've got a placque from Dr. Thomas Frist, Sr., founder of HCA, the world's largest healthcare company, hanging over my desk. The words on it, "Good people beget good people". He was right. Take care of the people, do the "right thing" and the rest will take care of itself.
Mentors will show you that none of us can really make anyone else do anything they don't want to do, if they really don't want to. The key to our success is getting them to WANT to do it. Peter Drucker summed it up for business when he said, "you can't motivate people, they have to motivate themselves; you just give them the opportunity.".
My Mentors all did that, and this carried through with me in my belief that I don't want anyone with me who doesn't WANT to be there. My job is to give them the opportunity, but if they don't want it, then my job is to help them find a place they want to be. I'll say it again, Mentors care about the people first, not the job or the P&L statements. That helicopter would have never gone up in Denver, if money was the decision point.
Another sidebar here, why would ANY company want any employees who don't want to be there? And, why would any employee come to a job they hate? I cannot comprehend the 20 year employee who has spent most of that time complaining about his job. I think there's therapy for masochism. Seriously, what possesses someone to get up day after day for 20 years to go somewhere they hate and spend 8 hours in misery? Don't say "money"; because you know better.

Mentors aren't assigned to you, they happen. In work and in life. They don't look for you. They aren't assigned to you. Most of them probably don't even encourage you to follow them too closely. They know they're human and they have failings.
Mentors are like the Phantom of the Opera... In sleep they sing to you, in dreams they come to you, the voice which calls to you and speaks your name... the "Mentor" is there, inside your mind.

Bill