Mentoring: The desire to to help others develop their skills and abilities.
Do you love helping people grow? Do you usually put other people first? If so, you may be a high scorer in mentoring. Let’s take a look at the behavioral traits of someone with a high score in mentoring and what managers can do to best encourage their growth.
High Mentoring
Meet Christina. Christina is a student advisor and loves connecting and helping the students at her school. She has always loved getting to know people and helping them in any way she can and people often seek her out for advice because of her open, warm personality. She has many longterm friends and places a huge importance on maintaining her relationships. She’s always the friend to call, check in and lend a helpful listening ear.
Christina is a good example of someone who likely has a high mentoring score. She:
- Seeks to mentor, encourage and sustain relationships
- Usually puts people first
- Tends to place a high value on supportive and nurturing behaviors.
- Values Respect and courtesy
- Tends to be conservative, values tradition, and is seen by others as a source of “good” counsel
- Is more trusting and open
Tips for Managing High Scorers
Although high scorers in mentoring can be supportive and kind, sometimes their nurturing nature can have consequences in their personal and work life. At times, high scorers may feel easily manipulated, especially through guilt and feeling sorry for people. They can also have difficulty holding others to a high standard out of fear of coming across mean or insensitive.
Whether you’re a manager of a high mentoring scorer or wanting to learn how to better understand a colleague’s behavior, here are some ideas on how to effectively manage this behavioral trait.
Recommendations for High Scorers:
- Encourage them to practice maintaining standards with others.
- Encourage them to first recognize manipulation and then to hold people accountable for their behavior. Accountability can be accomplished gently and with the utmost sensitivity.
- Providing emotional support, contribution, team play and affirmation motivate the high scorer in Mentoring.
- Remind them that they don’t have to be overly nice to everyone all the time. In fact, people will appreciate honesty.
