Replace Yourself!

Here’s a story my mentor told me about his mentor.

My mentor is a master facilitator.  Previously, he worked with corporate communities empowering them and helping them to be the best they could be.  He was good at this, and very successful.  One day his mentor came to him and asked, “What’s next?” which took my mentor by surprise.  What could possibly come next now that he had reached the pinnacle of success? 

“What happens when you’re gone?” his mentor continued.  “Who’s going to be there to take over what you can do?  What you must do next is replace yourself.”  And now this is what my mentor does for a living, training people around the world to do what he does and replacing himself in every continent on the globe.

It sounds like an unusual job description, but as a mentoring manager, replacing yourself is exactly what you need to be doing for your organization.  What you have learned over the years in your position and what you have contributed to your organization’s growth and success is what your organization needs for continuity.  Who’s going to be there to take over what you can do? 

Let’s discuss some of the important experience you’re bringing to a mentoring relationship.

First is your management perspective.  You’ve acquired this through years of experience working in various positions, and now you know the ropes more than most do.  You have cross-functional experience, so you understand how the different parts of your organization and others work together.  This enables you to share how things get done and help learners understand how their activities contribute to the organization as a whole.

Second is your influence.  Having been around for a while, you are fluent in your organization’s culture and understand how to work with existing power structures.  This makes you a powerful advocate for your learners.  In addition to creating the right atmosphere to develop them and showing the rest of the organization that what they are doing is important, you are also providing opportunities for your learners to develop.

Third is your personal style.  Having been successful in your position for a number of years, you’ve obtained a fair amount of respect or even admiration for who you are and what you’ve done.  This makes you a role model for your learners.  You have a set of habits, approaches, tools and skills and they can see see first hand how you use them.

Your organization and the individuals within it need what you know.  To ensure the continuity of your contributions, replace yourself.