The Kind of Mentor You Actually Need

The kind of mentor you want won’t be the most successful man in the room. He’ll be the most honest.

Most men look for mentors the wrong way. They look for the guy with the money, the title, the impressive resume. That’s not a mentor, that’s maybe somebody to admire from a distance. A good mentor isn’t someone who has won the most. It’s somebody who has failed and kept going.

Meeting Mine

Four years into recovery, sitting in a room full of men, a man walked in and sat down. He didn’t look particularly impressive, but he had a kind of respect earned through how he spoke and treated other people. Not power or status, impact. People were drawn to him, not like a rock star, but like someone they knew they’d benefit from talking to. It wasn’t just advice. It was compassion, empathy, being able to say yeah man, I’ve been there, I know what that feels like.

Hardly anybody would call him successful by the world’s standards. But in that room, there was real deference to him because of his experience and his willingness to say, let me tell you how I screwed up, and here’s what I did to fix it. His legacy isn’t a trophy case. It’s the man he sat with when everything was falling apart.

Shares Both Sides

A real mentor shares both sides: how he won, how he failed, the pain, the repair. He doesn’t wear a mask. There are places where a professional face is necessary, but if you ask, he’ll share the rest. He has the right to privacy. He doesn’t have the right to secrecy. If someone seems to want to keep secrets, that may not be the right person.

The first time we met, he was praying out loud, using some colorful language, talking to God, not at God, about a hard situation. That single moment changed my whole understanding of who God was and how I could show up in that relationship. Later, he shared books, shared losses, shared things that were difficult for him, and I got to see how those things actually changed his character, not just what he knew, but who he became. It’s one thing to read every book about recovery. It’s a completely different thing to watch somebody who actually has skin in the game go through something hard in real time.

How to Find One

He may not show up in the obvious places. He’s not looking for the limelight or trying to impress people. There might already be someone in your circle, a guy you trust long-term, who’s willing to sit with you in the difficult stuff. His humility, yeah, this is how I screwed up, this is what I did wrong, will draw you toward him. If he’s not always available, ask him to recommend somebody, because good mentors tend to know other good mentors. Frequency probably matters less than depth. Ask your wife’s input too. It’s important that she has a similar sense that this is the kind of character she’d want around you.

This Week

If you see someone like this, ask him to get a cup of coffee. If you’re in recovery, go to one of his meetings and find out where he goes and what he talks about. Just start the relationship.

Next in the Foundation Framework series: rest and self-care.

Take the free Storm Ready Assessment at StormReadyMen.com. Wives, find support at The Couple Cure.