Mentoring, Parasite or protege – a parasite wants what you have, a protege wants what you are.

This episode is devoted to mentoring and what it means to be mentored, as well as some of the pain and potential that the mentoring relationship brings with it. Since the spring of 2006 John and Ty have been in a mentoring relationship and in this episode they share some of their journey plus John shares his perspective as a mentor and some of the wisdom from being mentored for over 25+ years by the same mentor.

• as you walk in a mentor relationship, it’s a relationship that’s dynamic, it gets more valuable over time – John Marsh
• SOME OF THE QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS TODAY: – John Marsh

• • What is mentoring?
  • What it is not?
  • How do you pick a mentor?
  • Do you seek mentoring in the area of your weaknesses or STRENGTHS?

• But mentoring, I feel is really leaving a legacy on the hearts of people and not just in sticks and bricks. It’s really (a form of) what the bible calls discipling.  – John Marsh
• I would say, for me, the biggest difference between mentoring and coaching is I’ve had a lot of good coaches in my life, I’ve had a lot of good teachers and professors, and even sports coaches and all kinds of people that make me better. But coaching is, I would say, it’s really performance driven, whereas mentoring is overall development driven.  – Ty Maloney
• I would say our relationship and other mentoring relationships I might have, they’re more interested in the big picture, whole picture, my whole person, my character, and things that are really developing over time, and I would say that they are more eternal and purposeful. Whereas coaches are very specific, where they’re more performance and maybe a little bit easier to measure – Ty Maloney
• I think of coaching and mentoring, it’s like mentoring is sharing a piece of your story that you lived in an effort that let someone borrow your glasses, kind of the lens you have on the world. And hoping that they’ll make that decision better or not make that decision that was bad for you. That seems to be a mentoring story based around an experience. – John Marsh
• I feel like coaching, for me, is almost holding the tension of an environment and asking you questions, and knowing the truth will bubble up in that environment, but not engaging and telling them what you’ve seen and done. – John Marsh
• where I (we) have to be careful as the mentors is that it’s very easy for me to make you an amateur providentialist in the relationship.  – Ty Maloney
• So the relationship, what makes good mentoring is, as you said, transparency, authenticity, some connectivity. And I say the framework is character, chemistry and confidence in the person that you’re doing this.  – John Marsh
• But what I’ve realized is it’s a lens and it’s an opportunity to borrow their perspective, but the choice is still mine and my wife’s. They’re still mine and Ash’s to make decisions and to own the consequences. Once we’ve got all the wisdom we can get, done all the praying we can do, then, as you said in your thing, Ty, I mean, we get to ultimately own our decisions.  – John Marsh
• (For me) I don’t think anyone’s good enough to be the one mentor, but I do think you can be mentored in areas of their giftedness.- John Marsh
• (Key) And then keeping an open dialog into our relationship and keeping that expectation scale at the right place. – Ty Maloney
• Expectations are the key in a lot of things. I mean, if you think about it, some of the questions you need to ask yourself, as our listeners, is what is mentoring to me? Write that down. – John Marsh
• What do I believe being a good person to be mentored looks like? Write that down. What do I think a good mentor is? Write these things down because, if not, the expectations you have, we say expectations are unvoiced demands, and if you think mentoring … – John Marsh
• I’ll tell you what mentoring is not, it’s not a one-way street. It’s not hard to find. And it’s not only done one way, there’s a lot of different ways to do it.- John Marsh
• I had to learn this the hard way, that some (mentoring) relationships are for a season, some are for a reason, and some are for a lifetime. .- John Marsh
• I have a few lifetime, and then my heart is just full with the fact that I’ve got people who will love me and I’ll love them til death do us part. – John Marsh
• “Back when I was young,” he said, “I sure wanted a mentor and I couldn’t find one.” He said, “I kept looking so when I couldn’t find one I decided to be one.”  – Bro E
• Sometimes I’ve seen relationships, looking back, that God used me in their life as scaffolding to help them get and work on certain areas they needed to and things. And then when the scaffolding was taken down, they didn’t need the scaffolding anymore in that area.  – John Marsh
• So it’s funny, Ash and I were looking for agreement, and you know what we found? We found multiple perspectives. It’s one of the first times where I felt like we shared every one of our ideas with them and we didn’t get a consensus.  – John Marsh
• And Ash and I really struggled when we came home, we’re like, “We didn’t get anybody to agree on anything.” In fact, they all disagreed 100%, and what Ash and I realized is in the multitude of counselors there is wisdom, but wisdom isn’t necessarily agreement. It was in the perspectives.  – John Marsh
• One non-negotiable is if you don’t pass it on, I’m not going to invest. I don’t want anybody who’s spiritually constipated, where they take it in and not putting it out. They get sick.  – John Marsh
• So that’s another thing, and the last area around the non-negotiables for me, I do want lifters, not leaners. Your lifter to leaner ratio has got to be heavy because if you’ve got a bunch of leaners on you and no lifters, you’re going to get really tired.  – John Marsh
• How do you know if somebody is somebody you should spend time with? I tell people, “I always know.” They’re like, “You can’t always know.” I feel like I always know. And how I know is they talk to my heart and not my head. For some reason, when I meet somebody, when they start talking to my heart and it’s humming like a tuning fork and, man, they’re saying stuff only me and God have been talking about, I’m like, “Uh oh. I got to spend some more time with this person, this could be one. It could be one of the ones.” – John Marsh
• So what I look for in a person to invest in and to have invested into me, since I have limited time on this earth and resources, is multipliers. I want to be taught by multipliers and I want to teach multipliers. And they don’t add, they don’t subtract, they don’t divide, they multiply. – John Marsh
• The fruit of the kingdom is love, light, and multiplication. – Bro E
• “Am I doing good with what you’re entrusting me? Am I being faithful,” because if you’re faithful and have faith, you will be truly amazed at what you’ll accomplish.- John Marsh
•  You know what about a mentor, that I think is another key characteristic, is they put a 10 on their head.  And they see you for who you are but they focus on what you could be. – John Marsh
• And that if there’s hope in your future, there’s power in your present. – John Marsh
• “Well, if you want to be mentored by me, you’ve got to behave, you believe like I believe, and then I’m going to let you belong.” And I believe once you know that you’re supposed to be mentored or be mentoring someone, the key is to belong, then they’ll believe. And the last thing that happens is the behavior. – John Marsh