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You can't have a mentoring organization without mentors. Equipping and encouraging them enables them to be the most effective mentors they can be. Stephen "The Murr-Dawg" Murray is back with Zach this week to talk through what it looks like to encourage and equip mentors to be their best selves.
Show Notes
You can't have a mentoring organization without mentors. Equipping and encouraging them enables them to be the most effective mentors they can be. Stephen "The Murr-Dawg" Murray is back with Zach this week to talk through what it looks like to encourage and equip mentors to be their best selves.
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
Creators and Guests
What is You Can Mentor: A Christian Youth Mentoring Podcast?
You Can Mentor is a network that equips and encourages mentors and mentoring leaders through resources and relationships to love God, love others, and make disciples in their own community. We want to see Christian mentors thrive.
We want to hear from you! Send any mentoring questions to hello@youcanmentor.com, and we'll answer them on our podcast. We want to help you become the best possible mentor you can be. Also, if you are a mentoring organization, church, or non-profit, connect with us to join our mentoring network or to be spotlighted on our show.
Please find out more at www.youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You will find more resources on our website to help equip and encourage mentors. We have downloadable resources, cohort opportunities, and an opportunity to build relationships with other Christian mentoring leaders.
You can mentor is a podcast about the power of building relationships with kids from hard places in the name of Jesus. Every episode will help you overcome common mentoring obstacles and give you the confidence you need to invest in the lives of others. You can mentor.
Speaker 2:Hello, mentors and mentoring leaders. Zach Garza here with the You Can Mentor podcast with my main man, Stephen Murray.
Speaker 3:That's me.
Speaker 2:Today, we're gonna continue to talk about how to operate and lead a mentoring program. Today's episode is called sharing and navigating life with your volunteers, with your mentors. It's It's the journey of relationship. It's ongoing support and training and activities. We say this all the time.
Speaker 2:Your mentors are the most important people in your nonprofit. They have to be equipped, and they have to be encouraged. Those are the two main things. If they feel like they don't know what they're doing, the likelihood of them tossing in the towel is high. If they feel like they're not making a difference, if they feel discouraged, which the enemy loves to lie to them, they're not gonna last long.
Speaker 2:You gotta equip. You gotta encourage. Today, we're talking about how to do that with former director of mentoring, now executive director, the Murdog. Steven, say hi.
Speaker 3:I'm a big deal. I mean
Speaker 2:We talked about pride and humility.
Speaker 3:It's not gonna kill Jeez. The sword I'm sorry. Steven. I'm sorry. I'm I'm very small.
Speaker 2:Yes. No. That's false humility. We talked about that. Just say I'm Steven Murray.
Speaker 3:I'm Steven. Thank you for listening. And the this the journey of relationships, ongoing ongoing support training, this is something that I heard from a pastor recently. Jimmy Seibert, Antioch Waco, hashtag Jesus. He was saying he was talking to a group of pastors, and he was like, whatever you want to emphasize within the culture of your church, you have to embody.
Speaker 3:And I think that is a great a great thing for mentoring organizations to hear. So for the church, if you're trying to do evangelism initiatives, but you are not sharing the gospel as the pastor, you can't create a culture that that isn't in you. And so for mentoring organizations, if we're asking mentors to show up, build up with encouragement, and model faith in Jesus, and we're not doing those things with our volunteers, we can't create that culture within the the role that we're asking them to do if we're not doing it. Yeah. So that's that's this part of sharing and navigating life, being an example.
Speaker 3:So as you provide support, you're also reflecting to them the culture that you're wanting to create in your organization.
Speaker 2:So, basically, it's the mentoring organization, the mentoring leader's job to mentor their mentors.
Speaker 3:You have to. Yeah. You have to.
Speaker 2:That's just how I see it.
Speaker 3:That's good. You
Speaker 2:have to mentor the mentors when they mentor. Mentor. Right?
Speaker 3:Put that on Twitter.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right? And that's guys, this is why we started our podcast. It's because we needed to be encouraged, and this podcast encourages us. We need to find out ways to get better, which is why we have guests, which is why we have interviews.
Speaker 2:Because we, as we do our thing with our nonprofit, we we need this too. So, Steven, let's let's just get going. How do you train your mentors on a consistent regular basis?
Speaker 3:It's a great question. And I I don't think that I'll I'll say this from the beginning. I don't think we figured it all out. I don't think anyone has. But I do I do think that getting into rhythms is very important for us.
Speaker 3:And so as a leader, I'm thinking about, okay, what are my monthly rhythms? What are my weekly rhythms? What what are my daily rhythms in encouraging mentors in our organization?
Speaker 2:Okay. Stop. Why don't you tell us what those are? I don't know if that's where you were going, but
Speaker 3:I didn't wanna share I'm just kidding. Yes. I will. I mean, we we have a spreadsheet with all of our mentors on it. It's called our scorecard, which that sounds like we're we're just sitting in back in our office playing fantasy mentoring or something.
Speaker 3:But, I mean, every every month, our mentors are expected to show up, build up with encouragement, and model faith in Jesus. And so that's the expectation. If we're not asking them that they're doing it, we're not helping them. And if we're not giving them tangible ways to do that, we're not helping them. And so giving them opportunities and giving them accountability, I think those are the 2 ways that we equip and encourage them.
Speaker 3:And accountability doesn't sound encouraging, but really it is because everyone wants to be asked how they're fulfilling their commitment. And many many times, mentors are not asked. They're just expected to. And when you get into that place where you're not asked about it, you feel obligated, you feel like like no one sees you, and no one wants to be the mentor that's not seen, and you you're not being given the opportunity to share stories of how your relationship is going, the challenges that you're facing. And so really figuring out, okay, once a month, I need to figure out how are how is your relationship going, and are you fulfilling your commitments, and how can I help you?
Speaker 3:And so every mentor, we have a touch base some way. Whether it's a text message, a phone call, we try we try to meet in person as much as possible. We actually, as a staff, try to meet with every volunteer on a bimonthly basis face to face, and that's that's our goal.
Speaker 2:Every 2 months, not Yes. 2 times.
Speaker 3:Every every 2 months meeting face to face. Yeah. But at least every month, having some form of touch base, whether it's a text message or an email or a phone call where I'm actually talking to a person. I'm not just sending a newsletter. I'm talking to a person.
Speaker 2:Now now we do send out a newsletter every Monday to our volunteers to communicate things, but this is different. This is relationship. Right?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:And what we do on our scorecard, just to kinda give you guys a picture, we have every mentor on there. And I know this sounds crazy, but we put them in a category. They're either red, or they're yellow, or they're green. And we track how they're doing each and every month so we can see issues with consistency. We can see patterns.
Speaker 2:We can see, hey, here's a mentor who hasn't met with this kid for 3 months, but his kid got sick with cancer. And and so, like like, we toss in their notes. Like, we
Speaker 3:know Switch cancer out with COVID, and, yeah, that works. I mean, it could happen. But That's great.
Speaker 2:But, like, we
Speaker 3:This mentor has got COVID the last 3 months. What's going on?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah. Like, I mean, just there's been mentors who haven't seen their kid in a year, but it's because the mentor's wife is a doctor, and they're, you know, being super cautious with COVID. So, like, those are things that we need to know. So we put as much information on that scorecard as possible. In case Steven and I leave and someone else has to come in and, you know, take over the director of Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Mentoring role, they know exactly with detail how every mentor is doing, when the last time they saw their kid, how their kid's doing, and all of that stuff. So that scorecard might be the biggest win for our nonprofit in the the last year. It's amazing. So if you guys would like some more information about that, just holler at us.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well and and it it also helps us as an organization establish goals for, okay, how many mentors are actually fulfilling their commitment? And, I mean, yes, in a perfect world, you would hope that a 100% of your mentors would be fulfilling their commitment. I don't know if there's a mentoring organization that is there. Right.
Speaker 3:And so it it'll help you establish, okay, where are we at and how can we grow? How where can we focus and where can we provide more support?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So for us, our goal was 75% of the mentors fulfill their expectations, and we're at 74%. 74. Yeah. And so Failure.
Speaker 2:No. And so talk about the lunches. I think that this is awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yep. So, I mean, in the past, what we what we did as a monthly touch base, we did this 6:30 Mhmm. 6:30 AM breakfast tacos and PowerPoint presentations. Those are great.
Speaker 3:And and, honestly, I I would encourage any mentor organization to figure out how you could get your volunteers together once a month because mentoring alone is not going to win the day. Mentors need to see other mentors. They need encouragement. They need to share and process things that are going on, and you are gonna be a bottleneck if you are the only relationship that your volunteers have. It's much better for your volunteers to connect to one another than just be connected to you.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. And so I I think whether it's breakfast tacos or lunch, you have a consistent monthly meeting where you're inviting mentors to come together. And usually, the one the the volunteers who are looking for more connection, they're gonna be the ones that come to that. And so don't expect everybody to come. It's just not how the world works.
Speaker 3:But I think a good goal would just could we get 20% of our volunteers to come once a month? Set a a realistic expectation. Could we provide lunch for 15 guys and talk about how our mentor relationships are going and pray for one another. And so though those moments are ways that you establish connections and and provide encouragement, which even just getting in the room could be the encouragement that a mentor needs to be like, okay. I'm not alone in this.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, like, so I mean, some guys can meet at 6:30 AM. Some guys can do lunches. Some guys can do a happy hour. Like, create different ways
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So that if you can't come at 6:30, there's a second way to to meet. It's it's so encouraging whenever in your mind you're thinking, man, I'm having this issue with my kid, and I'm the only mentor that has this issue. But then you go to one of these meetings, and you hear that every mentor has a hard time talking to his kid. You're like, oh, I I I was under the impression that it was just me. Like, no.
Speaker 2:Like, there's some kind of comfort in knowing that everyone is basically having the same issues. Yeah. I think one thing that's important is for us as a nonprofit, we need to we need to figure out what are the consistent issues that most mentors are having. So it's like, I don't know what to do when my kid won't get off his cell phone. Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, spend 10 or 15, 20 minutes talking about that. I don't know what to do when my kid only gives me one word answers. I don't know what to do whenever the mom doesn't pick up the phone. Like, it's up to you to target these issues, and then you've gotta ask yourself, would this apply to most mentors? And if so, then do some kind of training on it, write an email, write a blog.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Just do whatever you can to help equip mentors with tools to overcome that, but also encourage, hey, I just want you to know that you're not the only one who's facing this issue.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So. Well and it's also great to ask those questions in groups Mhmm. So you can crowdsource practical solutions Yeah. And not feel this pressure as the mentoring organization leader to be the expert.
Speaker 3:Because more often than not, when mentors are facing an obstacle, a lot of the times, it's not something that I've faced before personally in mentoring Mhmm. But maybe someone else in the room has. And so, I mean, that can even empower mentors to recognize, okay, how I'm engaging in this could be something that helps someone else in the organization.
Speaker 2:Well and, like, I know, Steven, that, you know, things that you've done in the past, you've created, like, a Facebook page. That's like, Hey, if you guys ever have any issues, you can post them on this page and other people can, you know, talk about how they've overcome that. You do mentoring small groups. So it's like you have a text chain. Like, hey, here's you're on this text chain with 5 other guys.
Speaker 2:Hey, I just met with my kid, and he legitimately sat there for an hour silent. Can anyone help me? Right? And then you can receive encouragement from other mentors. And so, like, there's this preconceived notion that we are the experts, that we're, like, oh, this guy is the leader.
Speaker 2:Well, like, every relationship's different. Every kid is different. So, like, we're consistently, like, I don't know what to do. And so the more people that you have who can kinda toss out possible solutions, I just think that that's an awesome way to roll.
Speaker 3:And it's the same it's the same thing that you've done in hiring people here at 4 Runner is you've established from the get go, the reason I'm hiring you is because I want you to be the expert in Mhmm. This and not look to me to be the expert for you. And and so in every mentor relationship, when when you start a relationship, I always establish to the mentor, my hope is that after this initial match and you're with this kid, you are the expert on Joseph. Mhmm. I'm not the expert.
Speaker 3:You're the one spending time with him. You're getting to know his family. You know his needs. You know his weaknesses. You know the struggles.
Speaker 3:Like, establishing to the mentor that they are the expert on the kid they're mentoring, I think, really does empower them and not not discourage them, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yep. So it's our job as a nonprofit. We need to provide trainings. We need to identify potential issues that most volunteers have and offer possible solutions. We need to provide activities
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So the mentors can come, they can have a face to face, they can have a coffee, they can go bowling, have 6:30 AM tacos, have a lunch
Speaker 3:Mhmm. So
Speaker 2:they can interact with other mentors because there's a lot of value in that. You can possibly we talked about the scorecard. We talked about getting to know other people who are in the same boat as you as a mentor, so that you guys can encourage each other. And then we just talked about how it's our job as the mentoring organization to really lead out the charge in support. So we support the mentors, and the mentors support the kids.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of value in learning how to be the best mentor possible. That's why we have this podcast. That's why we have a book out. And then just getting to know other mentoring orgs, what they do, talking to people who are in the same area of ministry that we're in. All of those things have tremendous amounts of value.
Speaker 2:Steven, can you just kinda as as we close out, can you just kinda tell us what to do if a kid moves, if a mentor, you know, just can't fulfill his commitment? Tell us how to end well.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, I think what helps in these transitions is if you've if you've established that you're walking with someone for a while consistently. So, like like I said, bimonthly meeting face to face. If you're meeting bimonthly face to face with every mentor in your organization, you should have somewhat of a grasp of what's going on in their life, of how their relationship is going, and how you can support them moving forward. If you don't meet with them face to face every other month, you and and say you're meeting face to face once a semester, you don't know if they're in the same job, if their kid if you don't have connections to an after school program or any other touches with the kid in the mental relationship, you don't know if they're still at the school that they're at.
Speaker 3:You don't know what struggles they're facing or or what what encouraging stories are happening in the mentor relationship. And so it it is really important to keep a handle on every relationship, not just to micromanage, but to provide leadership. So if a if a mentor is saying, hey. I got this promotion, or I'm getting married, or I'm having a baby, you could be the one to say, hey. I think we need to figure out a a plan for this moment either to communicate I'm gonna be out this month or to communicate a transition, and I wanna introduce you to a new mentor.
Speaker 3:The more you know about your mentor relationships, the more you're able to provide leadership rather than just relationships falling off. Because I I think that that can be the thing that reinforces trauma in the life of a kid from a hard place is if you just fail to fulfill your commitment and don't communicate why and don't plan for it. So a good a good story right now, we have a mentor, Tyler Zoss, who has this incredible opportunity to move and start a new program for his business, but in a month, he'll be moving. And this came out of nowhere, and so immediately, as he was thinking about this promotion, he reached out to me and said, hey. What do you think about this?
Speaker 3:And I'm gonna be out for 6 months, and I don't want my kid to, be upset about it. I thought about this guy, Zach, in the community. He's a good friend of mine. I'd love to introduce him to Gregory to to be his mentor moving forward while while I'm out. What do you think about that?
Speaker 3:Hearing a mentor thinking about that tells me that he understands the commitment that he made, the impact of him not fulfilling that, and him working ahead to to find a way to to have a mentor in his kid's life. And the other side of that would be Tyler just leaves. I call him, and he's like, oh, I'm in Omaha. I'm like, you're in Omaha? What's going on?
Speaker 3:Like, I thought you were mentoring Gregory. Like, you'd never wanna get into that situation. And more often than not, as the mentoring organization, you're gonna have to tell them this is when the match ends. This is when we transition. You have to provide leadership for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I
Speaker 2:think so often, as a mentor, you think you're the solution. And I know that that sounds cold, but, like, if you're going through a hard time, if, you know, you're having a job transition, if you're having babies, all of these things, like, it's okay to say, hey, I'm in toward 1st season, and I'm out. But end well, that's the most important thing. Ending well. It's okay if you go to your kids and say, hey, look, man.
Speaker 2:I just I'm just going through a hard time right now, and I can't give you what you need. You're sure the kid will, you know, be hurt. But it's so much better if you can say, but here's my buddy. But we're gonna get you another mentor. Right?
Speaker 2:And, like, just ending well, transitioning well, not trying to, like, force it to happen. Right? Because if you got a new job, if you've got 4 kids, if if you just find that you're barely keeping your head above water and you're not doing what you said that, you know, you do as a mentor, that's ultimately gonna be worse than you saying, hey. Look. I don't think I can do this, but here's someone else.
Speaker 2:So end well, transition well. It's okay if seasons change, but just make sure to do it well.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, that's that's a side of mentoring leadership that can be discouraging, and you want you never want to end a match poorly, or you you always want to encourage and believe the best. And, we talk about this all the time. Mentors are doing a lot better job than we think they are Mhmm.
Speaker 3:More often than not, and we have to believe the best. At the same time, we have to be the ones that say, hey. I think you should take a season off. I think that it'd be better for your family, for for the family that you're serving, for them to have somebody who has the bandwidth to to invest in them right now, and let's just make it completely obvious. Let's share.
Speaker 3:Let's communicate. And that that's always better than living in the ambiguity of we're in a mental relationship, but we haven't met in a few months.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And no one really knows what's going on. So it's always helpful to be clear.
Speaker 2:And if you guys have to end it, right, focus on the time you had together and celebrate that. Don't focus on, I'm out. Right? So end well, celebrate the time you had together, focus on the positives. Yeah.
Speaker 3:We had we had a family with 3 kids in our program, moved to Idaho Yeah. And it it was a last minute thing. The mentors felt blindsided by it. Because mentors, many of them are signing up for a lifelong relationship. So when you hear your kids moving to Idaho, that can be a really painful thing.
Speaker 3:Well, they set up a time at the park to eat pizza, to celebrate their mentor relationships, to connect one last time and send them off. And I I think giving everyone closure, mentor included, I think is is really important. So do do as much as you can to provide closure to mentor relationships because it it it is sad when when no one has closure. I mean, I was talking to Brad Fuller, and his mentee moved away, and he didn't have closure. And the thing that messed him up was the boy probably didn't have closure.
Speaker 3:And doing doing as much as you can to support the mentor relationship by being there at its last minutes is is really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's great, man. Alright. Well, just know that equipping and encouraging your mentors as they embark on this journey of relationship, ongoing support training activities, you mentoring them is vital. It's so important.
Speaker 2:And so your mentoring org is nothing without mentors. And if mentors don't feel equipped and encouraged, you're not gonna have too many mentors.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So 1, if you're asking mentors to show up, you need to provide places and context and environments for them to show up. Mhmm. If you're asking them to encourage, you need to give them ways to encourage. If you're asking them to model love for God, you need to give them practicals on how to do that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And so that I mean, that's that's kind of what we do is we are modeling those things in our own relationship with them, and then we're also giving them opportunities through events, trainings, and through modeling what it looks like to follow after god.
Speaker 2:It's awesome, man. Close this out.
Speaker 3:Lord, we love you.
Speaker 2:Yes. Thank
Speaker 3:you for mentors. And and we do believe that you can mentor. And so if you're a mentoring leader listening today, know that your job is to provide ongoing support to ensure the health of mentor relationships and recognize the opportunities, the rhythms that you need to establish in order to do that.
Speaker 2:Amen. Hey. If you missed everything we talked about today, you're missing out. But if you're just tuning in for this last 10 seconds, know this. You can mentor, share the podcast, buy the book, tell everyone you know about the power of relationship.
Speaker 2:We love y'all. See you.