The Real Aim of Mentoring:
Mastering, Not Mastery

George is someone who has never been a person of moderation. When George was in college, he joined a group of fellow wayward students to take a forbidden midnight swim in the pool at the girls’ gym on the other side of a tall, locked chain-link fence. George was the one who decided everyone should make it a skinny-dipping adventure. The fact that George was the only one who stripped never seemed to bother him. It was not surprising that years later, after reading the best-selling book Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive, George went to a pet store and boldly bought a live shark for his Miami apartment. Though less than a foot long, it was a real shark—with a distinctive white dorsal fin rising out of its gun-metal-gray body. George named the little fish Harvey after the book’s author, Harvey Mackay.

Sometime later, George’s life took an unexpected turn. He was promoted to regional sales manager of his company and transferred to Houston. Knowing he was going to be on the road a lot, George worried about who would take care of little Harvey. So he gave the shark to Sea World in Orlando. Harvey moved from a two-gallon fish bowl to an aquarium the size of a three-story house.

Several years went by. When George got married, the inextinguishable kid in George picked Walt Disney World as the perfect honeymoon site. While he and his wife were in Orlando, they decided to go by Sea World and check on little Harvey. They were stunned. Harvey now was almost ten feet long and weighed nearly five hundred pounds.

When George told one of us about Harvey, we thought it was another of his tall tales. But George was convincing. Apparently certain animals—like sharks, and like humans—grow commensurately with their surroundings. Google it if you don’t believe us! If we are to grow to our greatest potential, we need a safe and unrestricted environment.

To grow is fundamentally the act of expanding, an unfolding into greatness. And so expansiveness is the most important attribute of a great mentoring relationship. Mentoring effectiveness is all about clearing an emotional path to make the learning journey as free of boundaries as possible. Change is a door opened from the inside. But it is the mentoring relationship that delivers the key to that door.

The real aim of mentoring is not mastery. Mastery implies closure, an ending, arrival at a destination. In today’s ever-changing world, the goal is “mastering,” a never-ending, ever-expansive journey of perpetual growth. It suggests the relationship is more important than the goal, that the process is more valued than the outcome.