When mentees question their own competency and suffer from serious self-doubt, the mentor can also be the vital resource who assists them in renewing their faith in themselves.
The source of inspiration that can often provide the mentees with the powerful incentive to move forward is often readily available within the life and workplace experiences of the mentors, who by example, can demonstrate that they understand what the mentee is feeling and thinking because they have also faced similar obstacles. The value of this self-disclosure is usually not so much in the interesting details of the narrative, nor in the extent to which there is similarity between the mentor’s history and the mentee’s current situation. Rather, the power to motivate often occurs due to the (sometimes startling for the mentee) revelation that esteemed mentors have also felt the internal chill caused by a loss of self-confidence, but have nonetheless managed to solve difficult problems and reach their goals.
There are individuals, unfortunately, who have become obsessed with their “failures” and are unable to recognize or accept legitimate praise for their achievements. What they have not done, or still need to accomplish, dominates their internal radar screen, while their noteworthy attainments are almost invisible as positive reference points. Some mentees may even need to learn how to properly celebrate their own hard-won success.
The central idea worth internalizing for mentees, of course, is that people who repeatedly strive to achieve become more skilled at mastering the art of survival because they allow themselves to learn—to discover through experience that they can handle a variety of unsettling personal concerns such as ongoing uncertainty and discomfort. Some mentees will need to be gently prodded if they are to comprehend that they must accept rather than hide from challenge. The truism that “Nothing succeeds like success” is no less relevant because it is considered to be conventional wisdom.
Timely self-disclosure can also help those mentees who are secretly agonizing about being somehow “defective” to recognize the myth that they alone are uniquely insecure while others who achieve their goals appear do so happily, with minimum anxiety, and are truly unmistakable towers of perpetual public and private strength.
Especially for mentees with distorted viewpoints, the art of useful self-disclosure will depend on the ability of the mentor to select and share relevant stories that will resonant with productive meaning within each distinct individual.