To the Mentor: Pardon the Interruption
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The guy just would not stop talking. He seemed unaware I had said nothing in almost 15 minutes. If I had no plan to be of assistance to him, it would have been torture of the cruelest degree.
As an extrovert, seemingly unaware others on the introverted scale get their energy from within and not from the environment, he was chaining one thought after another in a nervous race to get to a destination that was not altogether clear to me (and I doubt even to himself).
So, having been given enough concrete evidence I could use to arrest his attention, I cleared my throat and said: "Stop."
He looked at me abruptly; suddenly aware another human being was seated across from him.
I asked: "Would you like some help?"
"Help with what?" he asked.
"With communicating with me," I offered, staring back. "You're talking. You're definitely excited. You've got lots of details. But you're talking to yourself, not me. Would you like to talk WITH me, not TO me? I can help you," I replied. I then said: "If you can join me by listening to yourself as closely as I am listening to you, we can get somewhere.
He now was staring...his mouth opening, then closing, then opening as if to speak, then thinking better of it perhaps...closing.
A closed mouth.
Finally, we might commence with a focused conversation.
After having heard a long philosophical discussion about bureaucracy, I asked him one question related to this urgent administrative concern to which he appeared to be seeking resolution.
I asked: "Are you aware you resent the administrator who rebuffed you?"
A closed mouth...again. We just might have a chance for a generative conversation!
"What!?" annoyance was in his voice. "You're not listening to me...I was talking about..." he said.
I put my hand up, "Stop. You're feelings got hurt. Are you ready to talk about them?" I interrupted.
Closed mouth, clenched right hand. (We were really getting somewhere...an emotional conversation).
"You get it! Yes...that guy was so rude to me. All I did was.... He should not have.... I was only..." this emerging leader began.
I held up a hand. He closed his mouth. Finally, we just might get to an elegant conversation.
"That administrator mistreated you, attributed motives to you in an unfair way, and few things are as hard to bear as being misunderstood" I supplied.
Closed mouth, relaxing fists, he exhaled. "So, you get it..." he said.
I won't bother you with the rest of the dialogue that ensued. You've already been in that conversation before. I'll offer this: we are often at cross-purposes with ourselves. It comes out when we speak, especially when someone is in front of us who seems ready to actually listen to what we are saying (and what we might not actually be saying, but mean to say).
I assume most of the people who meet with me for mentoring moments are all a-jumble with competing motives, mislabeled emotions, unappeasable expectations, and strategy-strapped to be their better selves on most days.
So, I try to ask such leaders to spend a little time with me, acknowledging this upfront. I ask them to find ONE word, or ONE result they'd like to work on clarifying in a session together. An interruption—while it may break 10,000 rules of counseling methodology—becomes one of my main tools to curtail unproductive reasoning patterns, to offer awareness of them, and to cultivate more useful ones.
Protégés: begin your mentoring conversation by offering the mentor a gift of your own self-awareness. Offer one word, one theme, or one question to which you would like to invite their attention. Then, close your mouth as much as you can. Know: the best mentors will be doing the same...deciphering a simple line of thinking and keeping their mouths closed as much as they can. Somewhere between these two closed mouths there is a searches for a single theme—focused, generative, and elegant—the emerging leader's development will be served.EndFragment
