Leverage Mentoring to Reframe Our Life

Mentoring can be a transformative activity, allowing us to reframe our lives if we make room for ourselves to be valuable and authentic while sharing.

The benefits of mentoring are clear. Multiple studies have demonstrated the importance of mentoring in helping mentees complete high school, climb the social ladder, and achieve economic success. Mentoring is often considered a means to narrow the social mobility gap across generations. In the US, for example, it would take an average of five generations for the poorest families to attain the average income in their region .

In the last five years, I have had the opportunity to mentor young people through Resolve Foundation and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. While it was a privilege to mentor outstanding young people recognised by Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, I cherish the chance to be a mentor. By being a mentor, I have learnt to be a better listener and to understand the mindsets of young people. I would like to share a couple of tips:

Tip 1: Let People Share Their Story

I like to start the first mentor meeting by encouraging mentees to share their stories. This provides me with opportunities to understand the mentee as a person. For example, the dominance of social media in young people’s lives means that friendships can easily be built but also easily broken with a single click on the "Disconnect" icon. Social media exposes us to the lives of people from various social classes around the world. Some mentees may come from single-parent families or from the upper echelons of society. By letting people share their stories, I can understand what shapes their personalities and appreciate the generational gap, thus building a positive mentoring relationship.

Tip 2: Find People Different from You

One of the joys of mentoring young people from entirely different backgrounds is the opportunity to observe the changes among them. For example, my mentees have studied occupational therapy, design, and architecture. What struck me was their desire to leverage their domain expertise for the betterment of society. For instance, how can occupational therapists make healthcare knowledge easily understood by people from different walks of life? How can space be designed for the community? While typical professionals may prioritise personal career success and separate personal life from professional life, younger generations may see the world differently. This can be evidenced by their anxiety over climate change and megatrends in the world.

Today’s young people will be tomorrow’s stewards of the world. Mentoring, I believe, is a good way to keep our minds relevant and connected with young people. As much as we think our experience and sharing will widen their horizons, mentoring can help us build meaningful guides with different generations, including young people.