Sharing Knowledge

Mentors are also teachers.  Teaching in this case is not a classroom activity.  Rather, it is a process of sharing what you know with those you are guiding.  Most professionals will tell you that most of what they do is not something they learned from an experienced person.  Organizations can only exist when one generation shares what they know with the next generation.

Here is a process you can use to share your knowledge with those you are guiding.

1. Maintain a list of things you want to teach your advisee.  Most of the time, these will be more of the nature of “professional craft” than “how to” knowledge (e.g. how to gain acceptance for change).

2. Work through an actual case study with your advisee.  Ideally, this will be done live as the situation unfolds.

3. Schedule time before/after significant moments to do debriefings on what you are teaching.  What works best is when your advisee writes down questions during the unfolding event.  This way the training can be as current as possible.

4. After some time, start asking your advisee:  “How would you handle this case?”  You can start to judge how the knowledge transfer is going.

One of the most enjoyable experiences of being a mentor is knowledge sharing.  You often will also find that you learn during this process because you may not realize what you actually do.