In the Age of Self-Proclaimed Gurus and Coaches, Be a ‘Mentor Without Being Assertive’ like MS Dhoni

MS Dhoni is the most senior statesman in Indian Cricket Team at present. Being a two-time world cup winning captain, his voice is heard and respected on and off the ground by everyone, including the skipper himself.

For someone like Dhoni who is India’s most successful captain ever, it is easier to be commanding and push the things forcefully.

However, in the words of Skipper Virat Kohli himself, “MS is a mentor without being assertive or pushy. He gives you space to make your own decisions, but is never shy in giving advice when I ask him something.”

Today, when most of the so-called mentors, advisors or gurus try to impose themselves upon the other persons, MS Dhoni has proved how mentoring is done in true sense.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.”

A mentor can’t provide template-based solutions to the mentee’s problems because every problem has a different solution, just like every lock has a different key.

A good mentor would always encourage his mentee to challenge the status quo and discover the best solution himself through experimentation and systematic approach.

When a mentee tries hard, but can’t find a solution, that’s where a mentor steps in and shows a direction to him, based on his own rich experience.

However, a mentor never imposes his decisions or advice. He lets the mentee breath freely so that his productivity and thinking ability increases multifold.

What we see around today is a herd of self-declared mentors, who trap the startup owners. They have made mentoring their profession and charge a hefty amount for providing advice which is freely available on the Internet.

They don’t care to assess weakness, strengths and abilities of the young minds or provide them tailor-made, fit-to-situation guidance.

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Instead, they influence the decisions of the startup owners unnecessarily, which can prove to be disastrous. Sometimes, these mentors are only interested in acquiring a stake in the company so they can earn more profits as the company grows.

However, their obsession with authoritativeness or significant earnings does more harm than good, as they end up giving bad advice because they don’t even understand the situation well.

Today, as mentoring, coaching or guidance, whatever you call it, is becoming crucial, the people providing these should re-assess themselves before assessing the mentees.

Maybe, MS Dhoni should actually write a chapter on being a mentor without being assertive, because he’s the best institution to learn how-to of mentoring.

This Guru Poornima, let’s express gratitude towards our teachers, guides, mentors and advisors, who have shown us the right direction when nothing was going right.

Start a thread on Opined using #HappyGuruPoornima and thank those wonderful people.