Mentorship can be an extremely valuable experience for kids, teaching them essential skills like leadership, communication, and problem-solving.
So, how do you go about teaching mentorship to kids?
In this video, I share how it worked in my family and how it could work in yours.
Why mentorship is important at home (and at work)!
You may know that I wrote the book Mentor to Millions with Kevin Harrington.
Mentor to Millions is based on the idea that if you have a product, purpose, or passion, the quickest way to get that out there is through mentorship.
So I’m here to tell you that the same goes for your family, business, and personal life.
Many people ask me how to teach mentorship to kids so that they will understand it.
It requires communicating at their level and doing it in such a way that it is never over their heads, so when they get older, they are looking for mentors.
I want to explain a little bit about mentorship and how you have to model it.
How to find a mentor!
Number one, you need to have mentors in your life.
I tell people all the time, never ask someone who doesn’t have a mentor to mentor you.
Early on, I started telling my kids about mentors in my life, people I had in my life, and I started putting them in their lives as well.
Now, they’ll admit that when they were little, their grandparents were their mentors.
Their grandparents were people they knew, loved, and who loved them.
I remember my dad, grandpa Larry, would always show up and pick up the boys to take them to the farm.
He would cut fence posts, and he could trim grass, and he would build fences, and he would pick up rocks in the field.
He taught the boys hard work at a very young age.
He was their mentor from the beginning.
As they got older, I continued to put mentors in their lives.
When they were kids, it was their grandparents who mentored them.
However, as they got older, it was my friends who had wisdom and skill they could teach my young adult kids as they became older and needed that wisdom and education.
I continued to put mentors into their lives.
As they become young adults and I’ve launched them into the world, it’s awesome to see they’re looking for mentors.
Learn how to teach a positive mindset to your kids or team!
Why being a good mentee leads to success!
Markus, for example, decided that he was going to buy houses, renovate them, and then sell them.
I will tell you that I know how to buy a house and I know how to sell a house, but fixing it up is not my thing.
So, what did I do when he said he wanted to do this?
I just modeled everything we had discussed for his entire life.
Luckily, I knew someone who was very knowledgeable in this area.
Then, I said, I would like you to work for this person for six months and after working the entire time and remodeling kitchens and drywall, subflooring, and doing walls, and if you still want to buy houses and fix them up and sell them, I am 100% behind you.
Guess what?
Every day I saw him get up earlier than he had ever done before.
Once he put in the time and worked hard for this person, he actually got paid to go to school.
This was the school of hard work, the school of a fixer-upper, the school of construction, but after six months, he said, “I really want to do this”.
Why getting mentored can change your life!
Therefore, we got behind him and supported him in getting his first house.
He spent nearly a year on that first house.
It had its ups and its downs, but I’m here to say that he sold that first house for a really nice profit.
As a result of that, he bought another house that he’s fixing up.
Here’s the cool part…
He finished that house and sold it!
Afterward, he said, “I’m gonna go back to work for your friend because there’s more that I need to learn. I wish I had paid closer attention when I first learned it. Now I know what I really need to know. And I’m willing to learn it from him a second time, but I’m gonna pay more attention this time”.
Why it’s important to mentor others!
Now that is mentorship!
The fact of the matter is that we planted that seed when he was a kid.
He is now a young man on his own and looking for a mentor to help him learn and grow.
When it comes to mentoring your family and children, begin as early as possible!
If you’ve got teenagers, start now, because the best time to plant a tree was yesterday.
Perhaps the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the best time to plant a tree is now if you didn’t do it then.
Plant the seed, model mentorship in your life, have mentors, and then put mentors in their lives so that they come to understand how necessary it is to have mentors.
That way, when they become young adults, they’re not afraid to ask for help or to ask other people to mentor them.