Routledge The Mentor's Way: Eight Rules for Bringing Out the Best in Others

Drawing on the author’s extensive experience training mentors, The Mentor’s Way outlines eight rules for engaging in a mentoring relationship. Nemanick examines the ways in which mentoring differs from managing or leading, and details the various roles of the mentor as a role model, motivator, confidant, coach, and more. Readers will learn how to develop successfully in each of these roles while helping a protégé to develop his or her own skills. Clear and elegant chapters, each prefaced with a real-world example, emphasize to readers that their role as a mentor lies in listening and responding to a protégé’s individual strengths and needs. Special attention is paid to creating a safe space, displaying empathy, and fielding a protégé’s questions while knowing what to ask as a mentor. The author takes the anxiety out of the mentorship journey, accompanying practical insight with chapter exercises that are designed to help readers use their own experiences to identify best practice. Suggested topics for difficult mentor/protégé conversations allow readers to facilitate a stronger, more open relationship with their protégé. This practical guide will provide mentors with the toolkit they need to get the most out of a relationship with their protégés. Review Rik Nemanick has written an accessible and practical guide for mentors based on his own experiences as a leadership-development consultant that provides would-be or seasoned mentors with a toolkit for managing relationships with a diverse set of protégés...Whether you are a rule follower or a rule breaker in the mentoring world, you are likely to benefit by reading this book, or even just by dipping into it. Personnel Psychology Not only does Nemanick properly encourage us to broaden the traditional definition of a mentor―more importantly, he provides actionable advice about how to become a more impactful mentor within this expanded definition. By realizing that mentoring can range from a single inspiring interface to a formal relationship with a protégé, people in leadership positions should feel moved, if not obligated, to share their knowledge and experience more readily to bring out the best in others. Sharon John, CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop, USA The Mentor's Way provides an easy-to-implement path to successful mentoring in the workplace filled with relatable examples. The author presents principles and practices for mentoring that are not only useful, they are essential. We have incorporated his 8 Rules into our mentoring programs and they yield great results! Jeff Veenhuizen, Vice-President, R&D Operations, Monsanto Company, USA About the Author Rik Nemanick, PhD, is a principal with The Leadership Effect, a leadership development consulting firm based in St. Louis, USA. He trains 750–1,000 mentors each year through formal mentoring programs in the corporate setting, and has worked with Anheuser-Busch, Build-A-Bear Workshop, and Massachusetts General Hospital, among other organizations.