Helping your mentees build on their strengths can be more powerful and helpful than only concentrating on their weak areas. In other words, as you help your mentees choose goals, make sure at least one goal focuses on
improving or leveraging abilities and attributes they already have.

Identifying Strengths

How can you and your mentees find those strengths? Here are some places to look.

• What the mentees believe and feel about themselves

  Ask your mentees to list several things they know and can do well. Help them find what has worked in their lives rather than what’s gone wrong. Here are some sentences to use:

  Tell me about a time when you felt really alive, creative, excited, content, and successful. Describe how you felt. What factors contributed to this positive experience?

  What do others name as your strengths? Tell me what you most value about yourself. How has God gifted you?

  Be certain that you’ve built trust with your mentees and promise confidentiality before you ask these powerful questions. As they answer with beliefs and feelings, take notes, and together highlight the strengths that emerge.

• Assessment results

  Look with your mentees at any measurements of their abilities, styles, or character. Perhaps your mentees completed an instrument such as the Myers-Briggs or DISC or a spiritual gifts inventory or character assessment. Find out the subjects in which your mentees earned good grades in school.

• Past performance reviews

  Have your mentees had job performance evaluations? Ask them to bring in a copy of the last one (and more if available). What strengths and progress are mentioned?

• What the mentees’ managers or ministry leaders say

  Find out what their bosses or ministry leaders consider to be the mentees’ strengths. Encourage your mentees to ask these key people directly. You might even talk with their supervisors yourself, but only with your mentees’ permission and never without it.

• Your observations

  You may be the best source of data about your mentees’ strengths. Treat your partnerships like “mini-laboratories.” Chances are that your mentees will act similarly and affect others the same way they appear to you. Carefully observe your mentees’ comments, body language, and behaviors with you. What strengths do you see and hear? Are they quick thinking? sensitive? responsive? well-spoken? bright? patient? good writers? funny? careful listeners? Help your mentees recognize the behaviors you observed that helped you identify these strengths.

Next Step

Don’t rush the process of identifying your mentees’ strengths. And don’t limit the search to the beginning of your relationships. Keep adding to the list, and help them set goals and find venues to try out these strengths in new and more exciting ways.

Years ago, a mentee wrote and told several short stories about her dog to her nieces and children of her friends. She liked to write, and she knew she was good at it because the children begged her for more. She ended up filing away a small pile of mini-tales and scraps of almost-finished scenes. About a year ago, she found a mentor who recognized her talent and who helped her turn her short stories into a children’s book, workbook, and dog puppet presentation for schools and hospitals.

What are your mentees’ strengths, hidden and obvious? They definitely exist, and one of your most important tasks is to help your mentees find and use them.

For more ideas on Christ-centered mentoring, look at What We Offer.