Strength Based Mentoring

Gallup shared an awesome resource with us many years ago called the "The Bill of Rights for All Students." Their proclamations in this bill of rights is based off of their years of researching the classroom through their Gallup Student Poll. Through this tool, Gallup has studied the engagement, hope, and well-being of students in schools across the country. Through their decades of research, they have found that students need three things: someone who cares about their development to do what they like to do each day to do what they are best at every day But how can we as a mentor meet these needs of students?  First, and most readily, we are that someone who cares about their development. We get to show up each week aiming to bring about our mentee's full potential. We do not show up to fix, to judge, or to question our mentee, their teacher, or their parent. We show up with unconditional love and acceptance, ready to point out their success. I remember t...

An article came out from the strengths blogger Chris Heinz several days ago. He wrote short sentences about how each of the 34 themes might go about choosing names for their babies. Several people tagged me in the post of the blog asking my thoughts. We also had several conversations about it among the TeamMates staff. I found myself reading through the list thinking, wow, this seems fairly accurate. Now I do not have kids or kids on the horizon, but when my friends have children and they share the name prior to birth, I find myself wondering, why would someone name a baby before they meet them? For me, I found myself thinking I would not want to put a child into a predetermined box prior to getting to know them a bit. I laughed when I read the description about Adaptability naming babies. Chris wrote about Adaptability saying, " You wait until the baby is born to “try on names”. It is funny that even in this quirky blog post, I was reminded that the different ways we go about t...

Conversations have the power to bring our strengths to the next level. This week's strengths activity has curated conversation starters to help you and your mentee recognize talent and therefore develop your strengths. When answering these questions together, be sure to have your top 5 and top 3 strengths at the forefront. As you answer the starter questions, spot each other's strengths in the responses. At the end of the discussion, list 1-2 actions you could each take to develop your strengths further and keep each other accountable by checking in on these actions next time you meet.