Session 13 · Going Deeper
Three Myths of Mentoring (Adam Grant)
SESSION 13 · SHORTER READING · ABOUT 4 MINUTES |
WHYZMEN · SESSION 13
The Three Big Myths of Mentoring
Adam Grant on why the giver gains as much as the receiver
Credit: Adam Grant, “The Three Big Myths of Mentoring,” WorkLife with Adam Grant, a TED podcast. Transcript at ted.com/podcasts/worklife. Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton. Why it is here: Grant’s case that mentoring runs both ways is the research behind your triad project’s first rule, co-mentoring: older men have something to give and something still to receive. It also explains what you may have noticed in the younger-man conversation from the Session 11 Field Tests. |
Framing
Grant examines why mentoring so often disappoints despite its popularity. About 90% of Fortune 500 companies run mentoring programs, and having a mentor predicts higher job performance, career success and satisfaction. Yet formal, poorly designed programs regularly underperform informal relationships. The gap, he argues, comes from three myths we carry into mentoring.
The three myths
Myth | The truth |
1 · For mentees: seek out the biggest superstar. | The best performers are often poor teachers — their knowledge is tacit, and they struggle to explain what they do naturally. The ideal mentor is a dedicated teacher, someone committed to helping others grow. Grant: “Knowledge and experience do not a mentor make.” What to look for instead: “magnanimity and patience and grace.” |
2 · For mentors: your job is to always provide direction. | Great mentors ask questions rather than hand out answers. They help mentees crystallize lessons from the mentee’s own experience and find the mentee’s own path — not walk them down the mentor’s. Belle Ragins (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee), a leading mentoring researcher, names empathy and perspective-taking as the critical mentor skills. |
3 · For both: mentoring is one-way and benefits only the mentee. | Mentoring is mutual. Mentors gain fulfillment, fresh perspective and growth; teaching builds the mentor’s own competence, and giving guidance builds confidence. Grant highlights reverse mentoring: Patrice Gordon pioneered it at Virgin Atlantic, pairing junior employees with senior leaders, including the CEO, so learning flowed upward too. |
The anchor story
Sophia Chang — the first Asian-American woman in hip-hop management, who worked with Wu-Tang Clan and A Tribe Called Quest — describes her decades-long relationship with music executive Michael Ostin, who offered both belief and blunt correction (“You can’t boil the ocean… you can be like a bull in a china shop”). The relationship models the mix Grant prescribes: encouragement plus honest challenge, sustained over many years.
Grant’s closing counsel
Build mentoring on vulnerability, trust and mutual growth. Choose mentors motivated by genuine commitment to others rather than status; seek multiple mentors for diverse perspectives; and let the relationship run both directions — the strongest ones are two people openly learning together.
Where it shows up in WhyzMen
•Myth 2 is the Clearness Room rule and the triad champion role, stated by a Wharton professor: questions over answers, drawing a man’s own story out rather than prescribing. The skill you practice on your brothers is the skill you will use on the young man.
•Myth 3 is the strongest tie-in. Retirement-age men fear becoming “the guy with nothing left to offer.” Grant’s research says the giver gains as much as the receiver — which dovetails with Moynes’ Phase 4 (service to others), the significance arc, and the Session 11 Field Test conversation with a younger man: afterward, who learned more?
•Pairs with Stanier, The Coaching Habit and The Advice Trap, as the practical toolkit for Myth 2 — the seven questions are on the optional card E3 · Seven Questions.
“Knowledge and experience do not a mentor make.” — Adam Grant
WhyzMen · Rewire Retirement · Session 13 · Grant, “The Three Big Myths of Mentoring” · r3