Repost - Original by Nicole Gravagna posted on nicolegravagna.com
A strong mentor pool is a fundamental piece of successful accelerator programs like TechStars, which, by the way, is having it's flagship Demo Day next week in Boulder. I'm sure the mentors are proud of this cohort's hard work.
Entrepreneurs in residence programs formalize mentorship in universities, incubators, and venture capital firms all over the country. For those who have seen the power of mentorship, it's no mystery. Mentorship is fundamentally important for the growth and success of all people trying to make serious headway.
If you dig, you can uncover countless notable mentor/mentee pairs in business and other fields. Mark Zuckerberg looks up to Marc Andreessen, Guy Kawasaki points to Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison (CEO, Oracle) mentored Marc Benioff (founder and CEO of Salesforce.com). The list goes on.
Mentorship doesn't have to be formal. Peer to peer mentoring occurs anytime you lean over, furrow your brow at a friend and mutter, "I don't get it." Unless, of course, he just shrugs. That's called two blind mice.
The grandmother method was a term made famous by Sugata Mitra in his TED talk about child-driven education. He noticed that an adult, or even just a slightly older peer, showing interest in a child's learning and discovery was enough to boost learning significantly. What do I mean by showing an interest? Sugata said that he coached his "grandmothers" (mentors) to be present, and say affirming things as the children were learning. They said things like "You really talked through that one." "Wow, that's pretty cool." "You've worked together well on this." The grandmotherly statements don't have to be the least bit educational to be helpful. Just showing an interest is enough.
I have my own grandmother method stories both from mentoring others and from being mentored.
I was finishing graduate school and exploring career options. I was looking for a person I could look to as a mentor, role model, or guide to get me to my next thing. As a PhD scientist with every intention of heading straight into the business world after graduation, there really weren't many folks who understood me. The scientists in my life didn't understand why I was leaving science. The business people I knew didn't understand how my background was going to help them in their business. At the time, there was one guy I knew with a PhD who had a prolific science career and knew how to hold his own in the business world. That guy is Rick Duke from CID4.
I nervously asked Rick if I could take some of his time and talk to him in his office. I just wanted advice, a job, a direction.
After a few weeks of attempts to get a meeting, he accepted but told me it could only be 20 minutes. Excited, I marched into his office with my notepad ready to write down all the great knowledge and wisdom of a man who was doing things I thought I might be capable of doing one day. I sat down and started asking questions.
Frankly, the answers I got were daunting. Rick didn't have a silver bullet for me. Biotech is a hard industry to break into. Businesses weren't hiring. It was 2011 and the economy was looking pretty bleak. I left that office 55 minute later (he let me take up more than just the promised 20 minutes of his time) a little depressed about my prospects.
Fast forward to today. I see Rick Duke often. Our organizations are formally partnered (RVC and CID4). Rick still apologizes for not being much help in that meeting. But you know what? He was completely helpful. Just not in the way he meant to be. He was helpful through the grandmother method.
Let me be clear. Rick never verbally patted me on the head like the grandmothers in Sugata Mitra's study. He used the grownup grandmother method. First he showed me that I was worth his time by spending and hour of his day with me. Then, he called me persistant and when he said it, it sounded like a good thing. He was giving me a green light.
Green lights don't have to be a big deal. When you tell someone you are mentoring that they picked the right people to talk to at a networking event, that's a green light. When you tell someone that you were impressed that they asked a good question in Q&A after a talk, that's a green light. You get the point. Your green light doesn't have to move mountains.
Red lights are just as important. I had a mentee who took notes on her phone in meetings. She felt engaged (and had all the notes), but the two-generations-older people around the table thought she was texting her girlfriends. I gave her a red light and she started taking notes in a more traditional way to give the important appearance of being engaged.
Red lights mean "less of that". They give people pause, make them think harder about what they are doing and inspire change.
Green lights are motivational. They signal, "more like that", and get people to put more energy into the actions that they are already doing that will make them successful.
The grownup grandmother method is made up of three parts. Spending time. Giving candid red lights. And highlighting the green lights when appropriate.
As a mentor, you should never feel required to give advice or tell your mentee what you might secretly have planned for their future. Let them discover it on their own. Play an ongoing game of redlight-greenlight with mentees and see what they can do with that little bit of information. Just for curiosity's sake, if you find yourself outside the Boulder Theater on Demo Day, ask the TechStars mentors if they use the grownup grandmother method of mentorship.