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Misconception number one: Mentors are at least 83 years old. One of the most common misconceptions about mentoring involves age. Many people assume that in order to be wise enough and mature enough to be a mentor, you have to be at least 83 years old. They assume the only appropriate protégés are 16-year-olds receiving their tutelage on a stuffed leather bench at a grand piano. This is simply not the case.

I'd advise you to ignore age when selecting a mentor. Just look for a person whom you respect and like a lot, and from whom you want to learn.

Younger protégés look at mentors as "older," but mentors look at protégés over 30 simply as "adult." As a protégé, you may be constantly aware of the age difference. If you are over 30, your mentor probably sees you as a young adult friend. The relationship is adult to adult, not adult to child.

Misconception number two: Mentors must be perfect!

This misconception causes qualified people to hesitate about becoming mentors. The fact is, protégés don't expect a mentor to be perfect.

I once spoke at a conference where I asked how many of the attendees expected their mentors to be perfect. Not one hand went up. Then I asked, "How many of you have procrastinated about becoming a mentor because you assumed that you had to be perfect as a mentor?" Probably 95 percent of the hands in the room went up. The bottom line is, mentors are not perfect, and they don't need to be.

Misconception number three: Mentors have all the answers.

This misconception is obviously related to the one before it. The same logic applies. Mentors are human. They do not have all the answers. They never will have all the answers. Their role is sometimes to be the answer, sometimes to have the answer, but most of the time to know where to find the answer.

Fundamentally, a mentor connects a protégé to resources: his personal network, appropriate seminars, libraries, helpful videos, audio tapes and books, and even support groups. The mentor is never required to have all the answers or all the resources. S/he is simply a connector to many resources that the protégé needs during the growth process.

As a mentor, your attitude should be, "I'm here to help you, and I'll do what I can."

Misconception number four: The mentoring process involves a curriculum the mentor needs to teach a protégé.

Believe me, no such curriculum exists. The mentoring process is unique to each protégé. Learning is based on the protégé's agenda, priorities, questions, and needs — not on the mentor's preset program.

Within a trust relationship, protégés are able to ask questions they would never feel comfortable asking most people. They learn best when their need to know is greatest. Therefore, the single most teachable moment of any protégé's life is the few seconds immediately following a sincere question. No curriculum, checklist or theory could replace a mentor's life experience and compassion in such a teachable moment.

Misconception number five: A mentor's focus is holding a protégé accountable.

My observation is that many people focus on accountability for one of two reasons: they enjoy holding other people accountable but do not particularly want to be held accountable, or they lack self-control and try to put that responsibility in someone else's hands. Obviously, both of these motivations are unhealthy and would be detrimental to a mentoring relationship. Accountability should not be the focus of the mentoring relationship. The focus should be supporting, strengthening, and encouraging.

Of course, in the natural process of helping the protégés grow to maturity, you will use an element of accountability. For instance, you can hold your protégé accountable for following through on something if a little accountability support helps to form a new habit, reach a new goal, or resist some temptation. But do not feel that, as a mentor, you are supposed to hold your protégés accountable every step of the way. Their accountability needs to be developed in terms of responsibility to god, government and other legitimate authorities, not to you.

by Les and Leslie Parrott

Tom and Wendy were the typical newly married couple. In their mid-20s, they had dated for nearly two years before getting engaged. They had the blessing of their parents, attended premarital counseling, and were on their way to living happily ever after -- or so everyone thought.

But marriage for Tom and Wendy, like the majority of newlyweds, wasn't all they hoped for. Each of them, for different reasons, felt let down. Unlike the majority of couples, however, Tom and Wendy talked openly about their feelings. Their expectations of marriage were not being met, and they were determined to do something about it.

So on a cold January day four months after their wedding, Tom and Wendy asked for help. Bundled up against the cold, they came into our office and began to shed their coats. As Wendy sipped hot coffee to thaw out, she said, "We have talked to friends and family about what is going on, but we both decided we need more objectivity."

Tom joined in: "Yeah, everybody who knows us just says 'Give it time' or something like that." Tom went on to say that their marriage was not on the rocks and no major overhaul was needed. "I just think we need a little realignment," he said.

We met with him and Wendy for nearly an hour, listening to their experiences. We gave them several exercises to help them explore their misconceptions of marriage and then recommended a few resources. Then we introduced the idea of linking up with a marriage mentor couple.

We told them how meeting from time to time with a seasoned married couple could give them a sounding board and a safe place to explore some of their questions about marriage. Like most newly married couples we talked to, Tom and Wendy were very eager to find such a couple. After a bit of discussion, they suggested a married couple in their church.

Neither of them knew this other couple very well, but they respected their marriage from afar and thought they would fit the bill. After a few phone calls and a little more exploration, we made the connection for Tom and Wendy. Over the course of several months, they met three times with their mentors, Nate and Sharon.

Tom and Wendy have been married for more than five years now. They are madly in love and happier than they ever imagined. Here is a portion of a letter they recently sent us:

That's not a bad idea. Throughout human history mentoring has been the primary means of passing on knowledge and skills. In the Greek epic The Odyssey, the hero Odysseus had an elderly friend and adviser named Mentor. Before Odysseus went to fight in the Trojan War, he made Mentor the guardian of his son, Telemachus. The Bible is also filled with examples of mentoring (Eli and Samuel, Elijah and Elisha, Moses and Joshua, Naomi and Ruth, Elizabeth and Mary, Barnabas and Paul, Paul and Timothy).

Today, we have a dream that a network of mentors will rise up to become guardians of the next generation of marriages.

But mentoring is in short supply these days. In our modern age, the learning process has shifted. It now relies primarily on computers, classrooms, books and videos. In most cases today the relational connection between the knowledgeable and experienced giver and the receiver of that wisdom has weakened or is nonexistent — especially in the early years of marriage.

What Is a Marriage Mentor?

"What I need is someone to talk to who has walked down the path I'm just beginning," said Lisa a few weeks into her new marriage. "Whenever I go to my mom or dad with a situation, they end up being a parent or teaching me something I don't really need to learn."

While a mother and father can certainly serve a helpful function in the life of a new bride or groom, they usually cannot offer the distance and objectivity that a mentor gives. For this reason, it is important first to realize exactly what a mentor is not:

A mentor is not a mother or father.
A mentor is not a friend.
A mentor is not "on call" for every little crisis.
A mentor is not a know-it-all.
A mentor is not committed long-term.

In addition, the relationship between a mentor couple and newlyweds has a natural cycle of its own, which is not always predictable. Each mentoring relationship takes on its own style and personality. The amount of time couples spend together and the content they discuss can rarely be prescribed. However, we recommend a minimum of three meetings throughout the newlyweds' first year together: at three months, seven months, and one year after the wedding. These times provide the basic structure upon which additional meetings, meals and phone calls can rest.

The Boomerang Effect

An interesting aspect about marriage mentoring is that it can actually help the mentor couple.

"I don't know how much we helped Doug and Sarah," Joan told us, "but we sure got a lot out of it." Joan laughed as she was telling us about being a marriage mentor couple along with Larry, her husband of 18 years.

"Helping a young couple seemed to spark a lot of things in our own marriage that we had neglected," Larry added.

Something wonderful happens when a more mature couple reaches out to a new couple. We call it the boomerang effect. By helping another couple form and live out their dreams, one's own dreams for marriage are reawakened and fulfilled.

Once you take the time to listen to a questioning couple, your own "answers" become clearer. You will also be refreshed by this relationship. Almost by osmosis, the vim and vigor for marriage that a new couple enjoys will begin to rub off on you. Simply being around their energetic spirits will revive and rejuvenate your marriage. There is also an overwhelming sense of having done good, of helping a new couple build a love that will last a lifetime.