Who are your mentors? What characteristics inspired you? You may identify a psychologist who was particularly influential on your career, but maybe you can also identify mentors from other areas and times of your life. Perhaps it is a teacher, scout leader, or family member. What are you doing to emulate those same characteristics and mentor leaders from amongst your colleagues, students, or other members of your community?
My parents have always been community leaders. From my earliest memories, they attended community events, volunteered for service in our church, school, and county fair board. To a kid, they were just regular, embarrassing, boring parents, however as I got older, others started telling me the reasons they saw my parents as leaders and mentors. It is a strange experience of viewing one’s parents through the lens of others, but I distinctly remember the realization that my own parents were leaders and mentors in our community. My parents were not professional leaders, they did not have any formal training, but what others’ saw was their genuineness and willingness to serve. I’ve had lots of mentors throughout my life. When I ask myself the above question, “what characteristics inspire me?” It isn’t their capacity and knowledge in leadership skills, it’s their genuineness and willingness to serve.
Being on the receiving end of mentorship where genuineness and servant leadership was a core value, I think of this often as I work with students and early career psychologists. As much as I may enjoy professional engagement with APA, divisions, and my SPTA, I need to encourage others to step forward and contribute to our organizations.
As we are nearing the end of the calendar year, it is a good time to think about what we can do to give back to our professional community in the coming year and mentor others to do the same. Although I plan to encourage others to take on leadership roles within our division, I also challenge myself to think about my work environment and local community and how I can encourage others to take on leadership roles closer to home.
Be a mentor to someone else. Be genuine. Be of service to others. Consider how you can mentor others, not just within psychology, but in your community. I hope you will think about how you may be a mentor in the next year and how you can emulate the characteristics you admire in your own mentors.