Occasionally when mentoring or supervising professionally in the Christian community, you will need to have a difficult conversation about theology and beliefs. Even within the Christian community, there are many differences: between denominations—for instance,Catholics and Protestants, Calvinists and Moravians all vary drastically—but there are also subtle differences even within a denomination. For example, some mentees/supervisees may believe in predestination, while others are firm believers in freewill. Every person is influenced by their own experiences and their spiritual education, which leads to many different interpretations of God’s word and will…

Over the last few weeks, we have been exploring how to confront and challenge our mentee or supervisee when it is necessary. We have mostly focused on how we, as a mentor or supervisor, can encourage our clients to open up, to speak frankly and to face difficulties in themselves and the world around them. Today, we are turning towards ourselves and how we handle those conversations…

When working with mentees and supervisees as a Christian mentor or supervisor, we naturally run into behaviours that don’t align with the Bible’s ethics. This can be an excellent opportunity to bring the Bible into the conversation and explore stories that may parallel your mentee’s current situation. This means that we, as mentors or supervisors, need to understand the message

Every mentor or supervisor uses their own experiences to guide their mentees. It is almost impossible not to use one’s experiences and perspectives during sessions. Here are some to be aware of: Your Experience Mentors and Supervisors often enter into the role because of their personal experience. We have been pastors, coaches, teachers, leaders, and everything we have learned has

Providing feedback to a mentee is one of the most crucial skills for a mentor but also one of the most difficult. It can be hard to walk the line between helpful and constructive feedback and pushy and demoralising feedback. The last thing a mentor wants is for his feedback to hurt or discourage his mentee… however, feedback is essential

Last week, we looked at what it means to deal with setbacks when attaining goals and how to redirect your mentee on their course of action. We looked at situations that require a mentee to put their goals on hold or change their goals… and how that is okay if the situation requires this. But what if the setback is

Mentoring always begins with setting short-term and long-term goals for a mentee’s future and centres around achieving these goals over time. While the goals for each mentee will look very different for individuals, one thing is always true; the journey towards success can be long and difficult. There are always hard conversations, stumbling blocks to overcome and disappointments along the

We have all spent a session (or many) with our mentee considering their personal and professional goals, and found ourselves worried that these goals aren’t attainable or healthy. It can be harmful and wrong to support our mentees in goals that are not in their best interest or are interfering with a more important objective, but it can be difficult

My Message Some wonderful news: a research project on Christian Leaders Health is underway. It’s an empirical validation of the health of a Christian Leader assessment tool I developed with Dr Bob Logan and Prof Chuck Riddley.  It’s based on Dr Keith Farmers’ 5 core questions. If you are interested in being healthy, take the survey. Also, pass this survey