Partnership And Mentoring: Helping Shape Purpose And Innovation

It comes as no surprise that when Daniel Levinson did his ground breaking studies reported in his books The Stages of a Man’s Life and the Stages of a Woman’s life, he found that mentoring played a significant role in the life and career development of the participants. Beginning with parents and teachers, we each understand from our own experiences how important it is to have the guidance and support of more experienced people, who nurture us at critical points. A business partnership can also serve a similar function, where two people or more provide each other mutual support and guidance from a complementary set of strengths.

Sometimes mentoring transforms into partnership as the junior person matures. This is what I experienced in the longest lasting business relationship in my life. It began when I was in graduate school and worked closely with a professor, whom I will call Henry. Henry became my mentor in the profession of psychology. We became friends, and then I became his flute teacher; so we had a bit of role reversal. Eventually, I went to business school and then we decided to form a business partnership with a third person. That person dropped out after two years and Henry and I spent 17 years building two multi-million dollar businesses, before going our separate ways.

The relationship factor represents one of The 7 Dimensions of Wisdom in the SOPPHIA model. These are seven sets of skills or competencies linked to business and individual success. The word Sophia is Greek for wisdom, and the ‘O’ in the acronym SOPPHIA, stands for Others – i.e. relationships. The close relationships that occur in mentoring and partnerships help us to walk the delicate path between living our purpose and creating value for others through the process of innovation. Purpose and Innovation are two other of The 7 Dimensions of Wisdom that promote business and personal success.

There is indeed a delicate path to walk between living your purpose and creating value for others. We shouldn’t assume that just because you are passionate about an activity, that it is your purpose or calling or that you can use it to create value for others. First, purpose includes not just passion, but a commitment to achieving excellence. Therefore competence is also required, in addition to passion. But even if you are passionate about something and excel in it, this may still not result in value creation for others. Value creation depends on meeting other people’s needs and wants.

Needs and wants are quite complex. Even a need that is absolute, such as the need to eat food to survive, can be expressed and satisfied in seemingly infinite ways. So satisfying the need to eat becomes a matter of taste and fashion. That you are passionate about and excellent at creating certain delicacies, will only be perceived as valuable if they meet the prevailing taste and fashion of a community of potential customers enough to generate demand.

Mentoring and partnerships help both to clarify purpose and to socialize it. They get us both into and out of our own heads. They help us to channel our sense of purpose into forms that are more likely to be of value to other people. They connect that inner flame with the needs and tastes of the community of others who are likely to become the customers of our successful innovation.

I’m Dr. Bernard Brookes. To learn more go to www.sopphia.com.