During an interview once, the interviewee told me that she has often been mentored by the many books that she has read. While browsing a book about authors as mentors in a bookstore, one of the contributors called books, paper mentors. The contributor also indicated that the author of Harriet the Spy mentored and influenced her as a writer.
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Can a book be a mentor? Or is it the author who assumes the role of mentor? What about the characters in fiction, can they act as mentors? To answer these questions, requires that we look at the roles that mentors play in our lives. In the most basic sense, a mentor helps a protégé to achieve something that’s really important to her.
The Role of Mentors
- Advisor
- Role Model
- Sounding Board
- Guide
- Teacher/Skills Developer
- Resource Provider
- Champion/Advocate
- Cheerleader
- Confidant
- Critic
- Friend
- Facilitator
Mentors play many of the roles above, but no one mentor can play all of the roles in our lives. Let’s say for argument sake that books can be mentors, what characteristics would the books have for them to be great mentors? For a book to assume the role of a mentor, it has to have many of the elements below:
- Provokes thought
- Provides a deeper level of understanding and heightened awareness
- Ignites passion
- Awakens deep-seated emotions
- Provides practical wisdom
- Chronicles events for strategic guidance
- Provides formulas and intellectual frameworks to use
- Be about a change maker
- Solves everyday problems
- Shifts the reader’s mindset
Reflecting on the elements of a book that make it a mentor, when was the last time you read a really good book that mentored you? If there are books that have mentored you, just like my interviewee, think about the following questions.
- What was it about that book that made it memorable?
- How did you feel after you finished reading the book…sated… hungering for more…unnerved…?
- Did you take copious notes while you were reading this book?
- How many people did you refer this book to?
- Did it evoke any strong emotional response from you?
- Have you used any ideas from the book?
- What genre of book was it?
- Would you say that the book had a profound impact on your life?
If there are books that have mentored you, look at others that deal with the same topic, and do what Mortimer Adler recommends in How to Read a Book, and that is to read syntopically to master the topic, and I would add to also get divergent views. How do the books compare to each other? If the book is about a new area, think about what the author is saying, does it make sense? How does it stack up against what you already know? Also, identify:
- The problem the author presented and how it was solved
- The relevance of the information to your work and life
- Five takeaways
- Five great ideas you can glean from the information presented
- Any rule breaking
- Ideas/solutions that relate to work and life
- Solutions to everyday problems
- Ways to use ideas/insights/takeaways to increase the value of your product/service to your customers both internal and external to the organization
A book can never take the place of a traditional mentor, but it can assume some of the roles of a mentor, especially when you are trying to learn something, to gather information or to further your understanding of something.
Examples Where Books (and other publications) as Mentors Helped
Charles Darwin and British biologist Alfred Russel Wallace independently arrived at similar theories of Natural Selection in the mid-1800s after reading Essay on the Principle of Population by British pastor Thomas Malthus.
After many years of research and observing birds in flight, German engineer Otto Lilienthal, also known as the King of Gliders published his findings in the widely read book Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation. Lilienthal’s research article Practical Experiments for the Development of Human Flight, writings and notes proved invaluable to Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright also known as the Wright brothers. The Wright brothers believed that they could improve Lilienthal’s designs and resolve the problems plaguing aircraft theories. The Wright Brothers are credited for inventing the airplane.
As a child, while confined to bed because of illness, Robert Hutchings Goddard read H G Wells’ The War of the Worlds and became captivated with rockets and outer space. Goddard was a pioneer in liquid-fuelled rocketry and made significant contributions to the field.
While reading an article on a flight, Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon learned that the Internet was growing 2,300 per cent each year and wondered how he could use the information. He then looked at the top 20 catalogues to identify which would translate best to an online business and as a result Amazon was formed.
Now that you have read all this information, can books, authors and characters mentor you? I will leave that for you to digest and decide for yourself. How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let's keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don't you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.
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