When my friend and colleague, Laci reached out on that cold January day a few years ago, she had no understanding at that time what her call was unleashing. Perhaps she regrets that call now, but since we are still chatting regularly, my hope is that she still finds our conversations as beneficial as I do. What Laci was unaware of at the time she dug up the courage to call a complete stranger was that we both felt a similar nudge, that not only did we desire to have someone serve as a sounding board for our journeys in higher education, we were both witnessing at our individual institutions a need to coach young women considering a profession in the sport industry. For us, a missing Mentoring Community, meant we sought leadership outside of our institutions, but what we discovered along the way, is that perhaps God was placing a calling on our lives to create that Mentoring Community for others.

For all the myriad reasons which exist, and they are numerous, for why this current generation of Emerging Adults appear to especially need guidance from a trusted mentor, the reality is that as I share with organizations about engaging and equipping Gen Z, there is a common theme of uncertainty on how to best serve this generation entering our college classrooms and the workplace. And although I prefer the term learning partners to mentors, the concept is familiar, and I have found Sharon Daloz Parks to be an expert who best articulates my own thoughts. “We long for wisdom figures—people who give us confidence that we will make it through this transition,” whatever transition one might be navigating, whether it’s college or a career. “Classically, what we need in that transition [to critical thought] is for Yoda to show up! That transition is the time for [a Learning Partner] to appear.”

What I enjoy about Park’s approach to caring for emerging adults is that although we can gain valuable insight from what she calls a mentoring moment, she encourages us to embrace an even deeper reality that we need to create Mentoring Communities. “We are profoundly social creatures, and if we are going to have the courage to create new patterns of life—which is what is now being asked of us—we are going to need the confidence that we will have good company…I would wish that every emerging adult could be a part of a Mentoring Community, a mentoring environment.”

Included in Parks’ discussion in the book A Calling to Care, is an emphasis that mentoring can be so much more than just a one-on-one relationship between a protégé and a seasoned professional. When we invest the efforts into creating Mentoring Communities, we multiply the numerous gifts that mentoring provides such as recognition, support, challenge, inspiration, and accountability. “…while mentoring is, indeed, sometimes hierarchical in terms of age or position, our times call us to a considerable amount of shoulder-to-shoulder [what I call Side-By-Side] mentoring. As we are called into unprecedented landscapes, a mentor may play a role in inspiring future possibilities, but the mentor and protégé together will share the puzzle of discovering how to best proceed.” What I envision is a Mentoring Community that uses Appreciative Inquiry to engage all generations in conversations leading to how to best engage and equip everyone in their community, all generations working together as described in The Gen Z Effect. This type of Mentoring Community engages all its members in Courageous Conversations which aide us in Reclaiming Conversation and modeling for emerging generations how to think critically, how to empathize with differing opinions, and to solve problems in a collaborative way.

My heart is captured by college students and this stage of life in human development, and whether it’s delving into books like Life Questions Every Student Asks or Parks’ writings, I am convinced that the establishment of Mentoring Communities is one answer to caring our students and colleagues through their pilgrimage to a flourishing life. “If we fail to meet the moment, the casualties–not only in the form of suicides—are manifold: the potential contributions to society that are never realized when emerging adults are not recognized, supported, and challenged…There is a very long list of the ways that the distinctive gifts of a particular life—and thousands of lives—can be lost to the human story forever if we do not care, if we are not accountable, if we fail to craft the Mentoring Communities—in the classroom, in the residence hall, in the lab, on the playing field, within the off-campus project, and in the college or university as a whole—that appropriately and powerfully recognize the vulnerability and nurture the promise of the emerging adult years.”

Will you please join me in contributing to crafting a Mentoring Community, wherever you may be? And please feel free to share in the comments below the ways you have seen communities built that foster these types of relationships.

References:

Burge, G. & Lauber, D. (Eds). (2020). Life questions every student asks: Faithful responses to common issues. IVP Books.

Koulopoulos, T. & Keldsen, D. (2014). The Gen Z Effect: The Six Forces Shaping the Future of Business. Brookline, MA: Bibliomotion, Inc.

Parks, S.D. & Herrmann, T.W. (2018). Mentorship as Care for Emerging Adulthood: A Conversation with Sharon Daloz Parks and Timothy W. Herrmann. In Hermann, T.W. & Riedel, K.D. (Eds.) A calling to care: Nurturing college students toward wholeness. (pp. 37-54). Abilene Christian University Press.