If you have been learning and preparing for a more uncertain future, it’s time to set up and learn how to mentor others. People want to learn right now! They are having their eyes opened to the importance of a preparedness lifestyle. Mentors are essential to ushering this new wave of individuals into the preparedness folds. Books like those of Nicole Apelian and Johnny Jacks can be vital as well.

When you are searching for a mentor of your own, listen to your gut. Do you fit in with the group? Do they make wise decisions? You should be able to communicate easily with them, and they should represent the place you want to go to. Mentors will teach you new skills from their past mistakes. If they don’t represent the goals you are seeking, you need to find someone else. These lessons are vital to avoiding pitfalls that your journey will present.

The mentor you seek needs to be passionate about the information they are teaching. It helps get students excited about learning and willing to engage in the lessons. These mentors should be able to communicate well, but they also have to back up their words with ability. They need to have the skills that they are teaching. The learning experience that they went through will be their guide map to educating you. As a student, you need to be open to learning from them, so you must have respect for the individual, or the relationship is a waste of time.

When you become a mentor, people will be looking up to you and emulating you. They will want to follow you. It is a lot of responsibility to ensure that you are exemplifying the behavior and skill set you want to teach to them. The ability to instruct requires an exceptional command of the knowledge you are teaching. As a mentor, your lowest expectation is your student’s highest, so the higher you set the bar, the more proficient your students will be.

It is always better to teach someone to fish rather than handing them a fish. Don’t do something for them, teach them to think and do it for themselves. If you spoon-feed the knowledge, your students will not retain it. The better way is to get them to engage in discovering the information for themselves. If you can do this, knowledge becomes an in-depth learning experience.

To apply this method of guiding rather than showing, you have to stay a few steps ahead of your student’s progress, so you are ready to shed light on the next step you want them to take. Keeping up with your student’s progress can be a challenge when dealing with some students. Everyone learns differently. Study up on personality types so you can be adaptable to your student’s learning style, rather than expecting them to adapt to your teaching style.

Resist being a control freak. The student needs to stumble to learn. You are their guide, not their safety net. They will need to gain their own experience.

Build your student’s confidence. The personality types will play a significant role here because everyone responds differently to different kinds of coaching. Your student should walk away with the skill set and confidence to exemplify the lesson. The tools you taught need to apply to their journey, and they should be proficient enough to perform them without question.

Every type of person helps build a community. Being a mentor that is adaptable to any personality style is essential if you want to create a healthy, well-rounded community. Many of you have learned right along with me on this journey. You will be looked to for guidance when the time comes. Will you be ready to step into your mentorship role?