I said yes to mentoring one cohort. I have now walked alongside three. What keeps me coming back is watching how far a little proximity travels once you let go of it.
The fellows I mentored in the first year are now mentoring the newest ones. I did not plan that. I just answered honest questions honestly, and it turned out that habit is contagious. Each cohort teaches the next one better than I taught them.
How change compounds
Mentoring taught me that my job is not to have every answer. It is to shorten the distance between a fellow and the answer they can reach on their own. Do that a few dozen times and you have built something that keeps running without you.
“The best thing I built was a habit that outlived my part in it.”
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