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I listened as the young people told me how he didn’t listen to them, how he was too concerned with his own agenda and how he hadn’t taken the time to build relationships and trust with them. He was trying to mentor them without their assent. Building trust over time leads you to the point of ‘invitation’, where young people will allow you to pursue your agenda with them. Beware trying to push your agenda or ‘challenge’ them before you have achieved this!
The problem with that youth worker was not his credentials or his ability to communicate, nor his empathy or passion for those young people. His problem was expecting to be able to challenge them before they had given him invitation to do so. As youth workers we can assume we have the right to speak into young lives purely because we feel we have a mandate from God, but if you want to speak into young people’s lives you have to earn that right, through listening to them, spending a quantity of time with them and even taking a certain amount of flak from them. This is a process of testing you for your commitment to them before they will allow you ‘in.’
It took me months and months of listening to one group spout off about God, and putting up with all kinds of behaviour while loving them and being there for them until I had built enough trust that they allowed me to even share my opinion and began to ask me for advice. It was many more months until they would listen to me share about my faith.
In mentoring, this is more important than ever. Think of it as the mentoring ladder. You can’t step up to the second step until you’ve got established on the first.
The highest level of invitation is when you have enough relationship with a young person that you know you can bring challenge into areas they have not yet brought up or have not even noticed about themselves. Do not jump to this step lightly – it takes a long time of loving and putting them first to reach this point!
- If they take your advice you know you can begin to speak into their issues and challenge them on the things they tell you.
- If they listen to your opinion this is a sign that you are beginning to earn their respect and that you can begin to offer advice.
- At this point you earn the invitation to offer your opinion.
- The second is building trust.
- The first step on the mentoring ladder is building rapport.
