Mentors

Mentors ~ All

Contribution # 3 April, 2001

Younger Mentors

The morning sun, low on the northern horizon, warms my coat. The breeze steels the heat, and I scrunch my hat down to cover the bald from rays they say will harm me. Old boots, scuffed into being comfortable, shield tired feet from sharp rocks veneered with marble-like pebbles. Laces never stay neat as twigs and grass gently tug to test the knots. Dark glasses barely equalize the bright of light forcing a vision-limiting squint. Jeans torn by brambles on an earlier trip, let in numbing cold spots. My skin seams to itch out of misunderstanding why hot and cold can be so close together. The favorite T-shirt my spouse wants for a rag waits for a chance to be outer ware. Dad's World War II army captain's shirt, with pockets twice replaced from the original, has places for pens, pencils, rulers, and stuff necessary to look at the earth. Cold sensitive hands burned in a helicopter crash 15 years prior desire the warmth of the gloves and fight to be free. Warm or write, which is it? It is always the other, regardless. I am in the field looking at the rocks, the sky, the trees, and the critters; just looking.

I carry a hammer, almost half my height, to balance my traverse between stopping and looking inside some rock. The distant mountains are razor-like blades slicing the sky. They must be solid to stand so high. The rocks I slip on are softer, altered from what they were from years of water soaking baths. Colorful for sure and the reason I hope to see more, but still it is hard to maneuver to where the best areas look to be. Vibrams have no purchase on the side hill. My mussels strain to keep up with the pace. My blue pack will feel heavier at the end of the day as I trade water and food for rocks and soil. I am here as much due to my drive as the lessons from my mentors. One of them, younger than I by a decade or more, walks easily ahead on what must be an easier path. While I struggle, he lopes. While I pant, he needs a doctor with a stethoscope to tell him to breath deeply. Oh, what less age and longer legs could do for me. We will stop when we get there and compare notes.

My long handled hammer cracks open rocks deep enough to reveal the unweathered core. He looks though a new higher-powered magnifying glass, a hand lens in our trade, at the minerals within the rocks he has chosen to study. “There” is no place in specific, not necessarily the top, perhaps the next outcrop or an old-timers scraping in search of wealth. Notes compared, we sometimes return to rocks to reinterpret, discuss, disagree, and always learn from our different perspectives.

We will traverse further, climb higher perhaps, or circle to define better the reasons for our interest in the area. Our study is a continuum from details to wider perspective. From what we are seeing to question why it is there, to what it might mean. The process is a constant battle of taking the theoretical only so far as is practical and quickly defining what prospecting tools might well work, and assessing if this really is the place to spend our time, or might it be better invested someplace else.

Sometimes my experience clouds the details while other times his focus on the minute fails to see the scope of the issue. Both perspectives are valuable. In the mineral discovery business, where failure to find is more common than discovery, there is little room to waste time and talent with lesser chances of reward. Fun as it might be to study the details and unravel the mysteries, that is not always the mission of tramping through the hills. Making decisions is, avoiding decisions is not.

This scene, in a different setting each time, enjoys the same two figures, the younger smarter, enthusiastic, bright, challenged, driven person and me. One time it is with Lisa in Peru, another with Rich in Chile, or Bonnie in Montana, Gary in Colorado, Jerry, Jim and Dave in Idaho, Jorge in Peru, and even people outside my chosen profession, Tiffany in Chile the theme is the same. The specifics alter, however the lesson is the same. Youth are my mentors too. Not only do these bright people teach me things and bring different valuable points of view, they teach us how to be mentors though being willing enthusiastic learners. If there is a school for mentors, it is the classroom of the people we know and work with.
Mentoring is trust, mentoring is listening, mentoring is allowing ways for others to discover. From my younger friends and colleagues I see:

· They teach the new concepts
· They are not restrained by the predigest of experience
· They are open to ideas and the wisdom of experience
· They question
· They Listen
· They challenge
· They ask
· They bring out the best in all of us.
· They teach us to be mentors

I am indeed lucky to have learned some valuable lessons:

~Listen
~Teach don't preach
~Find ways to impart knowledge
~ Ask good questions, even if you know the answer
~ Let them discover the answers and most likely they will improve on them in the process.
~Treat people as equals
~Delegate and trust - give tasks they have not yet done in the context that you know they can do it, and not to be afraid to make mistakes - just learn from them.
~Guide rather than direct
~Provide useful training and build on strengths
~Set high goals and expectations
~Manage stress
~Help make decisions to get on to the next one - don't get so personally involved as to loose objectivity.

Mineral discovery, like most I suppose, is a tough cutthroat business where the agile and aggressive will only survive by making informed decisions. My experience, not a universal truth for sure, is that the positive and optimistic people will in the end reject more opportunities. While they will consider more places, ideas and concepts, with the best mentors at their side, it is their judgment of what is right that counts, and not how many opportunists they consider. In the process, they occasionally shatter a few paradigms and in the process become mentors themselves.