Connecting: The Mentoring Relationships You Need to Succeed in Life

This is excellent book on mentoring with fresh ideas as to how mentoring takes place with practical suggestions and an exhaustive recommended reading list.

This classic discussion of mentoring brings the expertise of two important authorities on leadership development to the table. Their discussion tends to widen the field when they consider mentoring to include a variety of different relationships. Essentially, any relationship that involves one person benefiting another could be considered mentoring. They even discuss "occasional mentoring" such as teachers, counselors, and "passive mentoring" such as role models. So mentoring is not exactly a synonym for personal discipleship. In fact, their definitions are so broad they include secular mentors in business or professions. Their coverage of the discipling role again involves mainly grounding believers in their walk, as opposed to leadership development or multiplication. Practical suggestions for how to make personal disciples are limited to two pages. One of their most important points is that most Christian leaders name more than one person as having key influence in their lives, often in different roles. The discipler, the coach, and the spiritual guide are the three most intentional types of mentors. Readers will notice we have incorporated all these roles into the single notion of disciple making. But I agree that God will often use others to fill in areas where a given disciple maker may need help. We certainly are familiar with many cases where multiple disciple makers have given input to the lives of the same believers. When making disciples in the context of good community we should frequently see others investing meaningfully into the life of any disciple with whom we work. But we continue to believe that someone should ideally take the lead, or the responsibility to see that any promising and willing young believer received the help he or she needs. This book ends with a stirring study on finishing well. The authors reveal disturbing findings that most leaders fail to do so. - Dennis McCallum, author Organic Disciplemaking: How to promote Christian leadership development through personal relationships, biblical discipleship, mentoring, and Christian community

Connecting: The Mentoring Relationships You Need to Succeed in Life, by Paul D. Stanley and J. Robert Clinton, Colorado Springs, Navpress, 1992, 252 pages. Reviewed by J. L. LeePaul Stanley has over twenty years experience in leadership development. He has served as the international vice-president of the Navigators. His ministry has taken him to a variety of international locations where he has done both leadership training and consulting.Dr. Robert Clinton has served on the faculty of the Fuller Theological Seminary as an associate professor of leadership for the school of world mission. He has completed extensive research in the field of leadership and specializes in leadership training, selection, and emergence patterns.The thesis of this book is to show leaders a method they may use to "finish well." That method is to use mentoring as a leadership tool. The authors define the tool of mentoring in relationship terms as an experience where one person empowers another using divinely provided resources. The authors also clearly state the four objectives of the book on page 13.1.) "How to be mentored even though there aren't enough mentors to go around"2.) "An explanation of what makes mentoring work"3.) "A balanced model of mentoring relationships"4.) "Illustrations and ideas on how mentoring can work for you"They answer the first objective in the first ten chapters of the book. This is accomplished by breaking down the task of mentoring into seven functions, Discipler, Spiritual Guide, Coach, Counselor, Teacher, Sponsor and Model. Model is further sub-divided into Contemporary and Historical Models. The first three mentoring functions are grouped together under the supra heading of Intensive Mentoring. The fourth through sixth functions are likewise grouped under the heading Occasional Mentoring. The two sub-types of models are considered under the heading Passive Mentoring. The authors also define three essential dynamics of the mentoring process as Attraction, Responsiveness, and Accountability. These three dynamics are of greater importance in the more intensive types of mentoring. The three dynamics also address the second objective of the book, "what makes mentoring work." The introduction of the seven mentoring functions and the three dynamics begins in chapter two, especially pages 41-45, and form the backbone of this book upon which most of the rest is expansion and elaboration. Chapter 11, especially pages 161-168, describes what the authors term the "Constellation Model" of mentoring. This model attempts to set forward a framework for the seven functions of mentoring detailed in chapters 3-10. This Constellation Model is defined in images of upward mentoring, downward mentoring, and peer co-mentoring. The peer co-mentoring is further described as either external (outside your organization) or internal (inside your organization). Peer co-mentoring is also described in terms of "close buddy", friend and acquaintance. The fourth objecti

Stanley and Clinton have written a very practical guide to developing mentoring relationships. By addressing several kinds of mentoring (from intentional discipleship to passive mentorship) they have digested sophisticated theory into reasonable methods. Throughout the book they also offer their own personal experiences as examples of the principles they wish to bring out, which adds a very readable flavor. At times the authors seem to treat the topic of relationships with a sterile pragmatism, which is my only complaint about the book. Perhaps Stanley and Clinton would do well to spend time reading Larry Crabb's book by the same name! Overrall, I appreciated this book and I am using some of the principles in my own ministry at Biola University.