What Coaches/Mentors Can Learn from Passages in Caregiving
Coach Okafor had mentored Ana since she was a promising but nervous rookie, offering constant technical correction and hands-on drills after every session. Over four years Ana became one of the team's most consistent performers, but Okafor kept coaching her exactly as he had on day one, correcting small mechanics, praising effort over results, treating her like a beginner who still needed building up. Ana began pulling away, frustrated at being managed like someone earlier in her development than she actually was. Okafor read her frustration as ingratitude rather than a sign his role needed to shift from instructor to strategic sounding board, and it took a hard conversation, and nearly losing her as a mentee, before he recognized that mentorship itself moves through stages the mentor has to notice.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
0 of 5 selected
The core lessons, applied to you
Naming what stage your mentee, and the relationship, is actually in
A beginner needs structure, correction, and encouragement. A developing performer needs honest, specific feedback and room to make their own mistakes. An advanced mentee often needs a sounding board more than instruction, someone to think out loud with rather than someone correcting their form. Coaching every stage the same way, however effective it once was, can start to feel like a ceiling rather than support.
A mentor keeps correcting small technical details with someone who has clearly moved past needing that kind of oversight, and the mentee starts to feel micromanaged rather than developed.
Ask your mentee directly what kind of support would actually help them most right now, rather than assuming it matches what helped a year ago.
Offering the support this stage calls for, not the support you enjoy giving
Some mentors are most comfortable teaching fundamentals and feel less useful once a mentee has grown past that need. But if the actual stage calls for stepping back, offering strategic perspective, or simply staying available without directing, continuing to teach fundamentals serves the mentor's comfort more than the mentee's growth.
A mentor keeps assigning structured drills to someone who is ready for open-ended challenges, holding them at a stage they have already outgrown.
Name, honestly, whether your usual way of helping still matches what this specific mentee needs at this specific point.
Preparing yourself for a relationship that will keep changing
Every mentoring relationship eventually shifts, toward independence, a peer footing, or its natural end. Mentors who prepare for that shift in advance, mentally and practically, adjust with far less friction than those who resist it. Preparing honestly does not mean rushing the relationship toward its end; it means not being surprised when the mentee needs you differently, or less, than before.
A mentor resists a mentee's growing independence, unintentionally undermining confidence the mentee has genuinely earned.
Ask yourself what this relationship might look like in a year, and name one way you could begin preparing for that now.
Meaning in the guiding itself, not only in who they become
It is tempting to measure mentorship only by a mentee's eventual success, a title, a win, a milestone achieved long after you've stepped back. But the guidance itself, the trust built, the confidence offered at the right moment, matters in the years it actually happens, whether or not you are there to witness however the story eventually unfolds.
Preparing for a mentee's growing independence can feel like preparing to lose a relationship you value. Resolve this by treating the relationship's evolution, not its ending, as the actual goal: a mentee who needs you less is usually a sign of success, and staying available in a new, lighter form often keeps the relationship alive longer than clinging to its earlier shape.
Name one thing, honestly
What would you offer a mentee this week if you assumed they need something different from you than they did a year ago?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
0 of 3 selected
Run this for seven days
Ask yourself what this relationship might look like in a year, and name one way you could begin preparing for that now.