What Coaches and Mentors Can Learn from Range
Coaches and mentors who succeeded through one clear, early path themselves can default to steering every mentee the same way, because it's the model they know best. That default can miss that the person in front of them may need a different route — more exposure, more testing — to find the fit that actually works for them, rather than the one that worked for you.
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.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Question "tell them what worked for me, sooner"
Your own early, narrow path may have worked because of the specific rules of your field or your specific fit with it. Defaulting to that advice for everyone can steer a mentee toward a lane that isn't actually theirs.
A mentor who built her career by specializing intensely at twenty pushes every mentee to do the same. One talented mentee who needed broader exposure first quietly disengages, concluding she must not be cut out for the field.
Before giving a mentee direction, ask what has actually worked for people with their specific strengths and constraints, not just what worked for you.
Design mentorship around trying things, not just planning them
Help mentees test different directions in small, real ways rather than only discussing and planning a single path in the abstract.
A mentor spends every session helping a mentee refine a five-year plan for one narrow role. It takes a full year of purely theoretical planning before anyone suggests the mentee actually shadow someone doing the job to see if it fits.
In your next mentoring conversation, replace one planning discussion with a concrete, small action the mentee can take this week to test a direction against reality.
Draw on models from outside your own field
Development ideas from fields other than the one you and your mentee work in can offer a genuinely useful alternative to the assumptions your own field takes for granted.
A mentor in one profession only ever references how development works in that profession, missing that a mentee struggling with the same fit problem might benefit more from how a completely different field handles early-career exploration.
Bring one example, method, or story from a field outside your own into your next mentoring conversation, and ask your mentee what they notice that applies to their situation.
Let mentees change direction
When a mentee decides, after real testing, that the direction you both assumed isn't right for them, treat that as the mentoring relationship working as intended, not as a setback to your guidance. Helping someone find where they actually fit is a more complete success than keeping them on a path chosen too early.
You want to give a mentee the confident, clear direction they're asking for, and you also need to stay honest that some of that direction can only come from their own testing. Hold both by being explicit that early guidance is a starting hypothesis to test, not a final answer.
Name one thing, honestly
Where are you currently steering a mentee toward your own path rather than helping them test their own?
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
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Run this for seven days
Bring one example, method, or story from a field outside your own into your next mentoring conversation, and ask your mentee what they notice that applies to their situation.