What Coaches and Mentors Can Learn from Scaling Up
Assuming a mentee's informal way of managing growing responsibilities will keep working as those responsibilities scale up is the specific trap Scaling Up names, and it's an easy one to fall into when things have worked out fine for them so far.
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
Help them get clear on who owns what
A mentee's growing responsibilities depend heavily on who is doing what, and unclear ownership, theirs or a collaborator's, quietly causes confusion and duplicated effort.
A mentor doesn't notice that their mentee has left an important responsibility unassigned in a group effort, and it falls through the cracks because no one was clearly accountable.
Ask your mentee to identify one area of their current responsibilities where ownership, theirs or someone else's, is unclear.
Help them build priorities simple enough to act on
Priorities that live only in a mentee's head, or that are too complicated to state simply, can't actually guide their daily decisions.
A mentee has a general sense of what matters most but never states it simply, and ends up spending time on whatever feels urgent instead.
Ask your mentee to state their top priority for this month in one sentence, and check it against how they're actually spending their time.
Help them execute through a small number of shared priorities and a disciplined rhythm
A regular, disciplined rhythm of short check-ins focused on a small number of priorities keeps a mentee aligned and moving, rather than drifting into confusion.
A mentor only checks in with a mentee informally and sporadically, and small problems go unnoticed until they've already cost real time.
Set a short, recurring check-in with your mentee whose only job is to confirm they're still on track with their top priorities.
Help them manage their time and resources deliberately
Running out of the time or resources a growing set of responsibilities actually requires, even while things look manageable on the surface, is one of the most common ways ambitious people stall, and it requires active, ongoing attention rather than periodic review.
Addressing today's question and helping a mentee build the discipline to manage growing responsibilities aren't opposites — the discipline is what prevents today's small gap from becoming a much bigger one later.
Name one thing, honestly
Is there an area of your mentee's responsibilities right now where ownership is genuinely unclear?
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
Set a short, recurring check-in with your mentee whose only job is to confirm they're still on track with their top priorities.