The joys of being an accidental mentor

Over dinner in Singapore recently, I sat at a table with three former colleagues, listening to their stories. I had a beaming smile plastered on my face.

To be sure, the food was excellent. The peppery pig stomach soup was boiled down to a collagen-rich broth that radiated warmth as much as the ray of pride working its way from my heart. 

It was the company, and the conversation, that was making me feel all aglow.

I left Singapore for a new life in Perth three years ago. The first year I returned, a few former colleagues and I sat in my hotel room and talked into the night. We talked about life, about work, about future plans. When they left, I had mixed feelings. I felt drawn back into the work world. I also felt a sense of nostalgia for what I had given up. Somewhere in that mix was a sense of sadness that one phase of my life was over.

This trip, my conversations about my friends’ lives felt different. There was no sadness, just a sense of acceptance, and a lot of contentment.

I met someone who had worked with me on a project when he was an intern. He remembered how I had insisted that every member of the team, no matter how junior, received due credit and recognition for their work. When the project was completed, the team had our photograph taken together. He said he had always sought to pay it forward. Given his current role as decision-maker on many issues, he has tremendous scope to pay it forward these days.

Another was a woman who had approached me as a student writing a paper on journalism in Singapore. I had agreed to be interviewed. She had quoted me liberally and received an A for the paper. To my surprise, and to her credit, she called to thank me and to buy me lunch months later. Today, she is an experienced media professional and I am retired. I listen to her war stories with interest and respect.

The third was a seasoned professional who balances work and family life with equanimity, happy with the role carved in the organisation, resisting attempts (mine included, in the past) to nudge them into a higher-profile role. 

Listening to friends share stories about their work and family joys and frustrations, I felt happiness, a sense of satisfaction, and some vicarious excitement. Most of all, I detected in myself a deep sense of contentment.

A mentor’s happiness

I realised that without trying to do so, I had developed a kind of mentoring relationship with them. I felt proud that I had played a role, no matter how small, in influencing them somewhere along their careers.

I have never really believed in “mentors”. All through my own career as a journalist, I did not have an official mentor. Nor did I ever really desire to be anyone’s mentor. And yet, as I listened to them and felt that glow of pride, I realised I had become an accidental mentor.

I say “accidental” because there was no formal mentoring relationship. Nor did I coach them. What we had was a respectful, friendly relationship across cohorts, across generations, centred on workplace issues and dynamics. We were bound by common interests – in public service journalism, in belief in the power of the written word, in wanting a better Singapore. We had common experiences in the newsroom and common baptisms of fire in managing newsmakers. We differed in range of experience perhaps, and in generational outlooks. As a Gen X worker, I was used to postponing personal gratification for the common (or organisational) good. They saw their lives differently, and were smart enough to balance work and family life. In that cross-generational mix lies fertile ground for sharing of insights and experience.

Generativity or stagnation

My feelings of pride and contentment can be explained by German-American psychoanalyst Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development that says individuals in middle age (around ages 40 to 65) are in a “generative” stage, when they seek to build a legacy that outlasts their own lives. People do this by raising children; by mentoring young people; or by contributing to the community. They develop a sense of care for others. At heart, this phase is about wanting to contribute to the well-being of future generations, through mentoring, sharing wisdom, parenting, or leaving some kind of legacy.

Erikson’s theory says that in middle adulthood people create opportunities for generativity, or risk stagnation. In late adulthood, as they integrate their lives, they have a choice of living with integrity or despair.

As someone who married late in life, I do not have biological children of my own. I have nieces and nephews in Singapore and Malaysia whom I see periodically. I also have a few close, warm relationships in Singapore with young people who are not kin, but have become dear to me. Each time I go back to Singapore or Malaysia, I make it a point to spend time with some of them.

I have been aware for some time that I am in the phase of “generativity”. How else to explain that strong, inexplicable desire in me to make a difference in the lives of others, to make the world a better place? This was one driving force that made me take up a new role in pastoral care in Perth. And although I did not believe in having “mentors” as a young journalist, I agreed to become a mentor to several people who wanted a career in writing when I was in Singapore. One became a good friend as we continued to hang out, long after the “mentorship” year was over. 

Apart from official mentees, I have relationships with a string of other young people.

This trip, I sat in a Japanese matcha cafe with two people I know from work, who are in their 60s and 70s. One of them brought his university student niece along. From her, I learnt a new phrase. As we tucked into our “Teochew tapas” dishes with alacrity, we left a few morsels on the common plate. As I urged her to finish them, she said: “These are “paiseh pieces”, proceeding to explain that this referred to how everyone was “paiseh” or embarrassed to finish the last piece. I was impressed by how the younger generation had summed up a cultural phenomenon in one snappy Singlish phrase. 

Being a mentee

Mentors or coaches derive a great deal of satisfaction from seeing their mentees or charges succeed.

Not too long ago, I was on the receiving end of such pride. Even though I never had official mentors, I was fortunate to have had senior editors or teachers who took time to train me or coach me. 

In school, the principal of Raffles Junior College, Mr Rudy Mosbergen, took the time to personally coach me and another student when we wanted to take the S level history paper. We were the first students to sit the examination in Singapore, we were told. Our usual history tutor didn’t feel equipped to coach us. So Mr Mosbergen, who loved history, took us under his wing. We went to his office for two-on-one tutorials. He lent us his personal copies of history books and magazines and those lessons helped me ace the exam. When he reached out to me after he had retired, I thanked him. We had lunch a few times and he would always recount how he had personally coached me in history. It was nice to feel I had done him proud. 

These days, I am more likely to be the one beaming with pride at a younger person’s success.

A friend who is a coach loves the “aha” moment when people’s eyes light up and they see themselves and their situation clearly, “when someone moves from self-doubt to clarity in their mind, when they realise they have choices and a voice”.

Reaching the stage of personal growth where you can take pride in other people’s achievements may not come naturally to some. Mid-life corporate warriors have a choice. Somewhere in our 40s or 50s, we will see younger, more energetic, better-trained youngsters start to come up to our level or surpass us. When that started happening to me, I knew I could become a disgruntled bitter old fogey complaining about the younger generation. Or I could be gracious and mature in recognising that they too excelled in their work, and that they had skills I lacked.

A few times, I made it a point to reach out to praise the work of people more junior than me who did not report to me. I feared they might think I was being condescending. The opposite happened. They were appreciative. The relationship shifted a little with each of those exchanges. We became peers, sharing with mutual respect. Over time, these people advanced ahead of me, and I was genuinely happy for them, because I had encouraged their success.

I know a few people who leave corporate life to become career or life coaches. When they have had a good run, it is easier to let go emotionally of the status and power they once had, without feeling a sense of FOMO, or fear of missing out. Been there, done that. Their own experience serves as anchor to recognise patterns quickly, “especially around leadership blind spots or organisational dynamics, and ask sharper questions because I’ve lived through some of these situations”, said a coach.

A good mentor or coach knows that what worked for them, in their time, may not be the best option today. So they refrain from giving advice, and instead support the mentee to find their own best solution with their own resources – not giving them answers, but “helping them unlock their own”, as the coach put it.

As I sat in the restaurant that evening, I was quite content to let my friends do most of the talking, and to chime in now and then. I had had my time in the limelight. This is their era now. And as I listened to their concerns, heard their fatigue, and their resolve to carry on tomorrow, I felt a sense of peace. 

All around me, Singapore bustles along. So much new construction, and promise of new Housing Board estates, around Tengah, Mount Pleasant, the Great Southern Waterfront. Young Singaporeans travel across estates to enjoy artisanal food at old-school hawker stalls, keeping such businesses alive. In old school Holland Village, pet-friendly private housing has sprung up across the road from established public housing. The country is moving along, keeping pace with a younger generation.

Singapore and the kids are gonna be all right.