Thursday, May 24, 2012

Inspirational Story of a Mentor...

By Amyr Haq, Seattle, WA

I became involved with the Mentor-Protégé program for number of reasons but primarily because of how I felt as a student with no mentor. I knew that I couldn't be the only person who felt timid about high school with its competitive classes, SATs, and college applications process. It is very difficult as a young person to immediately decide what you want to become in the future. Family and social pressures are immense and one's academic status can become very important in gaining admission to colleges and universities. Unfortunately, many of these pressures tend to demolish natural talents that the protégé may have. The Mentor-Protégé program is great way to create a more personal relationship with the younger generation of our Jamaat. The mentoring program gives younger Khuddam (protégés) the opportunity to gain the years of knowledge from a more experienced Khadim (Mentors).

There were several lessons that I learned from this program. The key to success rests with two elements; the first, the mentor and protégé need to be compatible with each other. If the mentor and protégé are not compatible, then no one will be happy. There is no need to do a Myers-Briggs to match people up, but common sense should indicate that two people with opposing views would spend more of their time arguing rather than cooperating. Collaboration would be difficult, the protégé may not learn from his mentor, and the relationship would suffer.

The second element is that the mentor must be willing to give up some of the control of the space so that the protégé can grow. This essential piece is perhaps the most difficult. While mentoring Humad, I had to fight back the urge to control his actions. I was worried that he would prefer to do something in his own style rather than mine. I was afraid that Humad would not cover the material that I wanted him to have covered. I had to feel confident in my own skills. I also had to reassure myself and trust in my protégé

The way that I built the trust with Humad was by lesson planning with him. I designed the grand scheme of assignments that evaluated his goals and let him work within his own parameters. Even though he could choose what he found useful and how to approach it, there was always a common goal that we were both working towards

achieving. We conducted a lot of our collaboration via email and phone conversations. I would send him a detailed plan for an assignment and would follow up with him shortly afterwards. He would send me his remarks on the lesson and I would make comments. As a result, Humad achieved his true potential and discovered his own strengths. In seeing him grow, my leadership skills blossomed and I started connecting with people on a more personal level.

If you are interested in being a mentor, please click here!
If you are interested in being a protege, please click here!

To learn about other projects of the Sanat-O-Tijarat Department (Jobs & Career Development), please go to: http://www.mkausa.org/sanat-o-tijarat.

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