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When I coach softball for kids new to the sport, my advice to batters is simple: stand at the plate, bring the bat up to shoulder height and keep your eye on the ball. It’s simple because they’re young and inexperienced. I’m happy as long as they’re learning and having fun.
When I coach competitive players at the high school level, my advice is more complex. It might be as granular as teaching them how to distribute their weight across their feet when they’re stealing bases.
I do a lot of coaching in my life — as a parent of school-aged children and at FutureFund, the company I started to provide a free fundraising platform for K-12 school groups. But whether I’m coaching a pinch hitter or a software engineer looking for bugs before a new feature launch, I’ve learned that sports coaching and business mentoring often go hand-in-hand.
In both cases, the key to remaining effective is recognizing what stage of development people are at so you can provide feedback that helps them keep improving. As the person you’re coaching or mentoring evolves, the advice you give needs to evolve with them.
So here are four key stages to recognize as the people you’re leading grow — and how you need to adapt to each one of them.
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Stage 1: Mentoring the beginner
When you’re starting almost anything that requires skill, you need someone to explain how to do it correctly. Then, you need them to identify areas that can be improved and put you on the right path.
In addition to coaching softball, I’m the strength and conditioning coach for the varsity water polo team at our local high school. When they start lifting weights, most of them need to be told exactly what to do because they simply don’t know.
Since I’m trying to impart basic foundational knowledge, my role as a mentor is primarily instructive. If I’m teaching someone who has never done a deadlift before, I need to clearly spell out how they should stand, brace their bodies and perform the lift. But once they understand these basic steps, I have a different responsibility to them.
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Stage 2: Mentoring the novice
Eventually, most beginners reach a stage where they have some basic skills — but this is the most dangerous part of their development. It often comes with confidence that may or may not be proportional to their knowledge.
A person at this stage doesn’t know what they don’t know. They have some ability and probably some autonomy as well, but they don’t know how to self-evaluate.
At this stage, my job as a mentor is to grade and critique. I’m there to help them understand the difference between doing something right and doing it wrong. I might tell a novice deadlifter, “That form is wrong — if you keep using it, you’ll hurt your back.” Then, I’ll provide specific adjustments to help them find the right technique.
For this to work, you have to let people take certain risks, but you also have to know when to step in and keep them out of trouble. That means making sure the risks you let them take are calculated.
Most weight lifters have to go through the wrong form before they find the right one, but I won’t make them lift anything heavy until they’re comfortable in the form because I don’t want them to get hurt. It’s the same in business — I might let an engineer who’s finding their footing make choices that could impact the success of their project, but not if the wrong choice could cripple the organization.
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Stage 3: Mentoring the intermediate
People who reach this stage know when they’ve done something right or wrong but may struggle to identify why or develop the solution they need on their own. In this stage, the stakes for mentees might be lower because they’re less prone to making dangerous errors — but it can also be the most difficult stage for mentors because the factors holding your mentees back aren’t always obvious.
Let’s say I’m coaching someone in the weight room and notice that the bar comes away from their knees when they lift. I can tell that the force is going into their lower back, but they’re probably not aware of this or how to adjust their stance to stop it from happening. They’re just frustrated that they can’t lift more.
At this stage, I don’t want to simply provide the information that would solve their problem immediately; my goal as a mentor now is to help them develop the capacity to coach themselves. Instead, I might ask, “Where do you feel it?” and encourage them to take an honest inventory of their process.
Stage 4: Mentoring the master
In the final stage, people develop the ability to self-critique. They know what they did wrong — but more importantly, they can improve as needed.
When you’ve brought someone to this level, you often become their peer while they mentor others. You might provide some outside perspective or draw on your experience when they have questions, but you recognize and respect that they can chart their own path forward.
Notice that these stages tend to correspond to levels of seniority in a career: at first, you can do the work but need supervision. Then you can work unsupervised. Later, you can supervise others. Eventually, you become a mentor yourself.
Your goal as a mentor should always be to help people through these stages of incremental improvement so they can ultimately become mentors themselves. It’s how you pay it forward.
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