#whyimentor mentorhop leadership

[heartofpassion2004]

Pierce’s Mentor Story: Five Leadership Lessons Learned

When first introduced to Heart of Passion’s mentor program, I was eager to join because it offered the unique opportunity to teach leadership traits and business skills to high school students, incorporating multiple interests of mine into one experience.  Knowing that it would be my last year in New Orleans, I was looking to volunteer with a non-profit that would allow me to leave a lasting impact on my community, and without a doubt, Heart of Passion offered exactly that.  What I never expected when I first signed up as a Heart of Passion mentor, however, was the incredibly transformative impact that HoP would end up having on my own personal leadership style.  Despite only working as a mentor for a year, my experience with HoP has helped me become the authentic and passionate leader that I am today more than any other organization with which I have worked.

In many ways, Heart of Passion’s mentor program has unique qualities that set it apart from many of the other organizations with which I have worked have, pushing me to further my talents and strengthening my effectiveness as a leader.  By working with the leadership team to formulate a plan and then executing that plan with the teenage leaders, I found that my time as a mentor was just as much about helping our leaders grow as it was about growing as a leader myself.  While this mindset was integrated into everything we did within the mentor program, there were major themes throughout the year that I noticed were especially important in helping me grow as a leader, making Heart of Passion the unique and transformative experience that it was.

Beginning Everything with a Clear Understanding of “Why”

From the very first conversations I had with the Heart of Passion leadership team, I have always noticed a strong emphasis placed on the “why” behind everything we do as an organization and, furthermore, everything we do as an individual.  Each HoP volunteer is drawn to the same mission and works towards a common goal, but what motivates each of us to work towards achieving the best possible outcome is unique.  After starting our year with the understanding of why we joined HoP, we continually returned to this firm foundation throughout the year, ensuring that we stayed focused on what we needed to achieve.  During phone calls with the leadership team, conversations between the mentors, and meetings with the teenage leaders, all aspects of our work focused on grounding ourselves in the intrinsic and unique motivation that each of us had, remembering at all time that we worked hard to guarantee the best possible experience for our guests.

Identifying and Developing Individual Strengths to Create a Cohesive Team

After strongly focusing on motivation, Heart of Passion’s mentor program devotes a large amount of time to helping each mentor realize his/her unique strengths within the team, capitalizing on these to ensure that the entire group works effectively to realize our common goals.  As I worked throughout the year with the two other New Orleans mentors and the leadership team, I was impressed by how HoP pushed each of us to understand and communicate our own personal strengths and weaknesses.  When it came time to work on anything as a group, we were encouraged to take on the responsibility of tasks that we thought were well-suited for us as well as to speak up about anything that might be a weakness of ours.  After only a short amount of time of working together as mentors, the three of us understood how each person would best contribute and where each person might need help. Heart of Passion’s goals, while somewhat daunting when we first started out as mentors, became easily manageable and perfectly executed because HoP helped us to understand how each of us could contribute effectively as mentors.

Using Honest and Positive Communication to Encourage Growth

Because Heart of Passion operates in multiple cities, proper communication was an essential component of our success throughout the entire year.  While “communication” seems to be a tenant of pretty much every organization, HoP specifically challenged us to take it one step further than what I had experienced elsewhere.  Instead of using communication only as a way to get our ideas across, we further used it as a very positive and encouraging tool to help delegate tasks effectively, speaking directly to whomever we thought was best suited for the job.  Since HoP had helped us to understand our individual strengths and weaknesses as mentors, we would often nominate each other for specific tasks based, simultaneously acknowledging past successes while motivating future ones.  Furthermore, when it came time to work with the teenage leaders in planning Red Carpet Day, we as mentors understood how to use communication to help lead and encourage them to pick specific tasks based on their unique leadership styles as opposed to simply interjecting with our own ideas or choices.  By placing the emphasis on communicating goals and visions instead of directions and rules, Heart of Passion’s mentor program taught me how to best use communication to encourage the entire team’s growth.

Improving Leadership Skills by Learning and Applying New Techniques

While most of what I have already mentioned about Heart of Passion involved strengthening leadership traits that were already in place, one of the most personally transformative aspects of the mentor program came from the exposure to new leadership styles that I was immediately able to apply.  After each phone call with the leadership team to discuss what we were teaching in the weeks ahead, I loved how I was able to take everything new that I was learning and actually use the information when working with the leaders.  Whether it was writing a 30 second elevator pitch or planning an entire fundraiser, Heart of Passion provided hands-on opportunity to apply these newly-discovered leadership skills, ensuring that I fully understood how to use them myself.  By learning about, applying, and then teaching these skills, Heart of Passion’s mentor program challenged me to reach a better understanding of different leadership styles as opposed to other programs which emphasized learning far more than application.

Exploring New Ideas in an Encouraging Environment that Promotes Growth

Throughout my year as a mentor for Heart of Passion, one aspect of the program that helped me grow most as a leader was that I was continually encouraged to try different ideas, work on new projects, and explore new leadership styles, all with the understanding that it was okay to make mistakes along the way.  All too often in the leadership programs in which I have participated, I was told exactly what to do and how to do it, learning leadership as a specific action or skill as opposed to certain traits or characteristics.  As a Heart of Passion mentor, I was pushed to explore my own leadership style within an environment that focused on growth as an individual.  If at any point something I tried was not working, we, as a team, used that opportunity to remind ourselves of the goal and come up with a new solution, using any past mistakes to help guide us in a more successful direction.  Heart of Passion’s mentor program provided the space that each of us needed to explore our own ideas and try out new skills, helping us to discover our unique leadership styles with positive encouragement along the way.

While there are potentially many ways to accomplish Heart of Passion’s ultimate goal of a successful Red Carpet Day, it effectively achieves this every year through its unique organizational structure where mentors are trained to help facilitate the teenage leaders in planning the entire event.  Throughout my year-long experience, Heart of Passion’s mentor program ensured not only that I would be ready and able to teach the skills that the leaders needed for a successful year, but it also helped me personally to discover and develop my own leadership style, something I had not been pushed towards in the past.  My time as a Heart of Passion mentor was different than any other leadership development program that I have experienced, and I continue to use what I learned in every new leadership opportunity I undertake.

Want to be a mentor yourself?  Visit heartofpassion.org/mentor today!

[heartofpassion2004]

HoP: A Platform for Passions, Hannah’s Story

Heart of Passion's Leadership Development Program is driven by planning and development meetings facilitated by young professional mentors for teen leaders. These meetings may include lessons about networking, balancing budgets, email etiquette, or contingency plans to empower these teen leaders to become strong and well-rounded leaders of the future. One of the most compelling lessons that I have been a part of implementing with Heart of Passion is "Passion Projects." This lesson involved the mentors helping the teen leaders to discover and state what they are excited or passionate about and figure out how this passion can be applied to Heart of Passion or Red Carpet Day, a four-day retreat for teens with cancer that serves as a culminating project of the Leadership Development Program. The teen leaders' passions did not need to be directly applicable to the mission, vision, or goals of Heart of Passion's Leadership Development Program. Rather, the mentors wanted the teen leaders to find something that they could get excited about, a unique contribution that they could make to the organization, and execute this activity or project in a way that would also concurrently benefit the organization.

Personally, my passion is working as a child life specialist with children and families who are facing unique challenges and difficult situations, such as a cancer diagnosis, in order to help these children and families feel informed, empowered, and able to cope with these challenging experiences or events. I was an aspiring child life specialist at the time that I applied for Heart of Passion three years ago and I believed that my unique skills and professional interest in working with children who have a chronic illness would fit perfectly with Heart of Passion's ultimate goal to provide a four-day retreat for teens with cancer. Red Carpet Day's mission is to provide teens with cancer respite from their diagnosis and an opportunity to interact and engage with other teens who may be going through similar experiences. HoP was the passion project that I had been searching for as a way to expand my reach and impact on children and families. 

However, when I met my fellow mentors and the 15 teen leaders from New Orleans, I quickly realized that each of us had different reasons for joining Heart of Passion, different skill sets, and different passions. For instance, my fellow mentors were in law school or running a local non-profit organization. In turn, the teen leaders were involved in a variety of after school activities and spent their weekends involved in different interests or pursuits. Their unique reasons for joining Heart of Passion became clear when we executed the aforementioned "Passion Projects" lesson. Photography, sports, and event planning were just a few of the passion projects that our teen leaders chose to pursue and engage in alongside their own Heart of Passion and Red Carpet Day planning. While these projects did not directly relate to Red Carpet Day, the teen leaders were able to creatively and seamlessly intertwine their projects with some aspect of Heart of Passion or Red Carpet Day. For example, the leader who was passionate about photography served as the photographer at Red Carpet Day and built a wonderful and memorable photo compilation of the event. 

Regardless of what your passion is, you can also find a way to seamlessly integrate your talent, skills, and passion into the Heart of Passion Mentor Program or Heart of Passion Leadership Development Program. Certainly, I have come to realize through my work with Heart of Passion that it is critical to have a variety of interests and skills represented in the mentor and leader cohorts in order to develop and challenge the leaders throughout the Leadership Development Program and, in turn, to produce a meaningful Red Carpet Day event for teens with cancer. Indeed, I have learned so much as a professional and am continually challenged personally as I share my passion with the teen leaders and as they share their own passions with me. Consequently, each successive Leadership Development Program and Red Carpet Day event is distinct and remarkable as each mentor and leader cohort has their own individual impact on the process of planning and executing Red Carpet Day. Heart of Passion is continuously looking for committed young professionals and teens to make their own individual impact on this process. Therefore, if you have a passion or talent to share, whether it is fundraising, networking, event planning, volunteering or something entirely different; please join us so you can share this passion and make your unique impact on the mentors, teen leaders and teens with cancer. HoP is a platform for passions, and we’d love YOURS to round out the team as a mentor OR leader!

heartofpassion.org/LCPapply

heartofpassion.org/Mentor

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