The first thing you have to understand when you become a mentor is that you set the bar for your mentee. You will earn the right to set the bar by living the bar. Understand that you are being watched. This is lesson one in the world of mentoring. YOU SET THE BAR.
How do you do this? You set the bar for your mentee by living for a world bigger than your own. This may require some sacrifice of time, energy, friends, social outings…etc. You decide really depending on your mentee. Your mentee needs you to be constant as I alluded to in a previous post. But he/she also needs you to be consistent. If you are telling them to stay away from something potentially dangerous, and live your world doing the same potentially dangerous things, you are not saying a whole lot. The best examples I do not even need to type on this page. You know what I am talking about. After you have set the bar, you need to make sure the bar is known.
With Brent, I often would explain to him that because I was his mentor, I expected something from him. There are some people who disagree with this style of mentorship and that is okay. Some people would rather love and not worry about reaching a goal. I do not do that. I am in the game to change lives. I have a desire to take boys, and help them understand what steps it takes to become a man. I set goals. Not only do I set goals, I set the bar. I do not hide the bar behind a curtain or in another room that “we can get to when you are ready”. I put it in the same room they are in (metaphorically). I put the bar right there on the side of the training ground so that every time they wonder why they are pushing themselves so hard to achieve something they do not know is reachable I point to the bar. Every time that young man wants to fall away from what he has been working for, I point to that bar. I set the bar. I set it high. I make sure the mentee understands two things. First, I want them to understand there is a point to all of this. There is a point to this mentoring that is greater than just growing a friendship. I also want to make sure that they understand that the bar is set by me, but it is obtainable by them. They can do it. Eventually, and this happened with Brent often, he would set be bar higher than I had for him. It was great. You see the growth within the individual every time this happens.
Eventually the mentee will take hold of the bar set and make it their own bar that is set. When you start a mentorship or if you are currently a mentor that is intentional about helping the mentee, you should set the bar. THIS DOES NOT MEAN you make a list of rules. This means you set a bar. You say, this is where we want to be. We can get there together. We can take a journey together. You do not have to try to top that bar alone, because we have set it. You in essence, become a coach to their talents. Coaches set goals for a team, the team has to go out and reach it. You help where you can, you give pointers, when they mess up, we have to run sprints. It is not because you want to punish them. You just want them to get away from the bad habits or whatever happened so that they can overcome and achieve their goals.
These ideas are my own, but they have been proving to be more and more effective as I see “Brent” growing in his journey that he and I started two years ago.
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Food for THOUGHT: What if someone had set a bar for you when you were younger? Maybe someone did, but what if they set the bar high enough that when you thought you reached your potential, they pushed you a little bit extra? Think about the man or woman you would be today if someone had done that. I would dare to say that we are challenged, moreover, that we are obligated, that it is our duty, to set the bar for those God has put us in charge of leading. What if someone did that for you? Would that not have been nice so that you could have grown further, faster?
leadershape 
Your food for thought brings me back to the deep desires I had growing up… when you are young you don’t always appreciate those people around you, you don’t even realize how much you desire them, setting the bar and pushing you to become all you can be, and when someone tries you don’t even know how to handle it if you’re not used to it, you even tend to become angry with them, because mentor’s don’t tell you what you want to hear… they tell you what you need to hear. I can promise you this, you will look back with more gratitude than you can iterate in words for that mentorship; you will wish you would have had even more.