This is a placeholder draft — replace with your own writing when ready.
A few years ago I started mentoring through Big Brothers Big Sisters, mostly because a colleague mentioned it in passing and I didn’t have a good reason to say no. I didn’t expect it to change how I think about leadership at work, but it has.
Mentoring outside a professional context strips away most of the shortcuts you rely on inside one. There’s no shared org chart, no shared incentive structure, no quarterly review to fall back on. What’s left is just showing up, consistently, and paying attention. It turns out that’s most of what good leadership is too — the frameworks and the strategy decks matter less than whether people can count on you to show up prepared and actually listen.
The lesson I keep relearning is that consistency is a form of respect. Canceling on a mentee, or a direct report, because something more urgent came up sends a message about where they rank, whether you mean it to or not. Protecting the time you’ve committed to someone, even when it’s inconvenient, is one of the simplest and most underrated leadership habits I know.