Mentoring in Basketball

Adapted by Todd Layfer from the book One Minute Mentor by Ken Blanchard & Claire Diaz-Ortiz

Many young basketball officials are looking for Mentors to help them develop and advance but are not sure how to go about it. This article hopefully sheds some light on how to do it!

Traditionally, mentors have always been more senior officials sharing wisdom and knowledge with younger officials. Even though we think of mentoring as a junior person and a senior person paring up, really that isn’t necessarily the only kind or even the best kind of mentoring relationship. You could have peer mentoring relationships, you can have people inside the San Gabriel Valley (SGV) unit or outside the unit.

An often asked question is “Well, how do I find a mentor if I wanted one.” Well, I think again it starts in your mind with the intention. I think if you send out energy that you really love to learn from somebody and you share that with other people all of a sudden you’re gonna have a bunch of possibilities out coming for you and I think it’s the intention that really begins.

As we close this article here is the acronym M.E.N.T.O.R

M just stands for mission. What are you trying to accomplish? Both of you, in this relationship.

E stands for engagement, which is how do you want to meet? Will the Mentor come to your games?

N has to do with network. Because you both know people, do you want to share that with your mentor or mentee?

T is trust which has such an important element in any relationship and how do you build a trusting relationship.

O stands for opportunities because you’re both going to see opportunities that might be helpful to either one.

And then finally

R stands for review and renew because you need to know where you’re headed and you’re not going to know how well you’ve done unless at some point you build in this renew, review and renew.

So those are little steps that you might want to think about in a mentoring relationship.