Mentoring Matters: Doug Lawrence's Journey to Empower Others

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast. A show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today we're going to be talking about mentoring as I am joined by Doug Lawrence. Doug is a true pioneer in the world of mentoring. He is the founder of Talent C, an international mentor, an international certified mentor, and he is the only person in the world to hold the certification of practice journey mentor. Doug has over 30 years of experience when it comes to leadership and mentoring. And he is also the best-selling author of two books. So we're going to be talking to Doug about what he's dedicated his life to. So, Doug, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Hello, and thank you once again for the opportunity to be on your show.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:19

I am a retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer, having served for 30, 20, sorry, 25 years. Time gets past me every so often. So 25 years in the police force ended up with uh post-traumatic stress as a result. Um ended up dealing with that, and and ironically, that's where I uh was one of my postings or where they had me working out of. I ended up meeting my uh my wife at the time, and we ended up we helped each other work our way through the post-traumatic stress. And then it was in 2021 that uh I lost uh her Deborah. I lost her to cancer, and I've been dealing with uh grief as a result of that. Um, and I think that's just been great because it's helped me deal with other people or helped them deal with their their grief and post-traumatic stress as well. So um I've been on over 200 podcasts sharing, telling people about my story and my journey and all of those things. So yeah, that's that's kind of in a compressed version of me.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Well, I know you've spent, like you said, uh over 30 years mentoring people. Talk about what is the biggest single lesson, lesson mentoring has taught you about human potential.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

What you mean, what can they talk to me about?

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Well, what what what is the biggest single lesson you have learned about human potential while mentoring you you know a lot of people over the years?

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, you know, I think the the and it varies. It it depends on what what I'm doing the mentoring for, what's the reason. Like I I have people that I work with, like I just finished this morning with uh a lady who has retired from the United States Air Force, and I'm her one of her mentors, and I'm helping her transition from military life to civilian life, because I ironically, I've traveled much the same, although I haven't experienced uh trauma to the extent that perhaps she has. So I still have I still am grounded enough that I'm bringing value uh to her to the relationship. I've also done some work with uh young entrepreneurs uh with the Sir Richard Branson uh entrepreneur program, helping them uh get up to speed and and and are able to how would I put this? Um helping them move forward with their business opportunities so that they can they can help other people as well.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Well, I know many people think mentoring is just simply giving advice. So talk about the biggest make misconception people have about what mentoring really is.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Well, I and I think you've kind of hit the nail on the head where it's all about giving advice. It is to some extent, but ideally, if I'm going to give advice, I do it uh using what what we call the Socratic method. So I ask a series of questions to guide my mentee to where I think we need to go. And we do it through back and forth with question and answer sort of an approach. Um and as a result of that, we don't end up with people, especially uh the younger generation, we don't end up with them relying on me as an example, relying on me to um provide them with the answers to all the questions because I've seen where even for adults, people that are uh seasoned professionals, I've seen where they don't understand or don't realize the impact that they have on an individual. I uh was working with a business owner and he kept getting interrupted because people would continually come into his office and ask him a bunch of questions. Uh, how do I fix this? You know, gee, I think I dealt with this before, but I'm not sure. And so I sat and listened to this whole thing going on. And when his employee left, I I asked the question, said, How many times during the course of a day or a week does that happen? And he said, Oh, gee, it's quite regular. And I said, What would happen if you were to bring them into your office, sit them down, and ask, guide them through the process they need to go through in order to make it so that you don't have to always be the one coming up with the answers, that you can help them with their critical thinking skills and be able to work their way through that. And that ended up turning out to be probably one of the best sets of advice that I could have given because he became he actually ended up taking uh the training program that I was offering at that particular time point. He came and took the training program and said it was time and money well spent.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Well, you are the only person in the world with the journey mentor certification. So talk about what journey mentoring is, what makes it different, and why is it so impactful?

SPEAKER_01 7:31

A large part of the journey mentor, when it was created, it was created primarily for two things. The first was to be a guide to help people work their way through the certification process, um, because it is a fairly rigorous uh process that you have to go through in order to become certified. So that was number one. Number two was we saw a great opportunity to have, well, we don't come right out and create the designation as a certified grief mentor. What we do do is we create and make sure that individuals have got the skill sets that they need to have in order to be able to walk beside people that are struggling with mental health and with grief in particular, so that they're in a better position to be able to deal with that. And that's the role or the function of a journey mentor is to work in that space a little bit more often than typically what you would see a mentor doing um from other experiences. Well, over your thousand thousands of hours of mentoring, was there a specific specific mentoring relationship that changed your sp perspective on leadership and life it well how I describe it is the the the mentoring part is uh it works in the organization and it works outside of the organization as well. And so it's not so much uh influencing their life decisions because there's life coaches that can do that for you. But what I want people to do is think about the choices that they are going to make and how can they make the choices that are best going to serve their needs and for that matter, their immediate family, and and they're going to have an impact on their friends and people in the community and all of those things. So it's really important that you know we we provide the grounding and and make sure that they've got the grounding that they need in order to be able to move forward without stepping into the life coach arena. Um I actually had a life coach take one of my training courses, and they had just finished the life coach program, and and so part of the training that we provided was we actually did role-playing exercises, and this young person had a very difficult time in role playing, coming working it his way through the through the core the the case studies and stuff that we did, he had a difficult time in doing so. So what I was trying to get across to people and even with your listeners today is that the art or the technique of mentoring is is a unique one, and it requires that you you know you put some thought into the approach you're going to take. And more importantly, it's really important that you uh you ask questions, you don't tell uh people what to do. So you need to ask and and guide in order to help them re solve the the situations as much as you possibly can uh on on their own.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Well talk to the listeners about your two best-selling books, you know. Let us know what inspired you to write them and what we can expect when we read them.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

You know, it follows it follows the sequence. So there's the the best sellers are the book number two and book number three. Book number one, which is the gift of mentoring, lays the foundation, the groundwork for for all of this. It's it's kind of like mentoring 101, and it gives you the basic understanding of the mentoring process and all of that. As time went on, I started to see that there was a place for mentoring to be part of the support structure for mental health. And as a result of that, uh, You Are Not Alone. Uh, I wrote You Are Not Alone as my second book, and uh ironically, or I guess it ended up being uh an Amazon number one bestseller as a result of that. And it was it was the sort of book that would help you if you were walking beside or wanting to walk beside somebody who was struggling with with mental health. I could, and I mean, uh there were examples of what I had gone through, but more importantly, I could actually see myself quite vividly in the storyline of you are not alone, sufficient enough to be able to say that I was satisfied that a mentor could become part of the support structure for mental health. So primarily, book number two dealt quite a bit with post-traumatic stress, and you know, I went through quite a bit of that when I was still in the police force. We didn't have a support structure, so I ended up falling or ended up getting my uh my good wife at the time, uh, having her uh acting as my support structure and and being able to deal with things. I I went through all kinds of things. I I would go out on a on a call that was very traumatic and come back to where my trailer that I was living in, and I would end up my coping strategies were a bottle of scotch whiskey, and that's what I would do is drink that, thinking that that was going to solve my own personal problems, when in fact all it did was make them worse. And so that was book number two. Book number three is Grief, the silent pandemic. It is more, I introduce more of my lived experience in that particular book, and it has quite a bit of a focus on uh being the support structure for people dealing with cancer. Um my wife Deborah ended up with cancer, and so we went through um me providing her support as much as I can, and conversely uh being me relying on my family and very close friends in order to be able to work our way through dealing with the amount of grief that there was both before death and after death. And so brief the silent pandemic uh ended up being the recipient of five uh global book awards uh for different uh categories or different genres. And uh I was actually quite taken uh by surprise that I was the recipient of five book awards. So uh who knows where we'll go from here.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Well, congratulations on that.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Well, I know that uh today the world is more digitally connected than ever, but people still feel isolated. So talk about how mentoring can bridge the gap for that and uh help create more human connection.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Yeah, a large part of the mentoring process and and even the the dealing with grief is the aspect of being able to develop relationships. And typically what when I teach, what I ask people to think about is what we want to build our trusted relationships, and and more so, more and more now it's become we want to create a place that's psychologically safe for people to go, where they can share what's kind of what's on their mind, what's what's what sort of thing are they dealing with at that particular time point, and what can we do in order to be able to help them navigate through that particular trauma or turmoil that they're struggling with. So we want to be able to give them that ability, and that comes from that's why relationships are so so strong, but so they're something that we depend on as mentors is the ability to be able to build a trusted relationship in a reasonably um quick period of time because the longer it takes to build that relationship, the harder it gets to actually walk beside somebody and help them as much as you possibly can. So I would I if I had to prioritize, I would put trusted relationship would be number three, number four on the on my scale. And then there's you know, there's caring and there's caring is is probably number three. And those if I had those in a package, that would be the step towards my ideal person as a mentor.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Well, what are some warning signs that a person might need a mentor, even though they might not realize it?

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Everybody needs a mentor. That's the easy answer. Uh, everybody needs needs someone to be to walk beside them. I, you know, all the mentoring that I've done, the number of hours that I've put in, and the different things that I've had, you know, that I've worked with, uh, at the end of the day, I still would need a mentor, somebody that I can I can turn to, somebody who I can build a relationship with to be able to figure out and sort of talk our way through. That's a large part of what mentoring is about is the ability to have uh conversations that are um are such that I feel comfortable talking with you and not to you but with you, and I feel comfortable knowing that um you've got my best interests in mind, and you know, those other topics that I had mentioned previously, those all fit into that quite nicely, and it's really you know, it's really important going forward that even for your listeners is if you have any inclination whatsoever that you think you need a mentor, you probably do need a mentor. The uh young lady that I mentioned earlier that I'm was retired with the United States Air Force, she has made such growth as number one as a person, but also as uh as an entrepreneur. And it's all because that she has she has a couple mentors, so you can have more than one, but she's got a couple, and she um I wouldn't say she relies on it on us that heavily. What I would say is that she establishes goals and objectives, and then has I my role is to ask questions to help her use creative thinking skills and to be able to work her way through so that you know we can we can achieve her desired goals every week that we meet.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

What legacy do you hope that your work will leave behind? And uh what do you hope people will remember about the gift of mentoring once you're done?

SPEAKER_01 22:28

I don't know if I'll ever be done, but in any event, um the legacy that I'm hoping that is is that we're able to make enough my goal or my purpose in life is to make the world a better place to be. And if I can do that one step at a time, one giant leap at a time, then I I will have been successful. The most important thing for me is that I want the world to be a better place, and I know that the gift of mentoring can help me be successful doing so, but it can also help you, it can help your listeners, it can help people all over the world, it can help them. In having a sense of purpose that is all about making the world a better place for people and doing that it, like I said, one step at a time.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Well, you know, the most important thing right now is that we're working very diligently, very hard on the aspect of grief being part of the meant the uh mentoring process. And so we're part way there now, but I wanted to get it a little bit further. Um, we want to tweak and fine-tune the mentoring, the certification process. So I have a business partner that I'm working with that is he's my um, what would I say, he's my ISO International Standards Organization guru. And so he is working very diligent as well in in making sure that we have a certification process that'll withstand the test of time and and be good that way. So those are the sort of the things. Um I have in draft format, I have the next version of my story in a book format. So we'll see how that evolves. Um, and I'm starting to see that because of the exposure that I've been getting from being on shows like yours here, is that people are reaching out uh, like tomorrow morning, for example, I have two mentoring sessions with uh two young leaders, two young leaders to help them uh obtain or to help them get to a level of to some level of competence uh in being a uh going from being a the best way to describe it is the hard way is going from being a baby manager to one that is graduated and is able to deal with leadership issues and challenges as and when they come up. So those would be the most um the most things that I can see. What I you know what I encourage people to do is if you think you need a mentor, then you probably do. So reach out to us and let's have a conversation. If you're struggling with grief or any um mental health issues, no matter what, um don't stay hidden in the closet, reach out and ask for help, and we'll be there to help you navigate through whatever trauma that you've experienced. And you know, finally, the most important thing is that uh, well, you know, the the whole thing about staying mired in the in the uh closet is such a powerful statement that that I encourage people to not get caught up in that um stigmatism of the fact that if I have a mentor, I must be weak, or if I'm doing something else. Like that's why a lot of people today, when it comes to the mental health uh story, that's why they don't reach out, is because they feel it's a sign of weakness and it's not. It's uh it's the start of a new journey and it's a start of something bigger and better for you. So I encourage you to start your journey today and start taking those steps out of the closet and moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Well, so people can uh contact you if they need you, uh though that's your contact info.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Yeah, so you can reach out and and if you go to LinkedIn, I've got a pretty good presence there, and you can direct message me through LinkedIn. Uh, you can go to my website www.talentc.ca, and there's a comment page, and you can get reach me through there. But probably the easiest and the most effective way for you is just to send me an email message, and you can reach me at Doug.lawrence, L A W R E N C E at talent C. So the word talent with the letter C on the end.ca, and I'll get back to you really quickly, and and we can begin a journey together.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on, any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

No, I would no. I I think we've touched on pretty much everything that that I wanted to uh talk about. And all I want to be able to do is to make sure that people understand that you don't have to do this on your own, that we're we're there to help you and we can guide you and let's make the world a better place together.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

All right, ladies and gentlemen, and for more information on Doug Lawrence, connect with him on LinkedIn or visit him at talentc.ca and please be sure to follow rate review, share this episode to as many people as possible. And if you are yourself or somebody that you know needs a mentor, reach out to Doug. Also to keep up with all things living the dream, visit www.curveball337.com and share the website and the show to everybody you know. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Doug, thank you for all that you do in the mentoring place space, and thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

Thank you for the opportunity to do so.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.