Managers As Mentors, 3rd Edition

7The Person in the Mirror

Mentor Humility Creates Protégé Confidence

I bid him look into the lives of men as though into a mirror, and from others to take an example for himself.

Terence (190–159 BC)

This chapter was written by Marshall Goldsmith.

 

As a Ph.D student at UCLA in the early 1970s, I had a self-image of being “hip” and “cool.” I believed I was intensely involved in deep human understanding, self-actualization, and the uncovering of profound wisdom. Early in my Ph.D program, I was one of thirteen students in a class led by a wise teacher, Bob Tannenbaum. Bob had come up with the term “sensitivity training,” had published the most widely distributed article to appear in the Harvard Business Review, and was a full professor. He was ...