What is Healthy Vulnerability? Webinar

Okay, joyful greetings, and welcome to all our viewers and listeners to this ACCFS mentor webinar titled What is Healthy Vulnerability? I’m Isaac Funk. I am a teacher here at ACCFS and we have others online to help present this topic, which I’ll introduce in just a moment, but I just wanted to offer a quick thanks to everybody for participating and for those of you who are able to send in questions ahead of time.

We love that. Thank you for doing that. That really helps us to keep these webinars relevant to you and answer the questions that you really have. So, thank you for that. To share their insight and share best practices with us, I have with me, Katie Miller, who is another teacher here at ACCFS and active mentor in her community.

And we also have counselor extraordinaire here at ACCFS, Kathy Knochel, a mentor in her community, and some might just consider her to be a professional mentor. That’s right. All the hard questions get directed towards Kathy. Yeah. We’ll see about that. That’s right. And then also in the background, we have Arlan Miller, who’s going to help ensure that this webinar runs as smoothly as possible and is also watching for any questions that you guys might have. You can just chat those in and, um, and Arlan will be there to relay those to us at any time during the webinar.

So, we do hope at the end of the webinar to perhaps have some time for Q&A as time allows. But if you have questions throughout the webinar, please do send those in. We’d love to see. So, we have three objectives for the webinar today. Like at bare minimum, this is what we’re really hoping you walk away with from this webinar.

First is an understanding of what healthy vulnerability is. What’s an appropriate level of sharing? And then number two is understanding what healthy vulnerability is not. Where is that line where I’ve crossed from appropriate sharing into perhaps oversharing? And then number three is we want you to have the skills and we offer tips and advice to recognize and to be able to overcome some of the common barriers that we find to vulnerability in a mentoring relationship.

So, let’s just start off then with a definition of what vulnerability is. Kathy, would you be able to kick us off here and help us understand what healthy vulnerability is. Yes, absolutely. So, if you see here on the screen, we have it laid out that the definition for vulnerability is showing emotions or allowing one’s weaknesses to be seen or known.

I think it’s easy for people to cringe a little bit when they hear this term vulnerability. I think that it is easy for people to go to this part of like, oh, vulnerability, that must mean that I have to be, or we have to be talking about those deep, deep things that are going on in people’s lives and things that feel very uncomfortable to talk about.

And I think that, unfortunately, because sometimes vulnerability is paired with that, people, especially in mentor and mentee relationships, can really be resistant to going too deep because people aren’t really sure how to handle the vulnerability piece of things. So, I guess I maybe would just work to dismantle that belief a little bit.

Vulnerability is talking about those deep, hard things but it doesn’t always start out that way. What it is, though, is certainly having to push past those surface level conversations. So, having to push past just talking about the weather or just talking about grandkids or just talking about an outfit or shopping experiences or those kinds of things that come up as like surface level conversations.

And it starts to get to a little bit more than that, the feelings and the emotions or the things that have been hard in people’s life. You’ll see this graphic up at the top that’s big and it talks about you to one another and the give and the receive piece of things. So, this is a model that we think about with what healthy vulnerability looks like. It looks like there’s this equal part of giving and receiving from two parties or in a group of people. So, the best way I like to describe this, I’ve used this example before, but when I see this graphic and I think about the concept, I think about a volleyball game. So, just let yourself think about a volleyball game that maybe you’re playing with some good friends that you have, and if you are in the point of the volleyball game where there’s a really good server and that person is just serving it and it’s just dropping on the other side continuously. It’s great for the team because they’re racking up points, but the truth is that doesn’t keep people engaged in the volleyball game.

It can get really boring for the participants when that just keeps happening. And so, the opposite of that is when the ball is served and there is volley back and forth, both sides are engaged, there are skills being used. There’s excitement building, there are emotions present, that sort of thing. And that keeps people engaged and interested. And so, that’s that same piece with how to get to vulnerability is making sure that all parties are engaged in things and providing pieces back and forth in a mentor mentee relationship. What we would see here is it’s not always 100 percent vulnerability being given and being received.

But for the mentor, it’s giving a safe place, consistency, the area for vulnerability to happen. And then that is what can be received by the other person for the ability to start showing emotions to happen. Kathy’s point about the giving and receiving and using the volleyball analogy is really good in an equal part relationship.

That’s what it’s going to look like, the back and forth, the conversation. And then the exposure is honestly, that’s where it gets a little bit hard, that’s where if you just heard some emotions about frustrating in that volleyball analogy, or not quite everybody’s engaged in that volleyball analogy, that’s where vulnerability is going to get a little bit tricky. The serve that just lands flat, you’re not quite sure what to do with that.

So, there’s another definition. She gave the show emotion or allowed one’s weakness to the team to be shown. We’ll talk about weakness here in a second, but there’s also another quote that she really likes from Brene Brown that talks about it’s more courageous showing weakness. And so, Kathy, do you want to speak into that a little bit there?

Yeah, just because the vulnerability piece is we share about our emotions, our thoughts, our feelings, the weaknesses that we’re facing, but to do that, it takes a lot of strength for a person. And so that’s why the Brene Brown quote says that. While it is something difficult, it is not a weakness to do it. It is a measure of courage. And I would say in a mentoring relationship, it also is a measure of the safety that’s there. Absolutely. If you look outside of relationships, if you look within like the professional world, or even as a parent, I find myself saying this to my kids, I know your strengths and I know your, I almost stop.

I don’t want to say, oh, in my marriage. We have strengths and we have weaknesses. It makes you pause a little bit to actually say that word weakness, but actually it is courageous to know what your strengths are and what are areas to grow. That’s the phrase I usually use instead of weakness.

I like to go to areas to grow, but there is something that makes us pause in our human nature to not say that word weakness. And that’s where vulnerability is really, really key, can I acknowledge? But there’s an area to grow, whether I define it as weakness or not. Can I be courageous enough? To number one, acknowledge that, but then step into that space.

I think that’s, that’s the genesis of this, this webinar today is, can we step into those spaces that are those awkward and what that looks like. And I’ll just throw this in here too. Before we had started the webinar, the three of us were talking on this topic a little bit and I was reminded of a Christian psychiatrist that we know of, named Kurt Thompson, who had shared that to be human is to be vulnerable, he says something to that effect to be human is to be vulnerable.

And so, that’s something that’s encouraging to me about it. And, that we really step into a place of honesty with who we are when we’re entering into vulnerability and knowing that we, as you were saying, Katie, this is what made me think of it is we have strengths, and we have weaknesses.

That’s just part of the package of being human. You just don’t get around it. That’s right. So, when you enter a space of vulnerability, you’re actually entering into a space of just being real, of being authentic. There is something really freeing in that, but we also know, especially in a mentor mentee relationship that sometimes a balance of those things can be put off kilter.

So, let’s talk a little bit about that. Katie, do you want to lead us through or Kathy, either one of you, what then is not vulnerability? What do we want to avoid? Sometimes instead of, yeah, before Kathy goes, sometimes instead of trying to put your finger on what vulnerability is, right? It’s a buzzword in today’s relationships. We want, Christians want vulnerability. We want relationships to be authentic and we want to be real about everything. But before we talk about maybe what it looks like, sometimes it’s better to queue up what it’s not. And so, some of these objectives here on this slide, oversharing, just talking, feeling forced into a conversation.

We talked a little bit about it’s not a sign of weakness. We talked a little bit about that or a burden relationship, something that can be avoided. So, Kathy is going to talk through a few of these and then we’ll keep going. Kathy, why don’t you start with oversharing and what that looks, why vulnerability is not oversharing.

Yeah, so I would encourage people to think about maybe both this oversharing and just talking as this is going to be a broad generalization, but maybe as two different groups of people that you might be interacting with. So, I think that we encounter the one group that is the voice and is really good at keeping the conversation and a talking area being in a place where we can keep constant conversation going, that is more like, so we talk about this in a counseling setting, but it’s only engaging the frontal lobe. It’s just that like conversation back and forth there, it never reaches an emotional level. So, that’s not vulnerability.

That’s, that’s just simply talking and keeping things a little bit more surface level. The other people can get into a place where they are referred to as over sharers. They are sharing lots of their emotions all of the time with lots of people. And so, I caution thinking that is vulnerability because really, vulnerability really happens within just a core group of people. It should be your closest people that you are sharing these things with.

And so, I encourage from a mentor perspective, if you are having people who are in the just talking zone, you want to work hard with them or with yourself to be able to make sure that you’re asking well timed questions or prompting some open-ended questions that force that conversation to go a little bit deeper.

And on the other side of that. With the individual who is over sharing and sharing a lot of details, it’s helpful to put some boundaries around that for them. Maybe by saying things like, this sounds like this is somebody else’s story you’re sharing with me. Or it sounds like there’s a lot of details here. Can we maybe go to the one most important part of it? So too much sharing isn’t helpful, but not sharing or going to any depth is not helpful either when we think about vulnerability.

I like Kathy’s example there of the relationship quantity and the relationship amount because I think oftentimes, especially when we get to the section, and this is a little bit getting ahead here, but especially when we get to the site, what if you’ve been burned by vulnerability? Oftentimes, if you take a step back and say, wow, is the person sharing a lot of emotion, a lot of information all the time with a great quantity of people? Kathy just spoke to that. Like true vulnerability is not what I just described.

True vulnerability is knowing some of those signs, my emotions and so forth are only safe with a certain number of people. And therefore, I need to guard that. From a mentor perspective, which we’re guessing most of you today are going to fill that role from a mentor perspective, that then is something to take as a personal challenge to yourself and be guarded with that and say, you know what? That just took a lot of courage for them to share with me. I need to protect that, and I need to honor their story. So, the oversharing and the just talking piece there that Kathy walked us through, I feel is a good gauge as to what are they sharing? How much are they sharing?

And then as a mentor, I need to be entrusted with that information and not share that with anyone else. I might also just touch on something that can be avoided. I think that sometimes depending on where we’re at with our own selves and when we’re engaging with other people, sometimes we can think, if only we could just keep conversation a little bit surface level. If only I could put some guardrails up in our conversation so that things that I don’t know how to answer won’t come up. That’s not helpful. And so, just remembering that, not being vulnerable with people is not an option, especially. not seeking out ways to increase vulnerability within relationships is not an option.

I would say even the Bible talks about bearing one another’s burdens, and that’s part of that giving and receiving piece of it. So, I appreciate that addition, Kathy. One of the questions that came up in my mind as I was thinking through this just now is, how do you know when you’re in this relationship and I’m a mentor and I’m speaking with my mentee because there’s no formula to this.

I don’t know if we’ve made that clear. Yeah, it’s this much talk about the weather, this much talk about what I did this week, this much talk about my emotion equals vulnerability or equals relational health, whatever. It’s not that way. And so how do we know what are perhaps the symptoms?

What happens in a relationship in a mentor mentee relationship when there is a lot of oversharing coming on from one side, maybe, or there is just too much surfacy talk and we’re never getting to that deeper level. What ends up happening in those relationships can be those red flags of, okay, maybe we need to take a step in another direction here.

So, I think probably to go back to the volleyball analogy that I gave, I think that it’s when maybe one or both parties start to feel like the conversations are just dragging. If you’ve met and decided on some goals and there’s no goals being met or mastered, or you’re not really seeing any changes, I think as the mentor involved, just feeling always really drained or really confused after some of the interactions, that probably means that the conversation did not get where it needed to get to.

And I think with vulnerability, I like your challenge here, Isaac, because we, as humans, have this, if we’re not growing or if it’s not an exponential curve up, then it’s, this is so stagnant. But I think the better question to what you brought up is how we know it’s surface level or too much emotion.

If it’s surface level, you’re talking about the same things again and again or you just can’t break it. Or as the mentor and hopefully the more mature believer, ask yourself, am I asking the wrong questions? Am I not listening? What am I missing here? Am I asking close ended questions?

All of those things. If I look down here, what vulnerability is not, feeling forced into conversation. If I am pulling repeatedly, there’s something about sitting in awkward silence, but then there’s also something about they’re just not giving me much, that’s not going to lend itself to a vulnerable state.

So, maybe just take a step back. Reanalyze the relationship, maybe going too fast too quick or questions too deep too quick is something to think about. You’re wanting vulnerability so badly, but it’s a natural progression. So, I would look at the length of time, the types of questions, and sometimes vulnerability is just a natural occurrence, and we’ll get to that I think later on in the PowerPoint presentation here. But it’s a natural occurrence of just a length of relationship and the trust and safety built up.

Kathy alluded to maybe there’s no respect in their relationship if you’re not looking forward to getting together with someone. The burden and relationship are there. That vulnerability is not right if there’s not a respect and an honor of one another’s time or conversation together. Vulnerability is also not something that should or can be avoided. It’s a natural blessing of intentional relationships, but again, it’s going to take time. It’s going to take safety and it’s going to take mutual respect.

And one example I might add on to that as maybe a little bit more tangible is this; so, say you’re meeting with a college student and you hear the conversation just keep coming up over and over of I don’t know for sure what degree to pursue, or college is so hard or…

Sometimes those statements indicate vulnerability is happening, but sometimes that too is just a little bit more of what we’re referring to as a surface level conversation. All college students talk about how difficult that stage of life is. And so, I think that as the person hearing these conversations to maybe try and get at a little bit deeper level or vulnerability, being able to ask questions like what for you is the hardest part or what are you noticing as the biggest challenge, just some open-ended questions. Sometimes what you hear back then is actually things that are a little bit deeper of like, I’m struggling so bad with what to go to college for because I feel like my family will not think the degree I want is good enough, or I don’t know if I’m smart enough, or I don’t have the financial ability to pay for this degree, or those sorts of things, which then, so just kind of hearing repeated phrases over and over, which might be that just talking. But then your ability to just be curious, ask questions that allow vulnerability or just more truth, fears, heart level things to come up, almost attach the circumstance or the fact to the surface level to an emotion that maybe you have experienced that is this most frustrating experience you’ve had in your life? What else have you felt like connecting that emotion, that experience with another life or asking that question.

I like that Kathy, yeah, I appreciate you. I’m pushing a little deeper and pulling out some real practical ways that we can venture into areas of healthy vulnerability in these relationships. I think it’s probably very clear, especially at this point in the conversation, that this is a complex subject. And so, models are helpful tools for us. We take complex ideas and we’re wired to just simplify them and models help us to do that. So that’s what we want to look at for that.

Really, the remainder of this webinar is a model of vulnerability that can help us understand this just a little bit better, hopefully. So, maybe I’ll kick this off and explain what you’re looking at. So, we have 2 people in a mentoring relationship, the mentor, and the mentee, obviously. And between them, we have this symbol of love heart, which symbolizes empathy, emotional, you might say heart connection. We’re really speaking to this idea of a stronger, more dynamic, open relationship. And another term that we talk about, especially in our church, is this idea of unity of brotherhood/sisterhood in Christ.

And this is what we’re going for. And so, when you see this heart, I want you to think unity between the mentor and the mentee. So, our aim is not even necessarily vulnerability. The aim is unity and love. And God is glorified in this when we are unified in love, right?

This is where the world on the outside looks into the church windows and they go, wow, I’ve never seen a community of people relating to each other like this. So, the heart, Isaac represents connection, commitment. You have that word there, right? Not necessarily vulnerability in what our topic is today.

That’s right. What we’re going for is towards this heart. And you’ll notice it’s black right now. And if you’re a visual learner out there, you’ll love colors into this. That’s right. Symbols and colors. So, it’s not quite lit up by this vulnerability.

And we’ll get to that in a minute. So, we’re going for this sort of unifying, empathetic, emotional heart level connection. We exemplify Christ to the world. Jesus Christ made himself vulnerable to humanity for love. And for unity with us.

So, with that mentor mentee, we have what we’re going for, this heart and then all of this takes place within the circle of commitment to each other. That’s the sort of heart level relationship that we’re that we’re going for. It’s only available, I would suggest, within the bindings of committed, graceful love. That love that says, hey, I’m going to walk with you no matter what. We’re talking about that commitment where you’re sitting across the table from someone or side by side with someone and you’re saying, look, I’m not leaving, no matter how bad it gets. I’m sticking with you on this journey. That’s commitment and that encompasses and circles this whole relationship between a mentor and mentee.

And I don’t think we can overstate enough how important that really is. You’re cultivating a safe environment for this relationship to exist within now. This is a process to create. This is why you can’t jump right into vulnerability from the get-go, perhaps. Am I right by saying that? You have to cultivate this safety so it’s a process. It doesn’t happen overnight. In our modern world of instant gratification, Amazon overnight Prime day shipping or whatever, and microwaves, that’s not natural for us, but it’s slow and it’s done in the slow cooker.

This is the crockpot. Yeah, this is crockpot relationship here. Nice. Not to overuse analogies, but I would say with your cultivate one, it made me think that this is really the perfect seedbed for vulnerability to be able to build roots and grow and thrive in relationships. There you go.

Yeah, I love that. That’s a great picture. So, this commitment speaks back to what you were talking about, Kathy, in an earlier slide of this giving and receiving. Reciprocated, genuine expressions of love and care and needs, they occur over time. And between a mentor and mentee, they create this safe atmosphere of sharing where vulnerability can take place.

And just to offer a practical tip here for our listeners. Active listening skills is a helpful way to start encouraging safe environments. So, as someone’s community, as your mentor/mentee is communicating with you, this is what this looks like. It might look like leaning in, like just physically, right?

We are embodied. Relationships. We are people and what we do with our body matters. So, we lean in. We nod as they’re speaking. We affirm the relationship that we’re in because this is frankly the same thing that you and I would hope for and expect from people who would love and care for us.

And so, you show that to your mentee, by example, over time. It builds that connection, putting your phone down, making eye contact, things of that nature, absolutely. Right. So, it’s in the realm of commitment to one another that we have this vulnerability that can emerge. So, that’s what we have on this slide, okay?

We have these broken lines, which are our symbol for vulnerability. These broken, dotted, jagged lines because vulnerability is hard. It is messy. It is broken. It is not a straight line. Nobody gets out of a meaningful relationship without having some of the other person rub off on you, right? It’s just a messy reality because all our stories, mentor and mentee alike, hold brokenness.

All our stories hold brokenness. That is waiting for the redemption when Jesus comes again, makes things right. But the broken parts of our story are often just hard for us to tell, as we’ve been talking about. We all stumble, we all fall, we all sin, we make mistakes. And as we share those stories, it’s messy.

So that’s why we have this broken, dotted line, jagged line. And then, as we venture into vulnerable places like that, we encounter some barriers. So that’s what you have and these black boxes here are some of the common barriers that that keep vulnerability from connecting with our mentor mentee relationship. So Katie, would you mind walking us through? What are some of the barriers that a mentor might face when trying to model vulnerability for a mentee?

So, I liked it when Isaac started creating this visual, just a couple of reminders. So, the circle represents the safe, that seedbed, that perfect environment for vulnerability to grow in. So, as we talk through some of these barriers, myself as a mentor, I’m sure, including yourselves, be thinking about, does some of this resonate with me? Is this an area of why we aren’t having vulnerable relationships. Is there a piece that I need to own? It is challenging to myself when I think about this.

So, shame, the first one, sometimes as a mentor, you just get the shame of, well, I don’t have everything figured out. So why should I talk to my mentee about this, or I don’t have anything to offer. Why do I need to step into this conversation or this connection with this person? So, there is a little bit of shame if I’m honest with myself, being vulnerable in a relationship, there’s pride in a relationship. Um, I don’t want to look too much like I know it all, the reverse is, I know I’ve struggled in an area. So, I’m not sure I want to step into that area necessarily.

I have an image to uphold. You see how it can go in two different directions there, as far as like a mentor becoming vulnerable with a mentee and what that looks like. Another one we have here is the early stage of a relationship. So, never underestimate the fact that vulnerability is not going to happen.

We’ve mentioned this before, with a snap of a finger, right? It’s going to take some time. And if it is a relationship that is just starting vulnerability is could potentially be there, but maybe isn’t already there. So just give yourself grace with that. It’s not a given that vulnerability is going to happen.

It’s something to think about, but vulnerability is going to take time. Another one, they won’t respect me. One of the biggest things, if you ask younger people in a congregation and older people in a congregation, a lot of the older people that could potentially step into some of these vulnerable relationships and connections would say they won’t respect me.

But the younger people are saying they do want connection. They do want to learn from life lessons and so forth. And so, respect over time is going to look a little bit different. Also consider the generational gaps. I think what respect to maybe a 20-year-old today looks like is maybe a little bit different than a 55-year-old.

And so being grace filled with that and honoring what respect means to them might be a little bit different than what respect means to you and trying to fill in those gaps in those voids. Maybe if I could just interject here again, I’m just thinking about another lens to view this and is even perhaps gender differences.

I think of in a marriage relationship, that maybe you’ve heard this before, women really value just being loved and being connected, cared for, but men have such high value for this word respect. And so, I think even in a mentor mentee relationship and vulnerability, sometimes it seems like men have a harder time entering into places of vulnerability than a woman would.

And I wonder if this might be part of that. What do you think? I would say it’s similar for sure. If you would look at it, I would say most marriages, the common marriages, the husband is maybe not as vulnerable with emotions. And the wife who’s maybe used to more emotions is vulnerable with emotions.

And so, you do have that tension there, I would say in a mentor mentee relationship, just be willing to step into that, allow grace, assume good intent, maybe just the 20-year-old mentee showing up, responding to texts, sitting by you at the lunch table on a Sunday, something like that maybe shows a respect versus to you potentially showing up five minutes early, repeatedly texting when I text you back, you know, that type of thing, just give grace for some of those spaces where vulnerability can be stepped into and can potentially thrive. But don’t assume good intent, don’t assume respect, grace, love that type of thing looks exactly the same as what you’re assuming the relationship would look like, so they won’t respect me. Just be careful with that barrier as a mentor. Try to find try to find seeds to step into with that.

And then I’m too busy for this. If you asked a common person on the street, believe it or not, why do you not step into intentional relationships? Everybody usually throws out the word, time. So be willing to respect, there’s that word again, be willing to respect their time and your time as well. But don’t assume that, oh man, this vulnerability thing takes so much time. I don’t have that much time.

Guess what? We just gave you the grace and the calendar freedom to say, you know what? I don’t have to have vulnerability in three weeks. I could have vulnerability in a couple of years. That’s scary to think about, but that gives you the grace and the freedom to just enjoy the relationship to willingly be intentional, but let vulnerability naturally happen versus forced. Vulnerability is not fun for any of us.

Other barriers. You want to speak to those, Kathy? Otherwise, I think the mentee piece would be good for you to speak into what are some barriers from the mentee’s perspective. Yeah, I think that it might just be helpful. Katie, you already kind of mentioned this.

I might just re-highlight that these barriers are present for most people in most relationships, or at least some of these barriers. If you think about… like a physical barrier that’s blocking a road. You cannot move that physical barrier, or you can’t move forward until that physical barrier is removed, that is not always the same with these types of barriers.

It doesn’t mean that you must have everything as a mentor figured out. You don’t have to have these all completely solved in your life before you step into a relationship because we never do have all of these things figured out, right? And so, it’s acknowledgement of them and knowing how they might be showing up.

And the same will be true for the barriers the mentee faces that we’ll talk about in a second. I think what I would say is probably from the mentee’s perspective, if these barriers are too loud or as the mentor you’re showing them, you’re probably coming across a little bit cold or guarded or looking at your watch or those sorts of things.

Yeah. Fake. That’s a good piece. So, it’s about being able to acknowledge what you’re feeling and, and you yourself being able to work through those so that you can be present with the person that’s sitting in front of you. This is that give and receive, Kathy, the first graphic we talked about.

So, it’s not just like you or the mentee. It’s acknowledging your own personal walk. So yeah, we probably would say that the person we’re walking alongside is facing a lot of barriers. If we’re noticing that they’re disinterested, or they appear like they’re disinterested. They appear disengaged, maybe not showing up to scheduled times or not completing certain readings or that sort of thing that was asked of them. I think it’s easy for us to say, well, this person must not be interested in engaging in relationship, so we can’t get to the deeper conversation.

But the reality is that their barriers are probably blocking them from being able to get to deeper level conversation. And so, I would say for sure what Isaac said, gender differences will be here. What is easier for females to share and harder for males to share or vice versa? So that certainly is a barrier to openness and communication. The other piece is just remembering that everybody has a story. There’s a Breaking Bread podcast out there in everybody’s playbook. And I think remembering that everybody comes with their own story and their own past will create a lot of blocking or barriers to communication.

So, your ability to be curious with the person, learning their story, hearing them, to be able to at least know what conversations really feel off limits. Which ones are they glazing over, what relationships will they not talk about, and unless you are at a point where you feel like the relationship is strong enough, it’s okay to walk around those a little bit for the time being while the relationship is building.

So, it’s being aware of what people’s shame and past wounds are. And then also just listening for unhelpful thinking styles like, I’ll never change, I’m a failure, that sort of thing. Sometimes it’s getting in and helping people hear themselves talk, or notice the unhelpful thinking styles, know that these are the barriers they’re facing, and then working with that.

To get a little bit deeper, speak a little bit. Oh, I just want to talk specifically on the lack of modeling. This is an important one. So, I was at a training several years ago and the speaker said this phrase, there are times then that we have to remember that with individuals, if they didn’t get it, they ain’t got it and they got to get it.

So. Yeah. It’s horrible grammar, but if your ears just twitched a little bit, that’s okay. Say it again, Kathy. Say it again and we’ll just hold our breath. Yes, it’s probably why it’s easy to remember. If they didn’t get it, they ain’t got it, and they have to go get it. So, this idea that if an individual was never modeled or shown what it looks like to be vulnerable, or grew up in a place where big emotions were not allowed, or they were told either directly or indirectly, we don’t share things that happen in this household outside of this household, or if there were times when big emotions or fears were shared, they weren’t picked up on, they weren’t acknowledged.

So, we would say that they didn’t get it, and they ain’t got it. And so, they don’t have the ability to do that. And so, they have to go get it and that’s where you come in as the mentor. You and again, we keep reinforcing this, but that’s where that giving part comes in, your ability to give the space for that model that shows that again.

It doesn’t mean that you’re sharing your own vulnerable story with them, depending on where the relationship is, but you’re providing opportunities and modeling healthy communication skills to help them get to that point. I want to just point out again how important this is. I’m thinking again from just a male perspective.

For a male mentee, perhaps, who just didn’t have this modeling, because of cultural expectations, cultural gender norms, things like this, that men are tough, rigid, unbreakable, a symbol of stability, whatever. And so, for some people, that translates into, I’m emotionless. I don’t have needs or feelings that I would share with anybody.

It’s easier just to live my life without being vulnerable with people because then people would see me and be like, that’s a respectable man, that’s a man I can trust or whatever. But what a pity to not be given that opportunity to just be congruent, who I am on the outside is who I am on the inside.

Right. How important is it then for our young men to have models of aged male models who are modeling for them. Yeah. Stories of brokenness and a reception of brokenness is perhaps even more important. I’m willing to receive you as you are. You don’t have to be cleaned up, right?

What a beautiful picture of who God is to his children. You don’t have to be cleaned up before you come to me. We’re going to walk through this together. So, just really beauty in that idea of it takes a village or a community. If we’re thinking about young people, sometimes because of where parents are at in their own healing journey, they aren’t able to give that to their kids. And so, if there are other people in the community that can model that, that’s helpful. Or, even just, regardless of what age you are, there are different people that can model different things for you.

And so, being able to step into that with a core group of people is important before we get to the next session. One last comment on this. I appreciate what you Kathy and Isaac are saying words to listen for. If you’re like, I don’t know. They just tell me, oh, I don’t know. I don’t know.

I try to get them to connect emotions and we’ve had conversations and they’ve talked about a struggle, or they’ve talked about joys. Lots of times the practice practical skill in me, I’m listening for things like, well, my parents just didn’t, or I don’t know how to, what does that look like?

They’re asking, or they’re seeing these statements that I need to catch and receive. And then I also, and we’ll get to this in the next section on what then, so all these broken lines and all these barriers, how then do I engage in healthy vulnerability?

I’m taking some of this lack of modeling and I’m using it to teach, not just myself on what vulnerability looks like in our relationship, but also them. If they’ve never seen it, they ain’t got it. Like dear Kathy says, then how do they get it? Right. How do they engage in that?

And that’s almost as much for you, the mentor, as it is potentially the mentee. So maybe Isaac, should we head on for time? Yeah. Katie, please continue speaking to that. Okay. So, then we’re still in this oval, right? We’re still in this safe relationship space, this oval is very indicative to confidentiality.

And I do not want to underestimate that word and a healthy vulnerability. The confidentiality that what they tell you, unless obviously there’s harm or grave danger for their physical self, their story is their story. Okay. Respect it, receive it and honor it as such. And so, when we think of this oval, the commitment, and then how do we go through those broken line pieces?

Here are some things from the mentor I’ll speak to. And then we can go into the mentee. So, let’s go over to the mentor section. Their guidance might look a variety of ways. Guidance might look like helping them contrast decisions. Kathy gave a great example of a college person. Maybe you’re stepped into their lives, and they have a couple different career options or job choices or something like that.

They’re moving. What does that look like? So that might be helping them step through a pro con list or connecting to additional resources. If you as a mentor feel like you’re inadequate to do so, maybe there are some people or some resources that you can help step into that guidance space as a mentor.

Do you see how all these things, hopefully, as we go through them will help kind of solidify? These are solid lines here. Not broken lines, the messiness piece. These are solid lines that hopefully will help switch and help connect that giving and receiving piece. Another one here we have is experience.

Allowing your life lessons to be brought up in an appropriate manner and context. This question was asked of several of you as you put in questions when you registered for this webinar. So, thank you for that. Like Isaac mentioned at the beginning of this webinar and what we would say, and Kathy and Isaac can add to this, is there are definitely shared life lessons and maybe sometimes it’s a public connection of relationship.

I’ll give a couple examples within church communities that as our outreach team travels around, we’ve experienced a couple of them in different mentoring groups where maybe there’s a purity struggle or a marriage issue, where you are paired specifically in our intentional relationship because of that struggle.

And then there’s sometimes just relationship things that come up. Maybe there’s an infertility situation or just a job decision that needs to happen. So, we would say if it’s a public situation, public as in not everyone knows about it, but an intentional pairing. How about I say that an intentional pairing relationship where you are specifically placed in this relationship? You both know why you’re there, right? If it’s a purity or marriage struggle or something of that nature, you both know why you’re there. But in the same context, potentially you are paired up because you have experienced some of those same struggles. We would encourage you to just consider sticking to the empathetic connector, right?

You’ve experienced it. You’re in an overcoming state, prayerfully, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to share all of the details and facts of what your life lesson has taught you. Connect through the emotion, use that as a building ground to go towards that heart, like Isaac’s graphic shows there, but not necessarily sharing all of the details. Several of your questions lent to do we share a lot; how much do we share what’s appropriate? I would say the older they are probably the more connection and the emotion you can connect to, the younger they are just step into that a little bit more careful. Okay. The goal of it isn’t to be about you yourself and your actions and what your circumstances were.

The goal would be to connect through the emotion of that’s frustrating. You feel like you failed again, things like that. Kathy, did I leave out anything there that we had talked about in the experience piece. No, I think that it’s an appropriate level of sharing of your personal struggle and you said this already, but that if the person comes to you specifically because they know you’ve had this same experience, it’s appropriate to be more open with them about it.

If you stumble upon something as your relationship gets going and this person you’re working with does not know this was your personal struggle, it’s helpful to be really careful on the timing because it turns into that, like, oh yeah, me too. And it invalidates them like, oh, guess what, you have a struggle, but so did I. So, yeah, knowing where the relationship is at and being prayerful about when is the best time to share and step into that slowly would be because that is being vulnerable, right?

Kathy, that is a mentor saying, hey, you know what? I can connect with you because I had a lot of hard, ugly, and messy too. At some point I had those broken lines. And so, gauging it, like Kathy said, timing it well, those are all pieces to speak about. And then support looks very different for different relationships.

So, remember, we’re again in this safe oval where there’s trust and there’s safety built up. There’s likely been some time. Support might sometimes just be listening, practicing the presence of just being there. It might be a physical act of meeting them for coffee or helping them move, helping them with an engagement, being there during pre-engagement stage. Sometimes it’s even to elevate the situation to a professional counselor. Support is going to look different at any one of these times. Hopefully these are some practical skills here from the mentor perspective, which most of you in this audience are.

And then for time’s sake, let’s switch over to the mentee as well. Let’s see, questions. Sometimes the mentee asks the same question over and over and over again, and that’s okay. We’re here to listen. We’re here to help, but maybe helping them reframe and bring it to a little bit deeper level instead of the surface that Kathy and Isaac talked about where we’re not talking about the weather anymore. We’re talking about fears or why can’t you pull the trigger on deciding about college or what’s with this move? That type of thing. They’re going to come to you with questions. But receiving those questions and then helping them with some of the things we talked about.

Another thing within the safe vulnerability that the mentee is going to expect, we talked about respect a little bit. This is going to look different from time to time. They might just want to talk sometime and feel listened to. There might be no big aha moments at that time. But it’s that respect, that confidentiality, that mutual sharing, showing the Christ likeness of receiving that. Whatever their respect looks like. Okay. And not assuming respect for them looks like respect for me.

And then the last one, and then definitely I want Isaac and Kathy’s comments on some of these pieces, is growth mindset. I will say, and I saved this one for last specifically, regardless of the age of the mentee, this is one, I think that human nature, unless I’m unique in this, this is a really hard one for the mentee to gauge. Rarely are you going to have a relationship where the mentee is like, I want to grow in my walk with Christ well and healthy. And here I am like, help me grow. So just stepping into that with a lot of grace.

And they are not going to notice their growth, whether it’s a yearlong relationship, two-month long relationship, lots of time, mentees aren’t vulnerable enough or they’re not willingly enough or we’re just human natured and we don’t like to assume the best of ourselves. They can’t see that growth, right?

And so, we as mentors play a huge role in that last line down there of growth mindset. This is rarely seen from a mentee’s perspective. Sometimes it’s really minimal growth, but as a mentor, being able to step into even those small spaces and that minimal growth to encourage and continue to point them to Christ is a big piece.

Last point here, doesn’t this just look like a perfect little graph, the lines go straight. Everything’s beautiful. When reality is all of these lines are not going to be present at all times. Sometimes there’s going to be questions just continually volleyed towards you. And you’re going to have to use that guidance of listening presence.

Connecting. And then maybe sometimes there’s going to be that respect and so forth. So just be aware that this graphic is intended to encourage and help you see where your relationship is at. What is present? What is not likely? These lines are not all going to be always present.

Yeah. Kathy, anything you would add to that? No, I think this is good. I guess when I’m looking at this and I just think, okay, from the mentee perspective, when deeper questions start to come, when you start to notice more that growth mindset or you’re noticing that there’s some positive steps being had and conversations getting a little bit deeper. There again, it might not be the big, bold revelations, but it might be sharing things that cause some anxiety or triggers or that sort of thing. When you see that start to happen, you know, from your perspective that you’ve probably done like from the mentor perspective, you’ve done what you’ve needed to do. It probably looks a little bit like consistently showing up like every Tuesday or whatever that setup is.

Enduring through a lot of, like, awkward conversations, feeling all those barriers, feeling like I’m not good enough, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be saying, and allowing that, active listening skills, and you’ve done all of that to has help create this place where the other person can feel seen, known, and then ultimately loved, and I think that’s a big transcribed part of vulnerability. People can step into deeper truths about things that they need to talk about when they feel fully known and loved by the person they’re interacting with. So, that’s how I see those lines working.

Yeah, that’s great. Thanks for diving into that, Katie and Kathy both. And so, we’re describing the elements that are brought into a committed relationship between a mentor and mentee that now exists or that now allows vulnerability to exist. And so just a quick reminder. We’ve only got a couple slides left here. If you have questions that have remained unanswered up to this point, please do chat those in, we’ll try to get to them as much as we can with a limited time. But if we don’t get to him here, we would love to be able to follow up through email or through the chat feature as well.

So, this next slide here we have the broken line again, right? The vulnerability, the hard, messy, real, not necessarily a straight line, vulnerability that enters this relationship, but it connects, if you’re looking at this model, we have the vulnerability line on the left-hand side of the mentor starting higher. This shows like the mentor has modeled vulnerability for the mentee, and then the mentee is also vulnerable, and they meet together in the heart. It’s now red. It’s red! The heart is red! It’s full of life, and they are being received by the mentor in vulnerability, heart connection is made, love is displayed, empathy is encountered, and people are united.

In loving relationship, his brothers and sisters, his daughters and sons, mothers and fathers, all in Christ. And God is glorified in relationships like that. So, that’s what we’re going for. And then we have joyful byproducts of this healthy vulnerability that extends both directions. The mentee is not the sole recipient of growth in this, right?

It extends to the mentor as well. We also have the benefit of perspective. Oh, now I have learned about other people’s stories, other people’s experiences of God and of life. And now my perspective has grown. I have a stronger relationship with my mentee that will hopefully result in an ever-deepening connection with them.

The mentee has had growth encouraged in them, perhaps healing of past wounds and trauma that could have only been dealt with in a place of vulnerability and safety. They’ve increased trust towards their mentor as they’ve been received in vulnerable places and then hopefully, ideally, an increased trust in God and God’s provision for them in their life. So, the byproducts extend both ways, and God’s glorified in this. Katie and Kathy both, would you have anything that you want to sum up here that hasn’t been mentioned up to this point?

I might just say one thing. So, I loved Isaac’s enthusiasm of like, boom, this happens and it’s a big firework moment. Instant! Is that what you heard on this webinar? I’ll just say I am an idealist and so that’s just natural for me. Kathy and I are a little bit more pragmatic. So, here’s the pragmatic. Here you go. I’ll just say sometimes it looks like that and sometimes it does not. That doesn’t make Isaac wrong.

He’s exactly right. That is what happens, but it doesn’t always display in that much color. Sometimes it’s just about noticing an ever-growing positivity. It’s that growth mindset piece that you’re noticing a lot more with the person that you’re talking with and walking beside.

You’re noticing more confidence grow, which is those things, right? The growth, healing trust. And sometimes we must remember to slow down and look for that because it doesn’t just display perfectly and wonderfully always. Yeah. And I would say that’s the clinician’s perspective of it. Here’s an even more lay perspective of it. I would say as this grows, whether it looks like the big booming heart or the lines less broken or whatever that looks like, I would say that intentional relationship, you wanting to be with them, right? Instead of maybe a more hierarchical approach, becoming more of like a friendship relationship.

That’s always an indicator for me. Like, you know what, this is going in a healthier direction. This is whether it’s this function there or not. Their struggle is still there or not. Just that intentionality, that liking to be together or looking for them, are you noticing where they are or not?

And I love how Isaac queued it up at the very beginning today, this needs to happen in the Body of Christ. This is what the difference is between secular relationships and the Body. And I love that. Are they looking in our windows, seeing connection and seeing whether it’s messy, broken, straight lines, you name it. Are they seeing that? And I think that’s beautiful. That is the Body of Christ in action. Well said. Thank you.

The one thing I just might add quick is that you didn’t hear anybody say on this is that the situation that people were vulnerable about was fixed by the mentor. And I think that’s important that is not. The role really, I think that you can even keep this visual in your mind of like, it just even stays here. It’s just that ability to kind of pour it out, let it be known to someone, and then, by doing that, sometimes an individual can process it differently. And then put it to the side and focus on where God’s leading them in life.

But yeah, your job is not to solve the thing that they bring to you that’s vulnerable. But it’s to be there to offer those things that you see on the left side. It’s not a fix it model. It’s a presence model. Not formulaic. Relational. Well, hey, thank you everybody for joining us today.

We are at the top of the hour again here so we will close. God bless you as you extend his love, his care, to his people as mentors in your local communities. Thanks for being on. Thank you.