Anyone can be a positive influence in the life of another.  At Cinco Energy Services we encourage all our employees—and everyone who wants to help make a difference in the life of a young person—to become a mentor.  You don’t have to be a parent or a teacher; all you have to do is care about your mentee’s well-being above all else and be willing to impart your wisdom to another.

Most people agree that young people require guidance.  Mentors provide a type of support that many young people want, but don’t know how to ask for.  Imagine someone asking you, “Will you teach me life-lessons that will positively impact my future development and expose me to knowledge beyond the realm of what my parents and/or teachers have experienced so far?” Asking the right question is important and mentors can narrow the focus when it comes to questions and answers.  However, that’s only a fraction of what mentors are for.

Part of the job of a mentor is to guide a young person to think in new ways.  Mentors often fill gaps in a younger person’s experience, helping them understand life from a different perspective.  A Mentor can be someone who has moved in different circles than the youth’s parents, teachers, church elders, or other respected members of the community and because of that the mentee will be offered options they didn’t know existed.

Another critical element that Mentors provide is devotion to their mentee.  A parent is biased by nature and may have an agenda that isn’t completely objective.  Sometimes that will limit what a parent encourages their child to do (i.e. someone who wants a doctor in the family might not encourage an education in music).  A teacher is also distracted by their preconceptions of what a student is or is not capable of, and what they are required by the curriculum to teach.  These circumstances may color the options provided to the child.  Mentors work for, and with, the mentee to help them figure out what they want to do and who they want to be without the distraction of preconceptions or expectations.

For example, when I was speaking with a young man who had been mentored for many years, he said that one of the best things about having a mentor was that he was an adult that wasn’t his parent.  Unlike a parent, a mentor’s guidance isn’t an investment in the mentor’s status (whereas many parents see children as extensions of themselves).  The mentor and mentee can relax without the pressure of expectation, which allows a relationship of trust and understanding to evolve.  When I asked that same young man if he recommended a mentorship program to his peers he replied, “Yeah, it’s actually pretty cool…people need to have real conversations and someone who understands what you’re going through.”

Cinco Energy Services is proud of the fact that many of our employees are mentors to students in the local area.  This process includes meeting with the students at least once a week to eat, talk, do homework, or hang out.  Integrity, Flexibility, Growth, Responsibility are what we are about at Cinco.  We don’t want to miss an opportunity to pass these core values along to the next generation who are looking to us to help them answer life’s important questions.