Are you a business leader who wants to elevate mentorship and cultivate strong character development in your workplace? If so, I have the solution for you. Join me as I reveal the success secrets for building robust mentorship programs and fostering a culture of integrity, resilience, and growth within your organization.
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Show Notes | TranscriptBe the example for those you lead – people will follow what leaders do. – Christine Van Horn
Introducing Christine Van Horn, an expert in mentorship and character development with a wealth of experience under her belt. As a certified emergency manager for three decades, she has plenty of insights to share about the importance of character and mentorship in both business and personal life. Christine is also an accomplished author, teacher, and speaker whose latest book, Teach Your Children Timeless Truths in Uncertain Times, showcases her dedication to fostering character growth in children. When it comes to mentorship, Christine has a friendly approach that’s both engaging and uplifting.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Understand the significance of mentorship in fostering success in various aspects of life.
- Identify key character traits crucial for lasting and beneficial mentorship bonds.
- Realize the need for strengthening fundamental values in our communities.
- Acquire knowledge on establishing fruitful mentorship initiatives in the workplace.
- Adapt to our ever-changing world by nurturing an informed and curious mindset.
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TRANSCRIPT
Gloria Grace Rand
You. Namaste. I am Gloria Grace Rand, and so delighted to be with you for another edition of Live. Love. Engage. And I’ve got a lovely woman here today to talk to us about mentoring, but I’m going to give you a little bit more about her bio first. So Dr. Christine Van Horn is an author, a teacher, and speaker. She’s been a certified emergency manager for 30 years and is now applying her emergency management experience to focus on character in society. And her goal is to help rebuild foundational values through mentorship. And her latest book, for those of you who are listening, you won’t have the benefit of seeing it on the screen, but it is called Teach Your Children Timeless Truths in Uncertain Times. And before we got started with the podcast, I knew I wanted to be able to focus on, we were talking about what I was going to ask you about and about how you got on this journey. And I realized that I do want to talk a little bit about the book, even though I know we want to focus more on Mentorship for Business. But I would love to know a little bit about what even prompted you to write this book and why you are passionate about helping to rebuild foundational values.
Christine Van Horn
All right, thank you. And first of all, it’s wonderful to be on the show, so thank you so much, Gloria. And this is not my first book on character. I actually have two before that. I wrote a book for children, older children called Captain Character. But I have focused on character for quite a number of years, and I’ve just kind of looked around in society and seen where we are at and thought about how life was when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s, and there’s a big difference. And the gap, I do believe, is character and lack thereof. Most of the things you see in society that are bad are due to a lack of character, so it kind of got me in that focus. But I really just kind of feel like the Lord’s kind of pointed me in a direction that this is where I’m supposed to focus on in society. So I wrote Teach Your Children Timeless Truths in Uncertain Times, which is looking at character traits, life skills, and being an example in the lives of children. And those, I think, are three gap areas that I see in society today. That’s kind of my focus.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, I appreciate you doing that because I agree there does seem to be especially with all of the not discourse of the, not disarray but just distress in how we communicate. I’ll use that dis word. I’m trying to think of something here, but, yeah, there’s just a lot of conflict and a lot of, my way or the highway, and there seems to be little room for compromise anymore, and that’s disheartening. There we go. I got another dis word in there. So I wanted to talk about. Like I said, some of the things that you talk about in the book are not only good for kids, but they’re also applicable for adults as well. And one of the things you talk about is one of the things that you’re focused in on is mentorship. But for those people out there, they may be a little bit confused because I know sometimes I think even when I was first starting in my business, I wasn’t exactly sure on what exactly is a mentor and how does that work, say, compared to, say, a coach or something like that. So can you talk about that a little bit?
Christine Van Horn
Sure. Life coach and a mentor are very similar. So for people that I’ve been talking with, I say use whichever term you relate to the most. So I did not realize we needed coaches until about a decade or so ago, and I thought coaches were really just for baseball games and football and things like that. And then I realized, hey, I need a life coach. And so it’s very similar. A mentor is someone who’s been there before. So the person that they’re mentoring is not starting off at the basics. It’s starting off at a higher level where that mentor has been. So the person who is a mentor or a life coach, they’re teaching out of their own experience. So you gain all of that benefit. And that’s the beauty of having a mentor, somebody who has been there before, they’ve experienced it, and they can teach you what they know.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. And hopefully save you from making some of the mistakes, probably, that they made early on. Which is one of the reasons I like to coach people as well, is because I have made those mistakes. And we all do as we’re getting started in anything new. But if we can then pass those lessons on to other people, it’s so important. So what are the timeless truths that you talk about in your book, and how does that actually apply to people in business?
Christine Van Horn
So my timeless truths are considered character traits. So being able to guide others in my book, it’s your children in character traits, and then the other is teaching them life skills. And I’ll explain a little bit about what that is. And then the last thing is really being the example for them. Now, that applies to children. And in my book, I’m really talking about nothing as formal as like, a life coach. It’s more like parents and grandparents teaching their children and grandchildren. So it’s a little more informal. And I guess that’s another difference between a coach and a mentor. But in business, it really still all applies. You can be mentoring or guiding people that you work with or who work for you on character traits. You can teach them. Do not gossip. Don’t take something that’s not yours, even if it’s just something simple. I learned a lesson when I was young and it was just I wanted to always pick up like a loose paperclip and instead of putting it like in a common area, I put it on my desk. And as I got older, I thought, no, that’s stealing, that wasn’t mine. Even if it’s still being used in business, that was not something given to me. And so some things like that, that are simple, you could really just to teach to those that you are with and then being the example, being the example because people will follow what leaders do, whether you’re a parent or you’re a supervisor, those that are your supervisor, they’re going to follow what you do. So you’ve got to be that same example for them.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. And it really does make sense because when you’re in a position of leadership, if you want people to be able to be good employees, for instance, you want them to be able to provide good service for your customers and your clients. And if they’re just running amok and not taking care of the company, in a sense, then you’re going to have problems. And it does start from the top, doesn’t it? I think that leadership has to start at the top.
Christine Van Horn
It really does. Yeah. If you’re the leader, director, executive of a company, you have got to be on your toes because people will watch. You can’t tell them don’t do this or don’t do that, and then you go ahead and do it. They’re not going to follow you. So if you have a policy to do something one way and you do it the other, you can be assured that everybody else is going to follow what you do and not the written rule and things will not be done correctly.
Gloria Grace Rand
Now, I can see that having a mentor can certainly help you in being able to, as we talked about, to be able to avoid maybe some of the missteps that someone made at the beginning. But does being a mentor benefit the mentor as opposed to the mentee? And how can it?
Christine Van Horn
Well, it really does because if you’re teaching someone how to do something, you need to make sure you’re really doing it yourself. And so it strengthens your own character, it strengthens your own skills by doing that for others. Just even something simple like teaching a company policy or a procedure on how to do something, the benefit to the mentor is you really need to do that and you’re going to learn it more. And it also enriches your lives when you see the influence that you can have on people and just see how they’re responding to what you’re doing and how people are improving on the things that they’re doing.
Gloria Grace Rand
Are there any other timeless truths that you think in your book that really do apply to the business world as well than the ones you’ve mentioned so far?
Christine Van Horn
Those are the main three that are in my book, but I really go into some other things that I think are benefits in these really also apply. So things like being consistent, being intentional, doing the things that you want them to do, you need to really make a set time and you need to have a follow through. And those things are extremely important in business as well, because you can’t just say, oh, we’re going to have some mentorship time and then you don’t do anything with it. You really need to be able to follow through with it and be committed to it. So these enhance not only the mentor, those that are being mentored, but I think the organization as a whole come together a whole lot more once you can do these things and then you’ll have the buy in from the people as well. Things like enhanced teamwork, people talking to each other more, these are all incredible outcomes of doing all of these things and have a real long lasting effect.
Gloria Grace Rand
You were or have been a certified emergency manager for three decades. So I wondering, did you have a mentor then when you were starting out at the company that you were working for and or then did you become a mentor? And so how did that work for you?
Christine Van Horn
Yeah, I did. When I started out doing the work I was doing, I had incredible mentors and that really helped me. I didn’t understand it well enough at that point in time. I just knew, oh, somebody was helping me and getting me through a process and learning new things. And as I reversed the role some, and as I became different levels in the organization and I had people that were I was leading and I started doing the same thing, I did it because that’s what I knew. It was done for me, I did it for others. And then I realized, oh, this is what mentorship really is. And so that’s another positive effect. Those that are being mentored are going to learn from the mentor that process and they can teach it to others and show things that they need to to new people starting the organization.
Gloria Grace Rand
Was there ever a time where when you were being a mentor that it was some sort of challenge? That it was really that either the person you were working with wasn’t responding, or tell me a little bit about if you had something like that happen and then how did you handle it?
Christine Van Horn
I have a couple of examples. The first one is often in my role, I was a leader but not a frontline supervisor. So people that were doing work for me, it was in a kind of a matrixed organization. So I was functionally their manager, but not administratively, so I couldn’t have any administrative direction in their life. And I think that’s difficult in mentorship because often in an organization, it could be that it’s someone who’s maybe like a training coordinator who becomes the mentor and they don’t have that supervisory direction over the people that they’re working with. So I did find that a challenge, but I often found myself in an organization that was matrixed. So over time, I learned how to function in that environment. But somebody who’s starting that new, especially if you’re not supervising those people, can be pretty difficult. The other thing is there’s group mentorship and then you can do individual mentorship. So if you do something where it’s a group mentorship in a session with a group that you set up in some organized fashion and somebody is not buying into what you’re saying, they don’t really want to follow that procedure, they don’t want to learn this new program. You can do individual mentorship and where it’s less a threatening environment to them, where they can open up to you and you can talk to them and find out what is the issue that they’re having and learn how to rectify that.
Gloria Grace Rand
That is one of the things I think that can be challenging is when you do have that pushback from someone, I love your suggestion to be able to then talk to them one on one because maybe they’re just embarrassed and they don’t want to talk in a group setting. And so that’s good that you can have that to be able to help them through that and be able to give them the support they need. Let me go a little bit broader and talk about your journey that you’ve had. You become you’re an author as well, and you’re a teacher. What about all the different things that you do now? What do you like the best?
Christine Van Horn
Well, I retired. I don’t like the word retirement. I changed careers in December, and so I’d spent 30 years in the field of emergency management, and it was time to turn it over to people that I had helped raise up. And that’s something that’s important. When you’re leaving a job in retirement, or whatever you call it, you need to make sure that somebody else is there to take your position. So I think a good leader always ensures that someone is there to replace them. Whether it’s you’re moving up in the corporate ladder or you’re retiring or whatever it is, you need to have that person there. And so I did that, but then I could focus on the things that were really in my heart as I saw for my future, and that was mentorship and specifically character. I just am very drawn to the topic of character and we just don’t see enough of it today. Like I grew up with. And my dad lived with me in the last part of his life, and he passed away a couple of years ago, but he was in World War II and the greatest generation. And I saw the things that he did and he told me stories and he wrote some stuff down and I recorded some things. And I think that’s something that mentorship also is sharing your experiences and whether it’s a parent doing it for a child or it’s in the business world like we’re talking about, record those experiences. Those are case studies. They really are. I like case studies and often use them in my emergency management career. But there’s things like that that we can record and be able to pass that on to others that are following in our footsteps.
Gloria Grace Rand
I like that idea because you’re right, if you don’t somehow put that information out there in some way that someone’s going to be able to be able to absorb it, for lack of a better word, then it gets lost. And it’s important, as you say, that it not be lost. Well, you know what? I want to go back a little bit to this. You keep bringing up character, and it might be helpful, especially for possibly if there’s someone younger listening to the podcast today that they’re still not quite sure on what that looks like. What are, say, maybe your top five character traits that someone should have, whether it’s in business or just in life in general.
Christine Van Horn
I actually do have some of them is thankfulness. We just don’t see enough gratitude in society today. And I just think that is so critical. Doors would open for people, especially for younger people who are not exposed to their peers being thankful. Doors would open. I was looking for someone to be interviewed for a position that I had, those that had that air of gratitude or thankfulness or appreciative, those are the ones you wanted. Something like that has great business applications. Extremely, extremely important. Another one that’s like one of my top ones is respect. We just don’t see enough of it. And the younger people are not even brought up with understanding what does that really mean? But respecting people can be simply things like using their titles and not just going into your boss’s office and going, hey Joe, I got something to tell you. No, it’s Mr. Smith, I have an idea I’d like to relate to you. It’s just even in the way that you dialogue with people. And so I think those are really my big two.
Gloria Grace Rand
I like that. And I do think having an attitude of gratitude, I agree with you. That’s so important because it really does. I found is that the more things that you have to be grateful, or the more that you’re grateful, the more things you have to be grateful for. And certainly that applies in the business world. Because when you go in, when you’re approaching your job and with that attitude of gratitude to be grateful that I’ve got a job, I’ve got something I’m bringing home money for, or I’m grateful that I’ve got a business to run and that I’m able to be able to serve my clients, then life is a lot nicer. It’s a lot more pleasant, shall we say. And then someone who is always the glass half empty type of person and looking for things to complain about. And then when you do look for things to complain about, you can frequently find them. Because I’ve lived with people, my mother, God rest her soul, was one of those people who was really good at finding things to complain about. And it’s tiring for the people around you to have to listen to that all the time too. So that contributes to really an unpleasant workplace. So it’s another reason, right? If you could do anything to sort of make our world a better place in addition to maybe your book, what else would you do, do you think?
Christine Van Horn
I think, just I don’t know. My mission really seems to be focused on I really call my mission Rebuilding Foundational Values and maybe it’s beyond character traits and life skills. It’s the things that we value in our lives as well and it’s made such a radical change. So I think somebody of my age group can see how things used to be and how things are in the future or where they are now or where we could be going and try to make some of those differences. I like to speak so I want to get out more to different organizations and talk at more personal level and apply it to the things that are important to them rather than it just be something like this where it’s… this is wonderful and I’m talking to so many people and it’s such a lovely thing. But there’s also that personal aspect that I want to be able to do, to just talk with people at a more one on one kind of kind of level. I have written a course for those that can’t figure out really what I’m talking about and how do you teach this stuff to your children? I’ve written a course that’s on my website and I’d like to do more of those. And I think this is just where I feel like my mission from God is right now is to address and it’s for everybody. This is a worldwide problem that everybody is facing.
Gloria Grace Rand
And I could see also perhaps maybe trying to get it into schools too, I think would be very useful even though I know in this day and age, sometimes they’re so focused on the basic reading, writing and arithmetic. But this stuff goes along with it. And I think because it’s like the pendulum is kind of swung too far one way. And it’s like we need to come back and bring some of this more timeless truths into helping our kids to grow up to be good citizens, good people, really. Just to be good, kind, thoughtful people. Because then they’re going to be able to treat others that are different from them. They’ll be able to still treat them well because they’ve been brought up on this. And I think that’s where some of this discord in our world today that’s the word I think I was looking for earlier. I was going to ask you what is a commonly held belief that you disagree with? And it could be on any subject.
Christine Van Horn
I am Christian. My doctorate degree is in Christian theology and Christian theology, theology is really the Biblical principles are not always mainstream. So if there’s things that are out there that are being talked about, like some of the things that are being taught in school as an example that are coming into curriculum that is not biblical, I disagree with those. But I also disagree with being really wild in your passion against some of those things. Some of the things that are really happening against it are not good either. So I won’t agree with some of those things or some of the gender things that are going on. But you can also do it in a good way. It doesn’t have to be revolts and school board meetings and things. There are ways to accomplish things that are more in line with your values.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, I think it’s really about tolerance. And I know sometimes people say, oh, well, you’re too tolerant of that. But I think it’s also I see it more of just learning to be able to be tolerant of people and just in recognizing differences and opening a dialogue. Because that’s how you can then learn. And then see is there any kind of room for common ground and a way to be able to maybe not necessarily come to an agreement, but maybe come to a place of at least understanding.
Christine Van Horn
And the understanding is important. I do think nothing that anyone would say would change any of my biblical values, however. But knowing where people are coming from gives you the ability to let them know the other side. So they may be really pro gender, whatever. If you understand what they’re saying, you can talk your side of it in a way that maybe they haven’t heard. Maybe all they hear is everything one sided. Right?
Gloria Grace Rand
Exactly.
Christine Van Horn
Being able to have open dialogues is important.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, for sure. What are you curious about right now?
Christine Van Horn
Where the world is headed. It’s something I focus on. I watch the news, but not just like everybody’s news because you know what? News is not what we used to know, what I used to know growing up. It’s more opinion. So I’m very careful with what I watch and look at things from a biblical perspective. But I am interested in where we’re heading and so it’s part of why I’m doing what I’m doing as well.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, that’s good. Is there anything else that I didn’t ask you about that I should have? Or any other last point about mentorship or character in general that you’d like to leave our viewers with today, our listeners?
Christine Van Horn
I’m trying to think I think one of the things that I want to leave with is, how can you accomplish mentoring the best? And so if you have an organization, whether large or small, and you really want to start a mentorship program, it can’t be something haphazard. Think of it as a training program. You have training criteria that have to be met. You need to have that same kind of mindset. We’re going to have a mentorship program, but yet at the same time keep it open and upbeat and not let people feel that they’re being corrected, that this is an enhancement to their learning so you can all get better. And just even things like letting people come in with coffee and some snacks and are doing it over lunchtime where they’re eating, eating kind of opens up people and they want to be able to chat a little bit more. It makes like a friendliness in the atmosphere. But having something that’s deliberate is really important. It just can’t be, let’s start some mentorship program. And you might even find people within the organization can take turns doing some of the mentoring. They may know some computer program really well that others are struggling with. Let them run it, that meeting. So there’s creative things that you can do.
Gloria Grace Rand
I think that’s a really important point, the awareness that you don’t have to do it all. You don’t have to be the person who knows everything. And you can certainly share what you’ve learned and your wisdom. But if your employees or whatever organization you’re working with needs help in an area that you’re not skilled at, then, yeah, it absolutely makes sense to find somebody else to be able to provide that training or wisdom, at least for them, so that you don’t have to think that you’re going to have to bone up on the latest Excel program. And so now that you can teach them how to do it, because that’s not a good recipe for success. Well, if someone listening today wants to learn more about you or maybe they want to get a hold of your books and where’s the best place for people to contact you?
Christine Van Horn
The best place is really my website and there’s links to get hold of me through email through there as well. The best way is my website and it’s www dot. I’m going to spell it Dr Chris.Co. So it stands for Dr. Christine. But it’s just DrChris.Co. Not but just Co. Just Dr chris.
Gloria Grace Rand
Co. All right? Very good. Well, I will have that in the show notes. So if you’re listening somewhere and you don’t have a pen handy, not to worry. Go back later to liveloveengagepodcast.com and find this episode and then you will be able to get that information and you can reach out to Dr. Chris. And so I appreciate that.
Christine Van Horn
Thank you so much, Gloria.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, well, thank you. I appreciate you being here today and sharing some of your timeless truths with us. And I know you’ve helped some people out today and I wish you continued success in your mission to rebuild foundational value.
Christine Van Horn
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Gloria Grace Rand
And I want to also acknowledge all of you for listening and watching. I really do appreciate it. If you’re, whether you’re listening on your favorite podcast platform, make sure you’re subscribed there. And of course, you’re watching on YouTube, please like and subscribe there. And until next time, as always, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply and engage authentically.
