Friday, March 29, 2013

Broken brackets and healed relationships


Early last week, I joined several million of my closest friends in the annual ritual of filling out an NCAA men’s basketball tournament bracket. Coming out of an upset-filled first weekend, I was riding high. Dumb luck had smiled on me, and I found myself near the top of the heap. I was ranked in the 97th percentile among participants in ESPN’s Tournament Challenge.

Then, last night, the tournament’s second weekend got underway. I missed on three of my four picks and saw my projected national champion make an early exit from the field. My overall ranking hasn’t plummeted just yet, but any dreams I might have had of fighting off throngs of reporters crowding around my door asking what’s behind my power of prognostication and seeking my opinions about capital markets and corn futures have gone up in smoke.

As is the case with my tournament bracket, a lot can change from one week to the next in a mentoring match. Ever have a tiff with a good friend and see your perception of that person take a big-time turn for the worse? Even long-standing friendships between mature individuals can sour at what might seem to an objective observer like a small-potatoes issue.

Imagine how much greater is the possibility of something going badly wrong when the parties involved are just getting to know one another—and are still in the process of constructing a bridge to span some major differences in culture, life circumstance, and so on.

All this speaks to the necessity of regular monitoring and contact with the members of our committed partnerships. This is definitely not a case where no news is good news. Just as my Tournament Challenge entry didn’t reach out to inform me that my bracket just drove off a cliff, it’s not realistic to expect that a teen is going to call me to say he’s thoroughly peeved with his mentor. Without regular check-ins initiated by an impartial and supportive staff member, he’d be more likely to simmer silently and let the relationship slowly fail.

I hope you’ve had the experience of recovering a relationship from what feels, at least in the moment, like a major disagreement or misunderstanding. And I hope many of our Coaching for Success program participants get to experience this during the course of their time with YES!Atlanta. Learning to get past hard feelings to preserve something of great value is both empowering and rewarding.

My bracket is a lost cause. Their relationships are anything but.

1 comment:

  1. Well spoken, Matt! I would add that the term we use for mentors, "Committed Partners" also applies to the youth. The commitment here is to jointly work toward fulfilling the promises for self-improvement the youth has made upon entering into the Coaching for Success program. For each of the participants, this focus can be a delicate matter, as the adult mentor's responsibility is to be the "wall" around these promises. This means walking a narrow line between being simply a "buddy" and being a demanding parent. We have found that both Committed Partners require support in achieving their objectives, hence continual support, as Matt suggests, is vital. This is achieved by individual interviews and group meetings where experiences can be shared to everyone's benefit.

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