Models of Mentoring 6 : Mentor as a Sharpening Stone

When we hear “mentoring” we tend to think about somebody who's more experienced and more knowledgeable working with someone who is less experienced and less knowledgeable. When we look at Mentoring as a Sharpening Stone you will see that it is a peer to peer relationship, where people who have a similar level of knowledge and a similar level of experience have a friendship.

When a chef’s knife is worked hard, he gets out the sharpening stone and sharpen it up to make it effective and fit for purpose. Some mentoring relationships are like sharpening stones, where in a relationship with somebody, you’re learning from each other in a peer to peer kind of way.

A well known saying from Proverbs 27:17 is “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” This is a great image of two pieces of iron, instead of blunting each other, they sharpen each other. This is a picture of a relationship where one person sharpens another person, and makes them more effective, more fine-tuned and more more impactful, and influential.

In 1 Samuel 18:1-4 we see that David and Jonathan had an amazing relationship just like this… There were moments when they saved each other's lives and other moments when they just sat and talked around the fire. They were were peers, and each sharpened each other. It was a great, great combination, and a great friendship.

Who are those people in your life? Who are the people for you, who are like sharpening stones? So it doesn't matter how blunt or ineffective you may feel - when you spend time with them, you come away feeling sharper and more effective. We all can have people like that in our lives - not just people who do that for us, but people that we do that for - who are you, a sharpening stone for?