Mentoring doesn’t always look like mentoring Published March 25, 2009 By Lt. Col. Vincent Buquicchio 30th Space Wing Staff Judge Advocate commander VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- Sometimes, you can mentor or receive mentoring without even knowing it. As a captain, I was assigned to a contract litigation job outside Washington, D.C. I'd never really done contract or acquisition law, so I was baffled about pulling the assignment; but I knew something about litigation and hoped that might get me through. A long-time civilian attorney assigned to the office was levied with the unenviable task of getting me proficient in the ways of contract litigation. He had also been an Army officer and was still a Reserve Army JAG, and knew some things about mentoring, though he didn't call it or consider it that, necessarily. When an issue came in that he wanted me to handle, Mr. O'Boyle would call me in and tell me what needed to be answered. He would say something vaguely contract-y, and mention off-hand that I might check the Federal, Defense or Air Force Acquisition Regulations, or Comptroller Decisions (though he'd say something like, "look in the FAR, DFARS, AFFARS and the Red Book"), and I would go away, trying to figure out first what those acronyms and terms even meant, and then scouring them for what seemed to be un-findable answers to our questions. After a couple of days of fruitless searching, I'd return with some half-formulated answer to his unanswerable questions, and he would nod politely and say, "good-nice work." But then he'd reach behind him, grab a book from a shelf, lay it on his desk, and allow it-magically it appeared-to open to the page with the 100 percent exact answer to the question I'd been pulling my hair out about. At the time, I considered some of this exercise (especially after the second or third iteration) to be a waste of my time, and more importantly (I tried to convince myself), a risk to the litigation, should we waste too much time at the wrong time. It didn't take me long, though, to realize that Mr. O'Boyle knew better than I did what I really needed, and what would make me proficient with the FAR, DFARS,AFFARS and any number of other mysterious tomes: time spent with them, focused on a specific problem, with the motivation to learn it and learn it fast! He would never endanger the cases-he knew too much and was far too much of a pro for that-and he knew that if he simply told me to go read and try to memorize the source documents with no specific goal that it would be far less effective. And, if he simply gave me the answers to all the questions, well, I'd learn even less. I learned contracts law well enough to do my job-and sometimes to do it well. More importantly, I learned that giving my own subordinates the answer, or simply talking them through every one of their problems, would not help them in the end, at least not long term. It also would not ultimately accomplish the mission long term. Instead, it is vital to push our folks, generally, in the right direction, and then challenge them to find the answer on their own. They'll get the job done and done right more often than you probably expect them to, and, in the long run, they will be much better off because of it! That is mentoring, too. But we don't always have to call it that.