Get the Most out of Your Mentor

What is Mentoring?

At any stage in our career, from graduation or internship to the highest senior executive levels, working with a mentor can be a powerful way to support and accelerate our personal development.

A mentoring relationship is distinct from the one that we have with our line manager who instructs, explains, motivates and develops our competencies, or a coach who observes then offers suggestions and feedback.

A mentor provides support as a mentee builds the self-awareness, knowledge, skills and experience needed in order to progress towards their goals. 

This process therefore needs to:

• Be driven by the mentee
• Empower the mentee to take charge of their own development and the journey towards their goals
• Stimulate, inspire and guide rather than tell and teach.

Mentoring does not address everyday performance issues that are the responsibility of the mentee’s line manager to resolve.  It generally has a much longer-term (e.g. career goals rather than the current role) and wider (e.g. integration of personal goals with work / career aspirations) focus than immediate performance management.  It is important that the mentor and mentee agree to work in a way that does not undermine the relationship that the mentee has with their line manager or a coach.

Mentoring is also not teaching, counselling or the mentor impressing their experience, knowledge and views on the mentee.

Mentoring provides a source of guidance and perspective as well as a space to try new ideas and explore change.  It also provides access to personal experience and knowledge that is specifically helpful to the mentee’s personal growth that is unlikely to be found in books,  generic information sources or training courses.

As a process, mentoring can be very challenging.

It requires the mentee to:

• Take responsibility for setting the mentoring agenda and driving the process
• Have clear goals and an acceptance that changes need to be made in order to reach them
• Be as honest as they can with their mentor about their goals, challenges and issues (this is why the relationship works best when the mentor has no authority over the mentee in the organisational hierarchy, or is not a personal friend)
• Be fully committed to the process and open to new insights, challenge, feedback and change
• Be proactive: to schedule meetings at agreed times, prepare fully for each session, complete agreed actions, reflect on new learning and put it into practice
• Build self reliance and not depend on the mentor to provide all the answers or a counselling service
• Understand the value that they are looking for the mentor add i.e. why a mentor is will help them achieve their learning goals, rather than a book, manual, training course, coaching or help from their line manager.

It requires the mentor to:

• Listen
• Work from the mentee’s perspective rather than their own
• Empower the mentee and allow them to build self-reliance
• Resist telling the mentee what to do, or impressing their personal experience and views on the mentee and the temptation to ‘fix problems’
• Ask the right questions to help the mentee clarify their thoughts and look for their own answers
• Stimulate insight and support the mentee as they direct their own development and build self-reliance
• Not interfere with or undermine the mentee’s line management (or coach).

Are you ready to work with a mentor?

If you’re looking to push your personal, work or career development, but are not sure if working with a mentor is right for you at this time, answer the following:

1. I have clear long term goals and I need to develop my experience / capabilities / knowledge / skills / thinking in order to reach them
2. The knowledge and understanding I need to move forward is unlikely to come from books or training courses
3. I am committed to my personal growth and am willing to be challenged in order to make changes
4. I can build trust and open up to the right person in order to work with them at a deeper level
5. I am willing to devote whatever time I need to my personal development
6. I find great value in the independent perspective and personal experience of others
7. I want to take responsibility for and drive my own development - I want to find my own answers, rather than be taught or instructed.

If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions, you could derive great benefit from a mentoring relationship.

Managing the mentoring process

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