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It is National Mentoring Month. Do you have a mentor? Start the year on the right foot with a plan for optimizing the mentor-mentee relationship. Already have a mentor but feel the relationship is stale? Here are five ways a mentee can leverage having a mentor and maintain the relationship’s energy:
1. Do your research.
Understand your mentor. What do they currently do? How did they get to where they are? Look at their LinkedIn profile or their company website. The more you know your mentor, the better you will have a sense of where they might be able to help you with your goals.
Also, understand yourself and what you want. Have a sense of what it is going to take to accomplish what you want to do. You do not need to have a detailed map on how to get to where you want to be, but you need to have a reasonable idea.
The more you understand the direction you want to go and your mentor, the less time you will spend figuring out how the mentor can support you.
2. Be clear about what you want.
If you know what you want, tell your mentor. The more detail you provide, the better. Don’t expect your mentor to help you get exactly what you want. But the more information you share, the more helpful your mentor can be.
For example, Jim tells his mentor Sandra (who works at a different company than where Jim works) that he is interested in exploring opportunities in financial technology. This is still vague. How could he have explained this better? Jim shares with Sandra that he is interested in a project manager role with a financial technology company in Chicago. This will give Sandra a better picture of what it is Jim is looking to do and increase her ability to identify particular people in her network with whom she could connect him.
The more you paint the picture, the more alive the picture will become for the mentor and the greater the chance the picture will become real for the mentee.
3. Ask questions.
Guide the discussion. Know what you want to get out of your conversations. Don’t expect the mentor to do it. The mentor is a resource. Their role is to help when they can. The mentor is there to answer your questions, so it is your responsibility to lead the discussion.
In addition to asking questions about the mentor’s experience, ask questions based on some of the research you have done about a field or on a company, for example. To expand your network in a particular area, ask “Who else should I speak to?
4. Keep the person updated.
The mentor is investing time in you and offering suggestions to consider. Act on the mentor’s recommendations, and let them know how things turn out. Keeping the person updated and showing that you are taking their advice will help the mentor feel valued and, in turn, stay actively engaged in the relationship. Don’t let the relationship fizzle out. Keep channels of communication open. Send a short e-mail every couple of months. (Don’t touch base too often. Your mentor’s role is not to hold your hand at each step.)
5. Ask if you can help the mentor.
With most mentoring relationships, the mentor is older than the mentee. It can be difficult for the younger person to see how they could add value to the mentor. You can add value. And this dynamic – the younger professional mentoring the older professional – is known as reverse mentoring.
As a millennial, for instance, you can share your perspective to help the older professional to better manage their millennial employees or understand their customer base. Everyone can add value. Make the mentoring relationship valuable for both people.
Remember the old adage, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” You don’t need to have a detailed plan going into a mentoring relationship, but you have to have a framework to maximize the opportunity.
How do you leverage mentoring? Share with me your stories and thoughts via Twitter or LinkedIn.
