Category: Mentoring

As part of mentoring you will need to be able to assess characteristics and guide people to improve upon them. An important part of this is being able to articulate these characteristics (both positive and negative).

This set of questions is provided to help you articulate what you as a mentor aspire towards,

and to be used as a guide for people you are starting (or already are) mentoring.

Note:

The following should be completed by the Mentor and the Mentee.

If you mentor on a regulated basis you can have yours pre-written and get the Mentee to complete their own. It is however recommended to do this together for the Mentor and the Mentee to discuss their goals together to create a shared sense of responsibility and mutual respect.

Part 1.1: Aspirational Characteristics

List three people who you look up to.

For each Person:

List three positive characteristics or personality traits you see in them:

List three negative characteristics or personality traits you see in them:

List three people who you know who look up to you or who you are responsible for:

For each Person:

List three positive characteristics or personality traits you see in them:

List three negative characteristics or personality traits you see in them:

For all the people listed above:

List any shared characteristics:

Note:

For the next section there is no set limit on what you should write down or how much detail you should provide. As a guide it is recommended to write one paragraph (three – five lines) per person.

For the three people you look up to write down why you look up to these people:

For the three people who look up to you write down how they could succeed (In their Careers, or Personal Lives).

For any shared characteristics (positive or negative) explain how they could be used positively.

Part 1.2: Existing Characteristics

List three characteristics about yourself that you think are positive:

List three characteristics about yourself that you think are negative:

Write down how you could use each these characteristics better:

Part 2.1: Goal Setting: Identification

For the next section there is no set limit on what you should write down or how much detail you should provide. It is also important to remember that these goals should be discussed between the Mentor and Mentee. 

List three skills you would like to improve:

Part 2.2: Goal Setting: Discussion

With the following questions please be as vague or specific as you would like. The purpose of these questions are to start a conversation around personal aspirations. If is up to you if you do or do not want to give a time frame for these goals.

Part 2.2.1 Discuss with your Mentor/Mentee and:

List three ‘Major’ accomplishments you would like to complete(e.g. Complete a Degree, get a black belt, learn the guitar):

Provide a short term (six months – one year) goal(s) for the Mentorship.

Provide a medium term (one year – three year) goal(s) for the Mentorship.

Provide a long term (one year – three year) goal(s) for the Mentorship.

Part 2.2.2 Discuss with your Mentor/Mentee and:

Discuss how the positive and negative skills in Part 1.2 can be used to reach your goals

Some conversation starters could be:

I can use my computer skills to help me learn the Guitar by….

I can use my experience as a Parent to help me be a team leader at work…

I can use my skills in Marketing to help a local charity fundraiser…

With your Mentor/Mentee discuss and write down at least 5 activities you could do together to reach these goals

What I understand about my own life is that I really enjoy elevating people around me and helping them thrive in their own lives. As I look back on my relationships, my habits and my behaviour I see a consistent set of attributes that track across all of them. 

Today I’m outlining the 5 habits of mentoring and the effects it has when implemented properly.

You know how to listen:

Yes you’ve heard it a thousand times and you’re hearing it again. Listening really is so important though. The difference listening makes when someone knows you are really paying attention is immeasurable. 

Between someone’s body language and their tone of voice it takes less than 10 seconds to know if someone is actually listening to you. You can tell almost instantly:

Are they looking at their phone?

Are they looking at someone else while they’re talking to me?

Are they even facing me?

Are they responding to me?

You notice these things automatically.

So if you want to be a mentor when someone new joins your team close the lid on your laptop when you’re talking to them. It’s small things like this that you and anyone you want to mentor will pick up on. 

And don’t just ask them questions – reverbalise what they’ve told you. Ask them how that made them feel. If you don’t understand them then reword what you think they said and ask them if that is what they meant.

Generic statements are also something that you should try to avoid. If you respond with “Oh yea – absolutely” three time in a row – you are probably not listening.

I’ve had clients use this exact phrase with me many times and I knew instantly that they weren’t listening to anything I was saying. They then looked embarrassed and had to ask the questions three or four times until they paid attention. This is not a good habit and no mentor worth their salt will avoid listening and will try and absorb as much information they can get about the mentee and their interests.

Think of the future, not the immediate.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a visionary – forward thinker or the like –  just that you know how to approach each eventuality as it comes your way.

This is an important aspect of mentoring – and leadership to an extent. You don’t have to know the answer to each question but you know how to find the answer out.

In the context of Mentoring this means you’ve been where the Mentee is right now. You know that once they solve Problem X, Problemss Y and Z will show up. You know that when problems Y and X are answered, problems A and B will appear.

This is where your Skills and Expertise are essential because as a mentor you don’t just tell, you show. You show and guide your Mentee that when you were in their position, you tried to solve the problem one way and that didn’t work so you had to use a different method. 

It is this guiding that you as a mentor, can build trust by exposing your emotions, the way you think and how you’ve learned and developed your experience to give your Mentee a view on how you perceive the world and how best you believe they can progress and achieve their aspirations.

You understand people

This is probably the most abstract of the points I’ll make today and it is quite easily the most expansive.

In terms of understanding people there are Emotions, Comprehension and Personality.

Each of these is equally important and cannot be discarded in a Mentor/Mentee relationship and are broken down below.

Emotions

As a mentor being emotionally intelligent is essential – as a side note emotional intelligence and IQ or general intelligence are not the same thing – and the biggest learning curve you will have as a mentor.

You don’t have to “understand emotions” either, you only need to know their effects. As an example, when someone is angry they are less likely to respond positively or in a courteous manner to questions, indications of shortcomings or imperfections. When someone is feeling proud they may be more willing to explain things about themselves and how they achieved certain objectives.

Obviously these are only examples and this varies from person to person. The point I’m making here is that as a mentor managing your mentees emotions and how they will respond in different circumstances will better position you to teach and mold them into the trajectory they aspire to.

Comprehension

The sister to listening and the brother to teaching. – Just because you said something does not mean that what you said was understood.

In my career – my 9/5 – I’ve personally spent more time teaching and re-explaining technical and interpersonal topics. Just as people have different emotional temperaments, there are different comprehension temperaments.

In the UK schooling system this referred to as ‘Learning Styles’

In the VARK model there are 4

Visual

Auditory

Reading/Writing

Kinesthetic

My personal experience is that most people lean heavily towards two styles. Myself, I’m a visual and Kinesthetic learner – writing this is hard and I’ve rewritten this whole post a few times.

Knowing this, when I have a new mentee onboarded into my company the first thing I try and do is find out how the person I am mentoring learns. I do this so that when I am explaining something I can do so in a way that they understand easily.

Of Course I don’t reinvent the wheel each time. I have a set method for how I approach each style and make small adjustments on a person to person basis but the idea is still the same.

Find out how to person comprehends new information and explain in the way that they will understand best.

Personality

I’ll keep this one short and I’m not going to pretend I’m a psychiatrist – I’ll be doing a larger more in depth post on this later on.

When I say personality I don’t mean ‘I’m bubbly or I’m a straight edge(I mean…I am but that’s not what we’re talking about here)’. What I mean is the big five personality scale (sometimes called the OCEAN Model).

Extraversion: Enthusiasm (spontaneous joy and engagement) and Assertiveness (social dominance, often verbal in nature).

Neuroticism: Withdrawal (the tendency to avoid in the face of uncertainty) and Volatility (the tendency to become irritable and upset when things go wrong).

Agreeableness.: Compassion (the tendency to empathically experience the emotion of others) and Politeness (the proclivity to abide by interpersonal norms).

Conscientiousness: Industriousness (the ability to engage in sustained, goal-directed effort) and Orderliness (the tendency to schedule, organize and systematize).

Openness to Experience.: Openness (creativity and aesthetic sensitivity) and Intellect (interest in abstract concepts and ideas).

As a small disclaimer the above was taken as a paraphrased quote from https://www.understandmyself.com/personality-assessment. it is my personal opinion that the best and simplest explanation of these personality traits can be found at understandmyself.com/personality-assessment. 

While this is not a sponsored post, A: I’m not going to reinvent the wheel. The above is the simplest and best explanation of these personality traits B: I genuinely encourage all my readers to take the understandmyself.com personality test to give you a better understanding of yourself and temperament.

To be able to understand and use your knowledge of these personality traits, just like your emotional intelligence will vastly improve your capabilities to mentor and guide people to their aspirations.

To summarize and wrap this up my top skills a mentor should have are:

Being able to listen and communicate in a way that the mentee understands.

Being able to articulate the future.

To understand people emotions and personality.

Dear Lord, you did it you actually got a job….and like most people you have no idea what you’re doing for the first few days. We’ve all been there – that’s fine – it’s fine not knowing what you’re doing when you first start. What’s not fine is not knowing what you need too one year into your job – that’s annoying – to both you and your colleagues. So how do you get people to tell you things that weren’t covered in the “one week all inclusive training” that covered precisely nothing you actually needed to do your job and wasted a week of your life you’ll never get back?

“The answer might surprise you”

Well, it shouldn’t because you need to get on with your colleagues and hopefully one of them will like you enough to tell you something you don’t know and thus the mentoring process begins.

Now I’m not going to bore you with speech training, or how to study, or how to ‘be magnetic’, I’m not writing for those types of people. I’m writing for the type of person that really wants to know how to get their colleagues to tell them how to do their job.

There are 6 steps in my estimation that cover most aspects, DO three of them, DON’T DO the other three.

Do:

Be teachable, let someone help you.

“But dude, I have a masters in Biochemistry” That’s cool but do you know what the code to enter the building is??? Didn’t think so. In the real world you can’t just rely on your qualifications and education to get you places, as the adage goes “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” and you won’t know a lot of people if no one wants to speak to you. You need to be humble enough to admit you might not know everything and attentive enough to know when someone might be trying to tell you something.

Of all the people I’ve met the ones who succeed are the ones who know when they’re out of their depth and ask for help. It doesn’t matter if you’re a senior sales director or a junior team member at a call center, when you ask for help and you do it politely, concisely and show development after asking questions your colleagues and co-worker will gravitate towards you because the more they see you develop the more they will rely on you, the more someone relies on you the more they trust you. When people trust you, then you look good in their eyes and when you look good in someone’s eyes you might get a promotion, you might get trusted with more important things and who knows you might even make some friends along the way.

Don’t

Do the bear minimum,

This is not  being lazy. Being lazy is deliberately or undeliberately not meeting the basic standards. Say you’re told to make $10,000.00 in sales so you go out and you make exactly $10,000.00 to the cent. Wonderful you reached your target and you won’t get fired, great. If you only ever meet the basic requirements however you won’t get people attention. Now if you don’t want people’s attention fine, but if you want to succeed, if you want people to take notice and invest in you as a person not just as an employee then you need to get your act together and prove you care. Because Jimmy who stayed an hour later every day of the week to make $12,000.00 instead of just the target, he will get attention. He might get a manager to introduce him to a big client, Jimmy might get put on special training to improve his sales pitch or a marketing course. Jimmy might be told about something that the rest of the team hasn’t, just because the manager wants him to know. Maybe just because the person in charge can see that if he invests in Jimmy he will be investing into a colleague and the business and that will improve the everyone involved.

Do:

Remember to learn,

Asking a question is great, asking the same question a thousand times is annoying. This is introspective but don’t assume that just because you’re asking questions you’re A: Learning something or B: Look like you’re trying. Don’t kid yourself, if you’ve spent more than 10 minutes around someone you can tell if they care about what they’re doing. If you can tell if someone cares then other people can too, including your colleagues. This is about your attitude towards new information.

I’ve taught plenty of people but those who take action on what they learn improve the fastest – no if’s no buts. They write down flashcards, they ask more and more complex questions, they take something they learned weeks ago and not just write it down but practice doing it. They don’t just show their desire to be taught but they put the effort in. 

Imagine you go to the gym and you only ever lift 50 pounds and try to lift heavier weights. Guess what, you might be going through the motions but at some point people will notice that you’re not developing, and why should I as a mentor invest in someone who doesn’t want to develop.

Don’t

Refuse to act.

This, this is laziness, THIS is what ruffles my jimmies. People who do this should be…well let’s not get into that.

Imagine this person, they’re the perfect student, they learn, they ask questions, they study, they read text books, they do labs, they take tests, you can see them developing, they love learning about their job to the point that it’s more of a hobby than work, but, but, BUT! They only do what they want to do when they want to do it. They see a problem and they don’t fix it, they see someone asking for help and they don’t help them, they are a fountain of knowledge, information and experience but they refuse to apply it to situations where there is no immediate gain for them because ‘its doesn’t make their stats look good’ or ‘they don’t feel like it”.

People like this are either psychopaths or end up becoming pariahs because no one wants to talk to them. Why should they be invested in, they’re just hoarding knowledge for the sake of it. They aren’t investing in the reciprocal ‘game’ of life. 

There is simply nothing worse, that repels and detracts me from mentoring someone than knowing they have potential and to see them actively refuse to apply what they learn to what they’re doing.

Do:

Be decisive,

It’s great to see people try. When someone genuinely tries they take a risk and succeeds. That is great to watch. It’s really motivating to see as a mentor because when you see someone act on something you told them or you see the evidence of them applying what you told them in real life (it doesn’t always have to be the work place) then that just makes my day. Its a massive green light to whoever took a risk to tell you something that A: This person cares enough to try B: This person actually learned something new (which is great by itself) C: Maybe just they’ll learn and apply something else I can teach them. 

And once that ball is rolling then…you have a successful mentor/mentee relationship and in my experience that’s how you accelerate someone’s position from newbie at work to “essential team member“.

Don’t

Make assumptions: 

I get it, I really do and I still do it because sometimes you have to take risks but if it’s in your power to know something, or learn something, or figure something out, but instead just make an assumption – you’re an idiot.

“Yes”, I hear you say, “But I know what I’m doing”

That doesn’t mean you’re right. When I was a kid my Dad always told me, “be careful you don’t know what you’re doing”, can you guess what I said in response “I know what I’m doing Dad”.

It took me about a decade of things but I eventually figured it out, just because you know what you’re doing does not mean you know or understand the consequences of what you’re doing. That’s the crux of this point if you understand the full ramifications of what you’re doing by all means go ahead but if you don’t you better be prepared for anything.

This is why people like those who take risks in business. People who take calculated risks are wonderful people. People who just jump to conclusions, by making assumptions, make life very difficult.

TL DR; If you make assumptions you don’t know what you’re talking about.

To wrap up all the points here cover having the right intentions. If you’re looking for a mentor take some notes and I’m sure you’ll find one. If you are a mentor or in a position to mentor someone these are the things I personally look for from day one of a new hire.

What Is mentoring: The first thing I will start with is a definition for mentoring:

 “An agreement between two people where the mentor guides, directs and teaches the mentee about aspects of their life”.

This sets the tone for what a mentor should be – you’re someone who is at least competent if not an expert in your main field who is willing to invest your time, and energy into the person (or people) you are mentoring to further and improve their lives. As a mentor you are setting the tone, expectation and trend that whoever you are mentoring should follow with a defined target and a path to get there.

With mentoring you are investing into a relationship. You’re teaching them, more than just the hows and the whys. You’re creating a relationship where you can contextualise the goals, give direction to the targets and refine the processes to improve your mentees practical skills such as programming or public speaking and also the more soft skills such as emotional intelligence and problem solving.

To pull out the main roles that I’ve hinted at a mentor (typically) encompases multiples or all of the following more traditional roles:

A Teacher –  Focusing on technical Skills.

A Therapist – Focusing on the Psychological needs.

A Leader – Giving direction towards goals.

A Friend – Giving rise to respect and emotions.

In all of these roles you’ll be addressing needs in one or many aspects of a person’s life so it’s useful to have a comfortable level of competence in assessing technical, psychological and social/economic needs as well as mapping out goals and aspirations.

In order to address these aspects there is another main characteristic and that is the influence of time on the relationship. Provided both mentor and mentee remain committed, mentorships can last last years and decades.

This is because a consultant or a teacher can provide on the spot advice on how to do something but a mentor can help the mentee by not necessarily showing the fastest way to solve a problem but the ‘best’ way to solve the problem which might take into account their other relationships. This can be contextualised by a mentor advising a mentee to evaluate the short term gains vs the long term consequences of their decisions.

What Mentoring isn’t:

But isn’t mentoring just leadership

Yes and no. I argue that all mentors will be good leaders but not all leaders will be good mentors. Most leadership ‘how to’ guides will usually conclude that usually come down to the following: 

(A leader is) Not a boss.

Provides the Vision / Gives Direction.

Respected.

Honest, Humble, Hardworking (see other buzzwords etc).

So what makes mentoring so different to leadership then? 

Intent and expected results.

That’s it. That’s the main difference I’ve come to find between leaders and mentors. A mentor is willing to sacrifice the time, energy and resources into the person they are mentoring with intents and expected results that do not benefit the mentor in any way.

So let’s dig a bit deeper into those leadership definitions and some other things that separate Mentorship from Leadership.

Not a Boss.

So you might want to stone me for this – but it’s the truth. A leader does not necessarily have to be the most competent person in the team to lead whereas a Mentor as a requirement has to be more competent in more than one area of the person they are mentoring. This doesn’t necessarily mean that what they say has to be acted on but provided the mentee agrees that the mentor is better than they are…its highly encouraged.

This is because a large part of mentoring is going to be doing some practical teaching around how to do something in the best way possible. You’ve heard the adages “Those who can’t teach” and “If you can’t explain it simply you don’t know it well enough”. These two statements apply here. A mentor has to be competent enough to practically perform the task at hand while also being able to simply explain what they are doing.

This also means that if you want to be a mentor you need to be good at what you do and if you’re looking for a mentor you need to find someone who knows what they’re doing well enough to explain it to you in words you understand.

Provides Vision/Gives Direction.

Remember that word I used earlier, intent, this what I was referring to. A leader will give direction into the goals that the leader or team has, and that is fair enough – just look at any political office and you’ll be able to see that we need more competent leaders. What I’m referring to here though is when you are a mentor you’re not training someone in a direction that you have chosen, or you’re not leading someone down a path of your own creation.

As a mentor you should be looking at the skills, personality type and aspirations of who you are mentoring and providing suggestions and solutions on how you can help them reach their goals using methods that the mentee is most suited for.

Respected.

I’ll state point blank that the backbone of mentoring requires a mutual respect between the mentor and the mentee (see my definition on ‘Mentoring’). This respect is not required for Leaders and bosses (Though it certainly does help). I’d challenge you to think of anyone you know who you would consider taking as a mentor or mentee and if you respect them.

This respect can start off purely technical but over time, with both mentor and mentee investing, should grow into a relationship where the mentor can share their failures and what they learnt from them as and the mentee can share their genuine aspiration knowing that they will be understood and guided in the direction that they want to go: and as will all personal things they are generally not shared with untrusted and unrespected people.

Summary.

Assuming you’ve just scrolled straight to the bottom the bullet points are:

Mentoring covers Technical, Psychological and Socio-economic aspirations.

Mentoring is about a long term relationship.

Mentoring is not just Leadership.

Mentoring in not about the mentors goals.

Respect is essential in a mentor/mentee relationship.

I’d encourage you to read some of our other posts around mentorship and get in contact if you have any questions or any suggestions for topics to cover in the future.

Note that this was originally written in 2020

At the start of everyone’s career most if not all go to university to learn their craft. In today’s era everyone wants the latest and greatest at the tip of their fingertips. Unfortunately this has led to quick and easy training platforms which either focus on ‘soft skills’, ignoring their purpose, or practical training which ignores the humanity of the people they are training.

Most businesses say they want approachable, collaborative ‘people focused’ teams but never actually invest into the people – only their short term benefit before they are discarded. This is something that works in the short term but leaves employees feeling like they don’t have a say and that their peers and managers don’t care.

The good news is there is a better way to handle career progression – Mentoring.

Mentoring takes investment and leaves a foundation of trust for career spanning relationships, and that makes everyone’s world just a little more real.

Most people are trained, some people are tutored but very few ever find a real mentor.

So what actually is mentoring? Is it an apprenticeship, is it long term training or is it leadership rebranded?

My definition of a mentorship is this: An agreement between two people  where the mentor guides, directs and teaches the mentee about any aspect of their life without the expectation of recompense .