Making the most of a Mentor

Using the experience of others

Mentoring can be a really positive and rewarding experience for both the Mentor and Mentee. It’s with good reason that mentoring is a popular career-furthering strategy. As a Chapter Lead your focus should be developing your chapter to the best of your ability which should mean being a mentor when necessary but using your network and influence to provide your chapter with other mentors.

Once you have agreed on a mentor how do you get the most out of them?

Situational Advice

If you’re working through a tough situation, ask your mentor if they’ve experienced the same or similar.
Have them walk you through their process and steps they took to overcame it.
Ask the detail – how were they feeling, which were the toughest parts – any other questions that spark discussions.
This will be an ongoing discussion that you can keep coming back to as you make progress on your journey. Don’t forget to also talk about what’s going right, especially since we tend to focus on challenges or problems.

Practice Storytelling

Practice telling your story in a way that adds a personal element, it can often help to make a problem seem less intimidating.
Have your mentor walk you through their journey to where they are now. This can be a high-level overview or in depth for areas of interest. It also offers further insight into the full process that’s involved to move beyond a challenge.
Think about what will be most useful and relevant to your current situation.
Thir stries may well speark new ideas for you or dispel your current fears.

Presentation and self-awareness

Your mentor is the best person to ask for feedback on the way you’re perceived. They will be honest with you and provide you with ongoing advice to help you grow and improve.
This is a great question to ask early on in the relationship before they realy get to know you. That gives you an idea of how you come across on a first impression and should show you how you are precirved to others.
This is also a question that you should frequently revisit, because perception is something that can constantly be worked on and improved. Be open to this feedback and be prepared that it might not always be easy to hear.

improving and developing new skills

Your mentor is the perfect person to help you build and develop skills.
This should be a large component of what you work on with a mentor. It can be more structured where you spend a session working on one particular skill or more of a discussion about how you can learn it elsewhere.
Perfect soft skills to work on would be; Communication, problem-solving, Interpersonal skills Teamwork.
Remember it’s important that you don’t try to cram all of them in at once but spread them with the ability revisit these over multiple sessions so you can apply what you get out of a session and continue to learn.

Unsure who to select as a mentor? Click here to find out more about how to select the right mentor for you and/or your Chapter