Mentoring tips: how mentor and mentee can make the most of it
Written by Peter McLuskie who is a project manager at the Institute of Creative Enterprise
It can change lives and careers, but mentoring requires honesty from both sides – avoid it becoming therapy at all costs.
As a professional development tool, mentoring is an effective means of moving people on and supporting them in their career aspirations. Over the past few years we’ve seen the launch of a number of high profile schemes that promote and offer mentoring services: some act as a broker between potential mentors and aspiring entrepreneurs, such as the Mentors me scheme; others offer resources, for example Nesta’s peer programme.
Mentoring, however, is not a magic wand; it’s not a simple steps-to-success programme. The process needs careful management to ensure everyone involved gets the most out of the opportunity. Here are some tips for doing just that.
Choosing the right person
We are often drawn to people who we most admire or would like to emulate and this can often shape our choice of mentor. If you’re an artist you might be thinking Damien Hirst would be the ideal mentor; if you’re film-maker, you might consider approaching someone like Debbie Isitt. But these are not necessarily the best people to explain how they made it. Being able to reflect on your success is something most people can do easily, but recognising and then explaining the relevant factors behind it is a real skill that not everyone can do well.
I often hear leading creatives explain away their success as a chance meeting with an influential person: a lucky break. It makes for a good story but it’s not encouraging to hear that so much hangs on chance. Good mentors will concentrate on the details that led to that lucky break, like the many years they spent building networks and nurturing relationships.
Be open and flexible
It’s good to go into mentoring with a clear idea of what you want. That said, you should also be prepared to change direction and explore new waters. Your mentor is there to challenge you, to get you to really think through why you want to do something, and whether the course of action you’re taking is the best way to do it. In doing all of this, a good mentor must understand tough love.
Avoid therapy
Mentoring is a relationship with someone prepared to listen to you talk about your hopes and aspirations, but also your concerns and fears. Sounds a bit like therapy. As such, the mentoring relationship can become an opportunity to visit personal challenges on which the mentor might not be qualified to comment.
Make sure the relationship focuses on professional challenges and explore options for overcoming them. Also ensure the meeting ends with clear and positive actions. Importantly, as a mentee, make sure you do your homework, otherwise when you meet again you’ll end up going over the same ground.
When mentoring works, it can changes lives and careers. Done badly, it can be demoralising at best and harmful at worst. My final tip is be honest with each other; if it isn’t working, call it a day.
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