Relating to Your Mentor

Seek criticism. When you goof up, ask your mentor where you went wrong. Listen carefully, because a good mentor doesn’t lecture you at length. A good mentor knows how to hit the nail on the head.

Share your drafts. Allow enough time when writing a report or a proposal to run the draft past your mentor. Even if your mentor only picks up on one or two subtleties -- a stronger or gentler word choice, something better left out, a suggestion to drop in a current buzz word or key phrase -- it could improve your written message and enhance your reputation as the message moves upward.

Offer assistance. Volunteer to assist when your mentor takes the lead on a project. This allows the mentor to demonstrate to you his or her working style, and it gains you critiques of your work that are integral to the regular functioning of the organization.

Offer critiques. At some point when you have gained confidence, take the lead and offer your critique of a draft report written by your mentor. Demonstrate back to the mentor that you have learned from the mentor’s critiques of your work. Done right, it will be seen as constructive criticism -- more importantly, as proof that you are a team player who cares enough to make the work of the team the best it can be.

Summarize your learning. When a task or a phase is completed, make a short statement to your mentor in appreciation of the value you have received. Not a gushy stream of “Oh, you’re just wonderful; I don’t know what I would have done without your help,” but rather a concise appraisal of where you stand: “I learned a lot from this project, and I really appreciate what you showed me about how to analyze our client’s needs in this kind of situation.”

Sense your relationship. Develop a sense of your mentor’s comfort level with your relationship. Don’t push familiarity. On the other hand, pick up on the mentor’s indications that your help and suggestions increasingly are important. A good mentor doesn’t expect thanks or praise (or gifts) from you in return for the favor of tutelage. A good mentor is rewarded when you do well.

How to Be a Mentor

Obviously, we can just flip the statements in the previous section to come up with a checklist for the mentor.

Know your organization. Help the person you are mentoring to answer those big questions. Don’t just draw on your own experiences, which may be sourced in past realities. Have a keen appreciation of how your organization is operating right now so that you can tailor your suggestions to where things stand to be in the immediate future that is so important to the person you are helping.

Take your ego out of it. What got you where you are is an interesting narrative...to you. It may have little or no relevance to the newcomer. An occasional war story can be instructive. A series of them is not what a newcomer needs to hear.

Be a good listener. You got where you are by figuring things out. So figure out what the newcomer needs to focus upon. The newcomer won’t succeed by emulating you. The newcomer will succeed by figuring out what lessons from your experience can be applied to the current situation. Provide data rather than prescriptions. The newcomer will use those data in ways that may be different from the ways that worked for you.

Don’t expect compliance. The newcomer can’t replicate your success. He or she can learn some things from your success, but in a fast-moving world what worked for you may not be achievable a second time. Smart people learn how to improvise and modify.

Don’t possess. Stand back from the person you are mentoring. To stage-manage the actions of another could be disastrous for both of you.

Help the newcomer to recover from failure. You are never more needed as a mentor than when the person you are helping blows it completely. Take a “Lessons Learned” approach. Okay, your project crashed and burned, and you are not up for a merit raise. What did you learn from it? How will that help you to do better next time? What’s the next opportunity you have to show that it was only a glitch? Show me that you’re not letting it affect what you have to do next. Have a good cry. Have a drink. Move on.

Keep it businesslike. A mentor who becomes too much of a buddy blurs the line. You can do more for a person when you’re not socializing regularly, when you’re not building emotional attachments that have nothing to do with the need of the newcomer to learn the way through an organization. Sure, there will be moments when you party and get goofy together. But when you lose your objectivity, you lose your ability to mentor.

Celebrate

In quality management, benchmarking means measuring whether you have achieved what you hope to achieve compared with others who are successful. Inherent in the process is the necessity of celebrating when benchmarks have been achieved.

High fives are good. Lunch is good. Lunch at a place where you usually don’t have lunch is especially good. A personal note written on stationery instead of an e-mail is special. Praising a person at a meeting of the entire department is wonderful. Putting a person up for an award is awesome. Don’t let a benchmark event pass without celebration, if you are a kind and responsible mentor.