1. Always come prepared
This is crucial as it reflects your dedication to the mentoring relationship and your personal development. Good mentees will have really considered why they want mentor, and have an idea of what they're hoping to gain from it. This means they start the relationship on the right foot, and can keep track of their progress.
Put some time into preparing this before your first session so you're ready to discuss it articulately when you meet. Present your goals and be clear about what areas you need help with. This is also a good opportunity to bring up any expectations you have about the mentoring process and how it will work. Having this prepared will leave a great first impression, and mean you really hit the ground running.
Being prepared also applies to all future mentoring sessions. Prior to meeting, ensure you've put some time aside to prepare discussion topics or questions. This not only shows your mentor that you're dedicated to making progress, but also ensures the sessions are as productive as possible.
? If you want to be a really good mentee, prepare an agenda. Come up with 2-3 discussion topics or questions that you would like to cover in your mentoring session before you meet. Email this to your mentor in advance to help guide the meeting and give them an expectation of what you'd like to focus on.
2. Ask insightful questions
Good mentees are curious. While it's tempting to talk about yourself and your challenges for most of the session, remember that you can learn a lot from hearing about others' experiences. Mastering the art of asking good questions is also a great leadership quality, and so your mentoring sessions are a perfect time to start honing your communication skills.
Another way you can prepare for a good mentoring session is to think of some insightful questions beforehand. Here are a few examples of questions that we recommend to get you started:
- "What is the most important leadership lesson you’ve learned, and how is it valuable?"
- "Can you tell me about a time when you had a difficult boss? How did you handle it?
- "How did you build the skills of speaking so engagingly in front of others?"
- "How can I become better at managing people who do not report to me?"
- "How did you learn to embrace failure?"
Naturally as you're chatting to your mentor, these questions may come up. But it's always handy to have a batch of questions to hand that could lead to some insightful conversations and life lessons.
3. Create an action plan (and act on it)
Be proactive! Make sure you are taking notes at every mentoring session so you can create an action plan to hit your goals. Your mentor may help with this, but you should be the one driving it.
Write yourself a list of actions before the end of every session. By running these actions by your mentor, you're inviting them to hold you accountable (which means they're more likely to get done).
This not only helps provide focus for the time in between sessions, but also ensures you don't forget what you said you'd do. With mentoring being a voluntary relationship alongside our day to day jobs, it can often be de-prioritised and lose momentum. If you've told your mentor you're going to do something, and then you turn up to the next session and haven't thought about it since the month before, you're going to make little progress and the relationship could even drop off. Keeping an action list helps you stay on track and moving in the right direction.