The Pillars Of Mentoring Explained

Effective communication in mentoring can go a long way. When working as a Mentor, your ability to share your knowledge and ideas with others will be one of the most definitive skills in your arsenal. That being said, effective communication is often as much about your relationship with your Mentee as it is about the words you use.

Put another way, in order to communicate well, it’s good to have a broad range of mentor competencies, and those are what we’ll be exploring today. We’ll be taking a deep dive into the four foundational pillars that make up mentoring and how you can use them to build better long-term Mentor/Mentee relationships.

Nurturing Trust

If you want your Mentee to follow your advice and successfully progress, then it’s important to nurture a relationship of trust and respect. In most cases this will naturally come over time as your Mentee follows your advice and sees the rewards. But what should you do when those rewards are a little more long-term?

When progress is slow or hard to pinpoint, Mentees can start to lose faith in the process. This is understandable but ultimately can also prove to be a vicious cycle. The less they expect results, the less they will apply your advice and take the important steps required in order to progress in their careers.

That being said, there are ways to mitigate this problem or even avoid it entirely. It all starts with setting expectations. With any task, you should always aim to be clear from the start about how long it will take and what it will achieve. Trust goes both ways after all, so it’s important to trust that once your Mentee knows why you’re advising them to take a certain step, they’ll make the decision that’s right for them.

Speaking of trust, sometimes your Mentee may want to make decisions you don’t agree with. Perhaps they’ll want to delay getting a vital qualification, or else they’ll be aiming for an entry level job when they could potentially aim higher.

In these cases it’s important to remember that, while your advice may be the best path to what they want in the long run, the decision ultimately rests with them. Once you’ve given them all the information you can, the best thing you can do is trust that while you understand the ideal career move, they know what’s right for them, and support them in the decisions they feel they need to make.

Respectfully Giving Guidance

Here at Career Navig8r, there’s a reason we call our Mentors “Navig8rs”. A Navig8r is a person whose core role is to guide people, even through rough or difficult terrain.

As a Navig8r, there will be times when the way is easy and giving advice is as simple as pointing someone towards the correct resources and helping to talk them through good practises. Alternatively, there will also be times when giving guidance may prove challenging, particularly if that guidance involves criticism.

Giving good, constructive criticism can feel very daunting – especially if you’re new to mentoring – but with the right approach it can be easier than it might at first seem.

First and foremost, it’s important to have a really good understanding of your Mentee’s strengths as well as their weaknesses. People are at their most inspired when they feel a sense of progress which is why, when possible, it’s always best to frame your critique as a next step rather than a corrective measure.

Let’s take an example:

Say your Mentee is struggling with interviews. You’ve had a few practises and while their answers are correct and they evidently know their subject, they just haven’t grasped the importance of basic factors like dressing smart, sitting up straight, and appearing attentive at all times.

The way you handle this is all about framing. Always start with the positive with a particular focus on any improvements they’ve made since the last time you practised. From there you move onto potential further improvements they could make, explaining how this next step could really make all the difference.

Expectation

We’ve already touched on guiding your Mentee’s expectations but let’s talk about your expectations as a Mentor.

Every Mentee will be different and that means that, no matter the advice you give them, they’ll probably apply it in their own way. This can be a great insight into their strengths, but it can also prove a challenge when they don’t meet the expectations you have in mind.

This is why it’s crucial to ask the right questions as soon as possible. Find out exactly what they’re expecting from mentoring and how they think the process might look. Discuss your own approach and don’t be afraid to say when you feel their expectations may be unrealistic. The sooner you establish where you’re going and how you’ll get there, the sooner you can begin your journey.

Communication

Last but not least, we return to where it all started. In some ways, communication is the only skill a Mentor really needs, but ultimately, good communication rests on all the other skills we’ve discussed. Good communication means having a well-established understanding between Mentor and Mentee, a respect for one another, and a clear plan for where you’re going and how you’ll get there.

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