5 Ways To Be A Good Mentor

Learning how to be a good mentor can take time but, with the right approach, we believe that anyone can do it. To that end, we’ve put together this list of our top five mentoring tips to help you get started.

1. Get to Know Your Mentee

It’s no secret that your personality has a huge influence on your behaviour. When it comes to one-to-one communication, understanding someone’s personality is vitally important for meaningfully getting your ideas across.

Getting to know your Mentee can aid development both directly and indirectly. Indirectly, you’ll have a better appreciation for their motivations – what they want and how to inspire them to meet their goals. In a more direct sense, that mutual understanding will help you tailor your advice to them and their learning style.

Does your Mentee learn best through action? If so then you may want to encourage them to take a more independent role, coming to you for advice and guidance only after they’ve had the chance to try something themselves.

Alternatively, your Mentee might have disabilities such as dyslexia or dyscalculia, affecting their ability to process words and numbers respectively. If that’s the case then it’s good to talk about this early to learn how they work with their disabilities and what you can do to help them.

2. Cultivate Trust

There’s no underestimating the value of trust. All healthy relationships, both professional and personal, are built on a foundation of trust.

What can you do to cultivate trust?

The easiest and most effective way to cultivate trust is to always be honest, even if that means confronting hard truths. It can be tempting to minimise the challenges ahead of your Mentee out of a desire not to demoralise them and, while that instinct for tact will serve you well, it’s also important to give them a realistic perspective from the start.

They say actions speak louder than words and, when it comes to establishing trust, this couldn’t be more true. If you give your Mentee the best, most honest advice you can from the start, then the more they put that advice into practice, the more they’ll come to trust you.

3. Communicate Effectively

In many respects knowing how to be a good Mentor is all about knowing how to communicate well with others. You have the information and the experience, while your Mentee is there to put that information and experience into practice.

That being said, it’s important to remember that your role is to guide your Mentee rather than to direct them. As such, the best communicators are the ones who listen and respond. For all the teaching advice you can provide, you’re ultimately here to support them – to answer their questions, provide feedback when necessary, and to help them find/master the job role you’re mentoring them for.

You may even disagree with their approach here and there. While it’s good to voice that disagreement, it’s also important to let them make their decisions once you feel they have all the information they need. Furthermore, allowing them to make mistakes after being cautioned will act as a teachable moment. Put simply, there’s no better lesson than the one you learn first-hand.

4. Be Dependable

As you work with your Mentee, the likelihood is that they’ll be progressing through various new stages of their career. They’ll probably face challenges they’ve never faced before and may even have to take risks that will feel large and daunting to them.

As a Mentor, you can provide a lot simply by being a sturdy and steadfast supporter – someone who’ll believe in them no matter what and keep directing them back towards the best possible path. 

5. Establish Respect for Each Other

Much like trust, respect is a vital part of any effective partnership. As you work with your Mentee you’ll learn a lot about the areas where they struggle and where they need development, but you should also make sure to learn about their strengths. Everyone has strengths and once you understand where your Mentee can excel, you’ll be able to put those strengths to work, helping them develop in the areas where they struggle.

Ultimately, while there are many things you can do to learn how to be a good Mentor, it’s important to remember that your core strengths as a Mentor will always come from your experience. In essence, if you want to be a great Mentor, then it never hurts to be yourself!

Here at CareerNavig8r, we’re always excited to see what new Mentors can bring to the table and how they can help our Mentees to learn and grow. If you think you’re ready to earn money while sharing your knowledge and experience, then sign up today and become a Mentor with CareerNavig8r.com.