What Does It Mean to Be a Decent Mentor?

A mentor is the term of high standing and respect, it’s a well-known name among all aficionados of Greek mythology. That was the man who was in charge of the Odysseus palace and bringing up his son during the Trojan War.

That’s the reason why being a mentor means being someone who blessed with infinite wisdom and shares knowledge in a professional area with a less-experienced colleague.

However, not all of us entirely understand the duties of a mentor, not all of us feel the responsibility of being a mentor.

Not long ago, our team has started preparing the course for newcomers. It was decided that each student is going to get through it together with a mentor. Suddenly, the question of a mentor’s duties and responsibilities became the issue.

So, let’s look into our research and give the answer to it together hand in hand.

Establish the rules.

Mentoring is all about communication. That’s why a mentor has to set up a healthy environment for his mentees. The communication might be done face-to-face, online, or maybe even by chatting on messengers. It should be agreed upfront on why and when mentees are able to bother a mentor because usually the mentoring itself is an extra activity that should not confront the main job.

In certain cases, a mentor can be a friend at the same time, so if the roles are not clear enough it might cause misunderstanding, unnecessary offenses, discrepancies in expectations. In order to avoid that, everything including goals, milestones, a format of cooperation, expectations in both directions, and deadlines should be discussed and agreed with mentees from the very-very beginning.

Share and educate.

A mentor is definitely not a teacher. It’s a person who raises independence, shares experience, and guides throughout the learning process.

Mentor’s experience and skills are being under a question mark over and over again. Always expect the unexpected.

Be proactive. Providing decent books/articles/self-study materials would be useful as well because in the outcome each mentee should be open as the day to self-education and willingness to learn something on their own. That might speed up their career growth several times.

Provide feedback.

Fair and clear feedback is a mentor’s greatest weapon. Nobody says that it’s not difficult, but it proves that the relationship is properly built.

For evaluating skills and readiness, a mentor should listen, ask questions, and check the progress up constantly.

Motivate and inspire.

Obviously, mentees have their own goals that directly affect their involvedness, a final result, and quality of work. For this reason, a mentor should understand how it works under the hood.

Overall motivation can be split into two parts: external and internal. Internal motivation is based on interest, values, self-awareness, and curiosity. On the contrary, external motivation is all about awards, deadlines, compliments, and limitations. To hunt for the balance between the two is one of the main responsibilities of a mentor.

Cheer up and support.

It might sound unbelievable but mentees are human-beings as well. They have feelings and state of mind. Thus, when it’s dark outside and homework is terribly complicated or a term is barely understandable they’ll suffer dearly and cry a lot. In such cases, a mentor should be patient, calm, and ready to cheer up mentees.

Prepare for the new world.

A mentor’s aim is to bring up experienced and self-concerned professionals, so at the end of mentoring it’d be helpful to share some tips and tricks with mentees. Besides, a mentor can even conduct an interview and open up their strengths and weaknesses.

To put it simply, a mentor should do whatever is needed for preparing the pupils for the first flight.

In conclusion, I just want you to spend a couple of hours thinking about reasons for being a mentor because it’s not only about building your teaching skills but also about changing others' lives and helping them to be a better version of themselves.