The goal of a mentoring relationship is to help your mentee. There are behaviors that some mentors may believe are helpful but are actually counterproductive and may harm a good mentoring relationship.
We've already discussed the impact that a mentor may have on the self-confidence and self-image of their mentee. The impact can indeed be huge.
Because of this impact, criticizing your mentee must be avoided. This is not to say that you, as a mentor, cannot provide difficult feedback to your mentee; quite the contrary. The difference is that criticism is at its core evaluative and judgmental. Typically, the outcome of criticism is not to encourage positive change, but rather to create fear and hesitation in the recipient of the criticism.
To avoid criticizing, take the time to think through how you will provide a mentee with feedback. Use a dialogue approach, asking discovery questions (see Mentoring Skills, above), to allow your mentee an opportunity to identify how they might do better.
While the breadth of your experience may make you a valuable or knowledgeable mentor, a mentor relationship is not an opportunity for you to prove to your mentee how much you have learned through your experiences. Instead, it is an opportunity for you to provide a safe place for your mentee to learn from their experiences. Giving advice takes away this opportunity. It produces little or no growth or learning in your mentee. You might have an opinion or information which may be appropriate to share, but beware when you begin a statement with “What I think you should do …” or “If I were you, …” By giving advice, you're cheating your mentee out of the essential experiences of a mentoring relationship and out of professional growth.
There may be times when it would just be easier to tell your mentee what to do; after all, the appropriate action may seem obvious. It may also seem easier sometimes to just do something on behalf of your mentee. When this urge strikes you, remember this old proverb: "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach him to fish and he eats for life."
Resist the urge to rescue. While it may make you feel great, it doesn't teach mentees anything, except that they may always be dependent on someone else in difficult times.
Next Section: Developing a Partnership and Dealing with Special IssuesMentoring Topics
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