How to be a meaningful mentor

Timestamps

00:00:02: Introduction

00:00:40: Busting mentoring myths

00:02:18: Self-doubt for mentoring

00:03:12: Multi-mentors

00:03:40: Types of mentoring

00:05:05: Clay Christensen

00:05:29: Mentoring basics:

00:05:49: … confidentiality

00:06:44: … agree the ways of working

00:07:39: Ideas for action

00:07:51: … get to know your mentee

00:09:25: … 4 Hs

00:11:45: Mentor versus coach

00:12:35: Advice, ideas and perspective

00:15:26: Share your contacts

00:17:18: Mentor versus Sponsor

00:18:33: Playback what you've heard

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Helen Tupper: Hi, I'm Helen Tupper.

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah Ellis.

Helen Tupper: You're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast where each week, we come together to talk about a different topic and discuss some practical ideas and actions to help you find your way through your Squiggly world of work. This week, we're going to be talking about how to be a meaningful mentor.

Sarah Ellis: We've covered before how to find a mentor, but actually there's not very much out there generally, in terms of research or things that you can read, watch or listen to, on how to be a really great mentor, how to do mentoring that makes a really positive difference; so a good topic to talk about I think, and perhaps one that we'll come back to in the future.

Just some mentoring myths that we thought might be useful to start with. The first thing we wanted to say is that everyone can be a mentor. Often we mistake mentors for having to be somebody who is more senior. Perhaps we think, "I couldn't be a mentor, because what would someone learn from me?" It's starting with the assumption that we've got something to learn from everyone. Everyone has something that they're great at, everyone has something to offer and so I'm really confident, certainly that everyone who listens to this podcast, you can all be amazing mentors. This is not about, "This is not for me, because I'm not at a certain level yet".

The other thing that's really interesting related to that is that when you do read about mentoring, there is much more demand than there is supply. There are more people who want mentors than there are people mentoring. It's one of those things that comes up quite a lot. People say, "I'd really like a mentor I think that'd be really helpful". Don't be afraid to volunteer, to say, "That's something that I'm really happy to do if anyone would benefit from that".

As a mentor, your job is not to know all of the answers. I do wonder whether you might be a bit fearful of this, you might think, "I would like be a mentor; that sounds like something I'd like to do. I can see how that'd be helpful and I'm really happy to volunteer, but what happens if someone asks me a question and I don't know the answer?" Or, "I haven't got experience in that area". Your job here is not to be the go-to guru on everything; it's to offer some advice, to ask them good questions, to listen to someone; but don't stop yourself through fear, one of those confidence gremlins coming to the surface like a fear of not being smart enough or not knowing enough. No one does.

Helen Tupper: One of my first times that I can consciously remember mentoring, I used to work for Capital One and that was probably about 13, 14 years ago and I volunteered to be a mentor for the Prince's Trust. It was something that I really wanted to do, and it was something that I could do, on top of my day job. I remember having so much self-doubt; so I was mentoring these people that had had some funding with the Prince's Trust to start their business and I've never started a business and I was, "Can I help? I really want to help them, but can I help them?"

I had quite a lot of self-doubt, but I did it quite a few times during the time that I was supporting the Prince's Trust in that way; and what I realised was, sometimes it was just listening or a few ideas or a bit of perspective. It was very rarely the answer, I never had the answer, I wasn't doing what they were doing; but also you can be a mentor, you don't have to have done exactly what someone wants to do. Being a helpful mentor can mean lots of different things, but don't let a lack of belief hold you back from being a great mentor.

Sarah Ellis: Also, this brings on to a couple of other points about mentoring that we think are really important. Firstly, you might be one of many mentors that somebody has, and so if you think about the people that Helen just described starting their own business, of course it makes sense for those people to have other people who have started their own business, but somebody like Helen, at that time, would have offered a different point of view and a different perspective.

You can mentor one-to-one; I think it's a really good thing to always encourage your mentees to have more than one mentor. You can also do things like group mentoring and peer-to-peer mentoring. As a group of people, you might get together and think, "We're all going to mentor each other. We're all going to help each other", and that can also be a way of getting confident and comfortable with the idea of mentoring, perhaps, if it is new to you.

Then the last thing, and I think some people might disagree with me on this, or certainly one of the TED talks that I watched did disagree with me on this; I think you can be a really meaningful mentor over the short term, perhaps even as short as one conversation, because I have had some really meaningful mentoring conversations that have been a one-hit wonder, I suppose is a good way to describe it.

Helen Tupper: I totally agree; those conversations where that advice is the right advice at the right time and it just helps you with whatever you're going through at that moment. Yeah, I'm with you, I disagree with someone who would say that one conversation is not a meaningful mentoring conversation.

Sarah Ellis: At the other end of the spectrum, I've also got some very meaningful mentors who have been mentors for a long time, so I can see that mix. But again, I don't think you should limit yourself as a mentor to thinking, "I couldn't do this because I can't commit to a monthly conversation of 90 minutes".

Helen Tupper: Or a lifelong commitment.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and that can feel really daunting and really overwhelming in terms of the expectations that you place on yourself. I think we've got to let that go and just go, "Well, maybe I could just be helpful for half an hour", and that's really meaningful.

I really love this quote from Clay Christensen who was a professor at Harvard, someone whose work I've read a lot about, an amazing professor who did lots of work on disruptive innovation and did lots of incredible work on mentoring and he said, "The only metrics that will truly matter to my life are the individuals whom I've been able to help, one-by-one, to become better people".

Helen Tupper: So, we've got some ideas for actions to help you to be maybe an even more meaningful mentor than you might be already, but there are a few basics, almost like some sort of foundations, that we think are just quite useful as you're starting out maybe on a new mentoring relationship with someone, just to think about, "Have I got these fundamentals in place".

The first one is about making sure that the mentee knows that the conversations will be confidential; and if for whatever reason they're not, also let them know that. Sarah and I were chatting, and you said that from your own personal experience, this was quite an important basic to have in place?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I think I have been on the receiving end of thinking conversations are confidential when they haven't been and it's probably something that I would have assumed and also that's an assumption that I didn't say out loud. But I think as a mentor, let your mentees know; are they in a very safe environment, which is just fully about them; and really the conversation is just the conversation that happens today, that's never going to go any further. But sometimes, there might be mentoring conversations where it's not quite as confidential, especially if you're doing it as a group or there's a few of you, especially if they're in your organisation.

Just be super clear either way, because if it's not confidential I think it's really important to let that mentee know.

Helen Tupper: The other thing that's important in terms of these basics is agree the ways of working between you and the mentee, so is this a one-off 30-minute chat? Are you going to meet a couple of times over the next few months? I think having that clarity and a shared sense of expectation from the outset can really mean that you get the most from the conversations that you're having.

The third thing around basics is really for you to think about, how you are going to be most helpful. For example, if it's useful for you as a mentor to know what the mentee wants to talk about in advance of the conversation, then let them know that. Say to them, "One of the ways that I'll be able to help you most is if 48 hours before we talk, if you could just drop me a voice message or a quick email, with some of the topics that you want to talk about". Then ask them that, "This is your time", and you want to make sure it's as impactful as possible and if there are certain things that the mentee could do that could enable that, then just be clear with them from the outset.

Sarah Ellis: You've got the basics in place; let's assume we've all done that brilliantly, though often they're things that are really easy to forget, I think.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, very true.

Sarah Ellis: We're now going to talk about more specific ideas for action that we think will just help you to be a really brilliant mentor.

The first one is about how you get to know your mentee. Sometimes you might mentor somebody because you already know them really well, but often you don't; perhaps you've been connected through two different people; perhaps you're even part of a mentoring scheme or programme where you're almost speed-matched or speed-dated together. So how can you understand somebody quite quickly, because the better you understand someone, the more you can help them and work out how you can be most helpful?

Particularly, I think if you imagine how a mentee feels when they are coming to that first conversation together. We can all imagine this because we've all been hopefully mentors and mentees, it can be really nerve wracking, you're not sure where to start and perhaps some of these getting-to-know-you questions are even things that you could suggest that your mentee has a think about before the first conversation.

Back to Helen's point about, you might ask somebody, "Think about before our conversation, what's most useful for us to talk about today", but you could also, if you're having more of a speculative, explorative, chemistry conversation, questions like, "What are you most proud of? What's the biggest challenge you've overcome? Who's really supported you in your career so far and how?"; those quite broad questions where people can pick and choose what they want to share and what they feel comfortable sharing.

Certainly, if this was me as a mentee, I'd always appreciate these questions beforehand, because I'd like to think about things. Other people, perhaps on the spot, would be great at answering these; but some of those getting-to-know-you questions can be really helpful.

The other thing that I've come across recently is this 4-H structure that is really helpful to introduce yourself and I really like the idea of using these 4 Hs together. If you knew about this again beforehand, "'m somebody who would always want to know beforehand that you were going to cover these 4 Hs, you come prepared to your first conversation going, "Okay we're going to spend ten minutes each sharing our 4 Hs", and I'd always say I think probably the mentee should go first here. It's about them, it's not about you, but there's something nice about reciprocating and doing the same thing in that conversation.

Those 4 Hs are history, heartbreaks, hopes and heroes. The idea, which is stolen from American Football/Baseball, they probably used it in a few different sports teams, they actually got all of the players to go round and do this, but you do it quite quickly, only five, six minutes and obviously you can edit for yourself. You can choose whether to share a big story on history, one sentence on heartbreaks, three hopes in bullet points and one hero, but it's quite a revealing way of getting to just

understand people as well outside of their jobs, outside of their work. More about who they are, I guess, than what they do; I really like it.

Helen Tupper: Just to be clear heartbreaks is not like personal situations where my heart's been broken right. It's those moments in my career where it might not have gone the way I wanted to.

Sarah Ellis: I guess, in what we're describing today, probably feels more appropriate. I think actually, in the way that it was used for this American Football team, it did mean heartbreaks.

Helen Tupper: Did it really?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah. I think that was very much about, "We really want to bond as a team and really get to know people", but I think also this is the point about, you choose what you want to share. That's why I like it, because I think as a heartbreak you could choose to share something a bit more personal or you could choose to share, "Actually, it was a bit heartbreaking when a project that I'd been working on for a year, suddenly got cancelled".

Helen Tupper: Yes, that's what I'm thinking.

Sarah Ellis: That's quite a different thing. You can let people interpret it how they like to and how they feel most comfortable with, I guess.

Helen Tupper: Very true. When you say them, I'm, "What would my history be? What's my heartbreak?"

Sarah Ellis: I know they're good questions.

Helen Tupper: I really like those questions and when someone says them, your brain wanders. It's probably not productive for me doing my next point on the podcast, but it's a very interesting question.

The next point in the context of being a meaningful mentor is to really make sure you are prioritising the way that you offer advice over giving answers. It is likely that you've been approached to be a mentor because your mentee feels like they've got something in common with you and definitely, that they've got something that they can learn from you. Maybe you've had a shared experience, or you know their context in a way that's helpful to them.

As a mentor, it's not like being a coach. So a coach's job is to unlock someone's thinking, so ask lots of open questions; whereas as a mentor you are sharing things that you know. There is a little bit more telling in that discussion than there would be if you are in a coaching relationship with that person. Really what we want you to share is advice and ideas and perspective.

You might say, "When I was in this situation, these are some of the things that have helped me; these are some of the things that I learned; these are some of the challenges that I had". That would be different to saying, "I've been where you have been, and this is what I think you should do. Speak to this person, apply for this role, go and do this course".

One of them is helping someone to think and giving them options that they could take away, reflect on and take ownership for; and the other approach is assuming that exactly what worked for you is going to work for that person and you're going to limit their opportunity to learn and take ownership when you take a more answers-based approach.

Sarah Ellis: Just listening to you there, I wonder whether when we've got a real coaching approach, we're thinking about questioning and listening; whereas where I think maybe when we're in mentoring mode, it's about sharing and listening. It's distinct and obviously, you still want to ask good questions as a mentor and as a coach, you still might do some sharing, but I think it is a slightly different type of relationship.

I think you are a mentor because people do want to hear your point of view and your perspective, but offering people a range of advice options, ideas and just going, "Which one of those feels like it might work for you", or, "Do any of those feel particularly interesting? Which one of the things that I've just talked about would it be helpful for me to talk to you about more, or describe more?" and letting your mentee lead that conversation in a way that works for them.

When I've done a bad job of mentoring, you're so keen to help that when you see a solution, you get quite quickly into, "If you do X, Y and Z…", I almost get people into like action planning and it becomes too task-oriented, those conversations. Whereas you want people to go, "Okay that's interesting". I'm almost serving you a platter of options here, and it's like, "You choose, you take those things that are helpful".

You also want to encourage people to go, "Okay that just doesn't feel right for me", and that's okay and, "That doesn't feel like that's not something I would try out". Just because it works for you, doesn't mean it will work for someone else and I think you've also got to be careful that you're not going, "There is a formula here. There's a formula for success and I can guarantee this is going to work", because that's never the case.

Helen Tupper: I remember some mentor relationships that I've had where they've been really prescriptive. I think they have badged it as advice, but it's felt more like a prescriptive solution for what I should do. Actually, it's made me think, "No, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do it like that", and it's actually like turned me off from the relationship because I've thought, "I don't quite know how to respond to that; that's just not a thing that I would do, but they haven't given me the ability to respond like that". They've just been so prescriptive in, "Helen, this is what you should do. I've been in that situation, take this approach". It's like, "Okay, maybe this isn't the right mentor match for me".

Sarah Ellis: Our next idea for action, I think, is as much about what you do outside of the conversation as to what you do in the conversation and it's about connecting the dots. So I think, as a mentor, one of the things that you can really offer to people that you're mentoring is connecting with other people, places, opportunities that could be interesting for them. That can be as simple as a one-line email that just says, "I saw this and thought of you; I thought this could be relevant", because you've heard someone talk about their challenge.

Let's say they want more gravitas in meetings, you see a great article or a podcast or something about gravitas and you just do that one step, you take that one action to send it their way and that shows that you're thinking about them; or being generous very specifically with your contacts, so that point about, "We don't really want people to have only one mentor". You might listen to someone and think, "I can give you a point of view on this challenge, but actually I think there's probably someone who'd be even more useful", or who could just provide a different point of view, especially if you feel confident that that person would probably give a bit of their time or share a bit of their advice. Again, making those introductions and those connections is also how you can be really valuable.

So I think, yes, think about how you can have a really good quality mentoring conversation, but also think about how you can connect the dots outside of the conversation. When people have done that for me, in my career, it has been so helpful. It's almost that thing of, those people can spot opportunities that you can't spot and see for yourself. They just know people that you would never get the chance to talk to otherwise. I've always been so grateful and so appreciative of that. Some of those things lead to really significant points in your career, so if you can do that for people, it's just so valuable.

Helen Tupper: I think as well, in listening to you talk about those things, that's almost like when a mentor can also become a bit of a sponsor.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, you're right.

Helen Tupper: Someone who can spot the opportunities and connect them. Because sponsoring and getting a sponsor is a specific thing in itself, we also have an episode coming up on sponsorship, so that might be -- it's not out yet everybody and I'm not intentionally teasing you, but as part of our Ask the Expert series, we spoke to Sylvia Ann Hewlett. She actually has a book about, don't get a mentor, get a sponsor, or something; but she talks about why it's good to have both. That could be a good listen after this one; it's out in a few weeks, but wait for that one and it might help you as well.

Sarah Ellis: I feel like you're doing a proper Netflix teaser!

Helen Tupper: But not intentional.

Sarah Ellis: I know it's not intentional, because we are never intentional. We're never smart or sophisticated enough to be intentional, but I do like the fact you at least gave it a go!

Helen Tupper: It's embarrassing.

Sarah Ellis: "Coming soon".

Helen Tupper: "Coming soon to the Squiggly Careers Podcast"! It's only because our Ask the Expert interviews, we have to really plan those so we can get people's time; whereas normally Sarah and I are like, "What is on people's mind right now and we can talk about it next week?". We are responsive, but we have to be very planned with our guest speakers. Anyway, it's coming up.

Another thing that's really important, so after you've gone and connected some dots, in the conversation itself one of the things that can happen when someone comes to a mentor conversation is that conversation can go in lots of different directions. There'd be lots going on, lots of thinking and maybe as you share your wisdom that might take the conversation in different directions.

One of the things that you could be really helpful as a mentor is bringing a sense of clarity to that conversation. Giving someone the space to follow their own thought processes and ask you whatever questions they want to, but also playback what you've heard. "One of the things that I've heard you saying, a lot of our conversation has focused on promotions", and then you might say, "What else have you thought about? Were you aware of how much you're talking about that?"

Just being that almost like a mirror to the conversation and summarising, "Okay, so these are three things that you have talked about; do you need any help with any of that after the conversation?" Just being that person who can bring the clarity to the conversation is really helpful. That's why when Sarah talked earlier about mentors don't need to have all the answers, they absolutely don't because sometimes the questions that you ask, that conversational mirroring or summarising that you do, can have a huge amount of value as well. It's not about having the answers; it's just about playing that role in the conversation for somebody.

Sarah Ellis: I don't think you want people to leave a mentoring conversation feeling vague or uncertain. I always think it's a good question to ask yourself, "How do you want people to feel after a mentoring conversation with you?" I think you want people to feel energised and optimistic and perhaps that they've either got a bit unstuck or maybe if their career's feeling a bit knotty right now, you've helped undo some of those knots.

You don't have to solve everything and clearly not in one conversation, but I think just by really listening hard and the way that I do this, if it helps as a really practical thing is, as I'm listening to somebody, I always do a bit of mind map of things that I'm hearing, themes that I'm hearing and then I star each time I hear someone say the same thing.

Maybe I keep hearing something about confidence and not having enough confidence in meetings, I'll just star it again and star it again, so that when I'm summarising, because it's a hard skill that takes practice, I've got a visual cue and reminder of going, "If I look at the three stars on my mind map, we've got a challenge around confidence, we've talked about this, we've talked about that". Also, if there's something that someone's mentioned that they then skip over but I think might be important, that's also the point I bring that up.

I actually did a mentoring conversation with someone recently where halfway through, they were talking about career change and career transition, but then they mentioned being an introvert and how they felt that that held them back and it had got in their way, but they moved on really quickly. I just made a note because I thought, "That's probably not the focus for today, but that does feel like something interesting and I don't want to ignore that". Again, I just asked at the end of the conversation, "I did hear you mention being an introvert feels like a challenge for you; I'm really happy

to come back to that in a future conversation if that would be useful for you". Again, you're asking that other person to go, "You decide", but that was something you heard. I think summarising is so valuable.

Our next idea for action is about reverse mentoring. Mentors will say, "I learn as much from my mentee as I think they do from me", or perhaps, "I feel like I learn even more from my mentee", and we should all remember that which is why we should all feel confident about asking for mentors. But I think here's always the opportunity, if you think your mentee could help you, ask them. That can give them a really good confidence boost, it shows that we've got something to learn from everyone and actually it can be just a way of really building that relationship. This actually happened to me last week.

Helen Tupper: Tell me more.

Sarah Ellis: You do not need to label these things do you, reverse mentoring, but somebody who has definitely been a mentor to me, actually got in touch and said, "I'd just really like to run something by you, Sarah, have you got a spare like half an hour?" I just felt like my job in that conversation was to listen, offer my on-the-spot observations, a bit of perspective and a few ideas. By the end it was a few specific ideas based on some experiences I've had and some networks that I'm part of.

I really enjoyed that; hopefully he found it helpful too. I think that's a good example of as you build these relationships, you don't always need to feel like, "I must stay in the role of mentor the whole time". It's absolutely fine to have that flow between sometimes feeling like maybe you're being mentored and even having the vulnerability and bravery to ask for that when you need it.

Helen Tupper: Our final idea to help you be an even more meaningful mentor is to give your mentees the option to opt out. I feel that is really strange advice, isn't it? If you want to be a more meaningful mentor, give the chance for people to not be mentored by you anymore.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: The reason for this is, there are no strict rules on how long a mentoring relationship needs to continue for. Sometimes they can go on for longer than they need to, and they almost like fizzle out. Like I've done these sometimes where I've been the mentee, and I have been going to a mentor who I have had some useful conversations with and I've kind of learned what I needed to know; but maybe because of the expectations weren't clear up front, back to that point about the brilliant basics, I haven't had an easy way to conclude the mentoring relationship. So, it's just sort of become a little bit less frequent and they almost fizzle out, and that's not a confident and constructive way of concluding what could have been a really a brilliant relationship.

As a mentor, what you can do is make it much easier for a mentoring relationship to conclude or to continue. You can create the trust and the safety so that the mentee can make that decision. One way that you can do that is by when you're coming to the end of your conversation, it's likely that you've talked quite a lot, they've probably heard quite a lot of different advice from you; maybe say to

them, "Do you want to reflect on what we've just talked about and let me know if it would be helpful for us to have another conversation in a couple of weeks or a month or so?" depending on what felt right; depending on the thing you were talking about.

Give them that option. They don't even have to decide then and there; I wouldn't put someone onto the spot and say, "Would you like to talk again?" because they're going to default to, "Yes", probably.

Sarah Ellis: No, thanks.

Helen Tupper: "No, this has been awful". No, don't do that but just say to them, "Why don't you reflect on the conversation today, come back and me and let me know whether you'd like to -- going to leave it there for now so that you can put some of this into action, or whether you'd like to continue the conversation. I will leave it with you, don't worry about when you come back to me but just let me know". Then give them that option to opt out.

I was actually mentoring someone recently and I did this with them, and they basically said, "This has been really, really helpful, thank you so much for your help. I respect and recognise that you're busy, and you've given me loads to think on". They actually were really clean, and really confident, and I really appreciated it. I was like, "Okay, yeah, great. That's really helpful". The door is still open at any point if that person wants to get back in touch with me, but what we don't have is a recurring meeting in the diary where that person's having to think about what they need to ask me and I'm having to think about how actually am I valuably helping that person.

So, if you are the mentor, just make it easy for someone to opt in or to opt out.

Sarah Ellis: Just to summarise our ideas for action for you:

One: work out how are you going to create an opportunity to get to know each other; whether that's the questions that you ask beforehand, using something like the 4-H structure. I usually think giving people a bit of notice about that is helpful. Idea for action two is just thinking about offering advice and options, rather than answers; still getting people to really own what is going to be most useful for them. Idea for action three was about connecting the dots. Perhaps particularly outside of the conversation, so that's a way that you can be really valuable for people.

Number four was about summarising, so letting the conversation go in all the different directions that it needs to but then just bringing some clarity at the end for people, so they go away feeling energised and optimistic and able to take action. Number five was about reverse mentoring; don't be afraid to ask your mentee for help too. And, number six was about giving people the option to opt out.

Helen Tupper: Thank you so much for listening today, we hope that you have got some things in here that you can maybe experiment with and you can put into practice. Do let us know; we love to hear from you. You can give us a bit of reverse mentoring for us! Let us know what you've done and what's been helpful. You can email us; it's just helen&sarah@squigglycareers.com or get in touch with us on Instagram @Amazingif if that is easier for y

Sarah Ellis: Before we go, just to let you know, our next Ask the Expert episode is next week and that is me interviewing Kim Scott and Trier Bryant all about feedback. Some of you might know Kim Scott from her work on Radical Candor and actually, I really enjoyed the opportunity to just discuss with them both how we can create these environments of feedback and improvement, what their experiences have been, what works well and where they still see that there are really big challenges, which is why they've continued to build on the Radical Candor work.

They are both great; real experts; worked in loads of different kinds of organisations, so loads of insights to share with all of our listeners. I'm pretty confident that is going to be a useful episode for us all.

Helen Tupper: I can't wait; I love Kim Scott's work and Radical Candor. I think they're so clear and concise. I remember when I was at Microsoft listening to the audio book which she narrates and just be like, "Wow, I want to be a bit more like Kim Scott", so I am looking forward to listening to that one.

Thank you everyone, we'll be back with you very soon.

Sarah Ellis: Thanks for listening everyone, bye for now