I am a middle manager in a bank and have been assigned a mentor at my request. I was able to choose the person I wanted from a shortlist of available candidates. Knowing this man’s reputation, I was very well pleased with the choice. The mentoring opportunity has come about from my annual appraisal, at which I was told that I was too functional in my thinking and therefore career promotion was not currently recommended. I accept this as a fair criticism and would like to develop in this area in order to identify future opportunities at the bank. Unfortunately, my three meetings to date with my mentor have been pretty uninspiring. He has done alright for himself but seems reluctant to impart his wisdom to me. He says little, preferring to ask me questions and his interest in me seems low. He has postponed one meeting already because of his busy schedule. I now doubt that mentoring will move me forward. I don’t want to offend him as he is a ‘someone’ in my organisation but should I make a polite excuse to end it and find someone else? I could always use his busy schedule as the excuse.
ZULFI HUSSAIN
CEO, Global Energy Solutions
I am sorry to hear that you are feeling disappointed with your experience of mentoring to date, although I am pleased to see that you are an eager participant in the process. Mentoring has many benefits but they might not be immediately obvious. Often, the type of questions you mention quietly promote new angles of thinking, which eventually help you make positive changes.Have you received any training in mentoring? If not, you should consider it both as a mentee and a mentor. This will help you learn about the process from both sides and let you steer your own mentoring relationship in the direction that you want it to go. Your organisation might also run supervision for both mentors and mentees at which you could discuss your concerns.
Following on from your training you might also want to mentor someone else in the organisation. This will expand your skills, and give you insight into wider corporate issues at work and your own mentoring relationship.
On a more individual note, one of the best things that mentors can do early on in a relationship is to find concrete ways of showing an interest in their mentee such as catching up on what has happened between sessions and, of course, being reliable and punctual. Another good strategy is to ask for feedback on how the sessions are going and to seek out feedback on their role as a mentor.
There are 360-degree tools out there that can help facilitate this process. But in the absence of your mentor seeking feedback, I suggest that you initiate a positive feedback process yourself, possibly based on your updated understanding of the mentoring process.You are the person who defines the direction that the process takes so the ball really is in your court.
“You define the direction that the process takes – so the ball really is in your court”
SARA IRELAND
Coach/mentoring consultant
Well done on acknowledging your areas of development with such candour. Receptiveness to feedback is often a prerequisite to learning in mentoring relationships. It is very common to feel dissatisfied at this stage in the process but I wouldn’t quit now when the benefits are yet to be realised. I wonder whether you have clearly agreed your goals for the process and the format by which you intend to achieve them? Perhaps you have only just confirmed your relationship and are still sorting out goals and mutual expectations? Sometimes, we can dive too quickly into goal setting and agreements of how we will work. It is always useful to review the process that you have undertaken so far and to consider the framework that you have in place. You might require an exchange of values about time-keeping and cancellations to make the terms that you have agreed concrete and clear. Having started the relationship, you might also feel clearer about stating what works and what does not; what you want more of and less of in the process. If you feel that, after another couple of sessions, the relationship is not working, you might want to talk through your concerns with your co-ordinator. If you decide to end the relationship with this mentor, then you should be clear about what you have learned when terminating it.
There is no reason why he cannot remain a distant advocate for you if you keep the relationship positive and contract accordingly. Mentoring relationships act like a no-fault divorce and neither of you needs to get into excuses.
“Sometimes we dive too quickly into goal setting and agreements of how we will work”