10 Mistakes Mentee Make During Mentorship

In the series on mentorship and coaching, we have talked about why you need a mentor, how they differ from a coach, and how to find a great mentor for you.

Next, I want to share common mistakes that I’ve made as a mentee and see first-time mentees make often. Why am I sharing these? Two reasons:

1. Becoming a great mentee: Your first experience in mentorship will play a huge role in how you engage in future mentorship relationships. Knowing and avoiding these common mistakes can make the difference between an exceptional and an underwhelming experience.
2. Becoming a great mentor: When you become a mentor, you will see first-time mentees making these mistakes. You can engage sooner and help them avoid these pitfalls.

So, what are the common pitfalls for first-time mentees?

1. Not knowing what they need mentorship advice on, i.e., short-term goals: If a mentee doesn’t know what they need guidance on, a mentor cannot help. If a mentee doesn’t have a short-term goal, then the short-term goal should be to identify one. Some mentors can help with that too, but it’s actually more of a coach's responsibility.
2. Not sharing all the details about the challenge or feeling shy: A great mentoring relationship is about transparency. Mentees often hide details about their challenges, resulting in less effective guidance. It’s important to be transparent with mentors, especially when the mentor is from outside of your organization.
3. Not setting the right expectations on what they want from the mentorship engagement: Some mentees assume that mentors will do the work; no. Mentors only provide guidance. The work still has to be done by the mentee. This is why having a short-term goal helps. A right expectation can be that the mentor will provide guidance that will help the mentee make progress towards their short-term goal.
4. Not having the right cadence of meetings: Meeting too frequently or too infrequently can impact how the advice is being applied. Meeting too frequently does not leave enough time for the mentee to try out the mentor’s advice and experience the outcome, and meeting too infrequently can result in gaps on how to make changes based on the experience. A good cadence is once per month (twice per month for first-timers) for six months, and then re-evaluate.
5. Expecting solutions instead of directional advice: As discussed in a previous post, mentors provide guidance and not exact solutions. Mentors help mentees solve their own problems and do not solve them for them.

For the rest of them, please checkout the full blog post at https://thinkingthrough.substack.com/p/10-mistakes-mentee-make-during-mentorship