My Mentor's struggles

Not so long ago, I was having a meeting with one of my mentees. This specific occasion was a closing meeting for our mentoring relationship. We had been working together for a little over a year. My mentee was very disciplined with regards to our connects, managed the meeting scheduling very effectively, always came very prepared, asked a lot of questions and summarized own learning, take aways and specific actions at the end of each meeting. ?The relationship was rooted in solid trust and respect. ?On account of certain developments, the mentee decided to take a break from the relationship. As we spoke about a few things and specifically the journey of the mentoring period and plans for next, I asked my mentee to give feedback to me. I asked what I could have done different to be a better mentor. While the mentee gave a lot of praise and appreciative comments, the most valuable of the feedback was when mentee said to me I would have liked you to share more of your personal struggles with me than you did.

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This feedback took me by surprise and has been extremely meaningful for me as it made me reflect a lot on my presence as a mentor and sometimes even beyond that role. I recalled that very often during the mentoring conversation, I derailed more towards being a Coach than a mentor. While a mentor can leverage on their coaching skills as and when needed during mentoring, the overall relationship is different from being a coach. The very idea of a mentor is to learn from the experiences of the mentor and draw learning from those experiences. I recalled how on some occasions while I felt tempted to share my own experience on a specific occasion, I held myself back as I feared it would unnecessarily burden my mentee with my painful experience. Was I being a rescuer? ?Sometimes the thought that held me back was that my mentee has different circumstances and so my circumstances within which I faced the challenge are different and rejected my own experience for sharing.

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This feedback turned out to be an amazing gift for me because to be an effective mentor I need to let my mentee know that I understood their challenge and I had been there, even if somewhat and that I share my approach and outcomes with them. It was also a reminder that my experience is not a burden to my mentee. Any emotional challenges that came along with those were mine and I had overcome them or will do so. Mentoring is indeed an experience of mutual development.