Mentorship Mistakes and Misconceptions

It’s rare that anyone has anything bad to say about mentorship. Any level of mentorship seems like it has to be a good thing, right? In my experience that’s not always the case. I’ve noticed a few mentorship mistakes and misconceptions that, when adopted, can do more harm than good to the unsuspecting mentee, and I wanted to write about them here.

Mistake #1: Declaring yourself someone’s mentor

I don’t think true mentorship ever starts with someone declaring that they’re another person’s mentor, or with thinking, "I’m going to mentor this person." That attitude is a sign that maybe the person enjoys the idea of themselves as a mentor more than the substance of mentorship. Starting with any kind of "me" focus, even an unspoken one, is the antithesis of mentorship.

Mistake #2: Valuing the employee over the person

Mentorship starts with valuing the entire person, not just the coworker and their output. It begins with a deep interest in learning about who the other person is and what they value. When I think about the best mentors that I’ve had in my life, a consistent theme is that they’ve taken an interest in who I am beyond work. They’ve given me advice that ran contrary to their own self-interest because they knew it was what I needed to grow.

Trust and openness are so important to mentorship. If you only ever stop at the edges of work it will be hard for the other person to believe that you really care about them as a person, and therefore it will be hard for them to ever trust you completely.

Mistake #3: Thinking only about your career advancement

As you start to push for more senior roles, displaying some level of mentorship becomes a requirement to get to the next level. But mentorship that’s motivated by your own needs is not very authentic. It’s tricky, because when you hear that in order to become a Senior Whatever you need to take on mentorship responsibilities, it’s natural to try a little too hard to make it happen. This can result in some awkward interactions as you try to insert yourself into the growth path of your less-experienced teammates.

My answer to this problem is to stop trying so hard to be a mentor, and instead take an authentic interest in who your coworkers are and what they hope to learn and accomplish. Becoming invested in the growth of the people around you is a more natural path to mentorship. You’ll find that if you really care, all the mentoring behaviors that you need to show to get to the next level will emerge as totally honest side effects.

Mistake #4: Thinking mentorship is all verbal

Mentorship doesn’t only happen in coffee chats or one-on-ones. People learn much more from the way you carry yourself every day than from whatever advice you can give them in a 30-minute conversation. The way you handle your own life and relationships with others is far more meaningful and inspiring than anything you can say over coffee, and they often leave the deepest impression.

Mistake #5: Thinking it’s a one-way street

Mentorship is not a transfer of useful information from a person who has it to someone who doesn’t; it’s a two-way teaching relationship. Don’t be so set in your ways and confident in your wisdom that you assume the other person has nothing to teach you. If you’re not willing to say "you might be right" or "I never thought about it that way before," people will get the impression that no matter what they say to you it has very little value. Over time they’ll share less and less and the trust will erode. Listening is more important than dispensing wisdom.