Mentoring is an important institution that guides you in professional life. One of the important points in your relationship with your mentor is the questions you ask your mentor. Asking the right questions will let you overcome many issues related to your professional life. You can overcome challenges, establish worthwhile objectives, and obtain career clarity by utilizing the experience, counsel, and comments of a mentor.
How to Prepare a Meeting with Your Mentor
As a mentee, you should have a regular frequency of meetings with your mentor. It is as important for you to prepare for these meetings as it is for your mentor to be ready.
Setting Clear Expectations for Meeting
A few minutes of prep before the meeting with your mentor will help clarify your goals and what you want to achieve. Are you looking for guidance on a specific project that is difficult for you? Maybe you are seeking insights on how to improve your skills or what a career path post-graduate school looks like.
It is advisable to describe the things you want in detail so that you are very clear as well as specific about them. It will help ensure that the meeting is purposeful and that the tone is set for the conversation to be productive. To help the mentor help you and to facilitate you getting what you really want, set clear objectives.
Review Previous Conversations
You can think of each of your meetings with your mentor as a lesson session. Therefore, knowing what you discussed in the previous meeting will help you avoid repeating the same topics. This action also shows that you value the advice of your mentor and helps keep continuity in your discussions.
Be Open to Feedback
Feedback is very important in a mentor-mentee relationship. Getting feedback from your mentor on what you have done and what you have not done will increase the benefit you can get from mentoring. In addition, all of the feedback provides an opportunity for you to ask the right questions to your mentor.
How to Ask Your Mentor the Right Questions
It is a skill but an art to ask the right questions in a mentoring exercise. The quality of your questions for your mentor will determine where the meeting goes, and you will come out from the meeting both personally and professionally. Asking thoughtful and strategic questions not only maximizes your mentor’s time but also deepens your relationship with them.
Focusing on Growth and Success
The aim of mentoring is to support you in developing a certain skill set, your job, or your personal life. You need to remain at the surface. Your mentor and you can concentrate on questions that highlight important situations and lessons rather than asking general ones.
Choosing Specific Themes
In every meeting with your mentor, you can choose specific themes, and you can pose your questions in the sphere of your selected theme.At the beginning of what you need to pay attention to when choosing a theme, you need to make the theme as specific as possible.
Prioritize Quality Over Quantity
Asking many questions to your mentor may lead to some quality problems. That’s why you can choose specific questions that are based on specific themes.
Basic Questions to Ask Your Mentor
As a mentee, you can feel anxious about asking questions to your mentor. During your regular meetings, you and your mentor can choose a topic, and you can specify your questions. Those questions can be about your personal or professional life.
Questions About Personal Life
Talking about personal life can be very useful in a conversation with your mentor. These reciprocal questions can also make you feel more comfortable during your meeting with your mentor.
- How are you doing these days?
- What’s something you’re looking forward to right now?
- What’s been happening since the last time we talked?
- How are you keeping yourself energized and driven?
- What’s a personal or professional goal you’re focusing on at the moment?
- What’s been keeping you busy outside of work lately?
Questions About Professional Experiences
Talking about professional life with your mentor will take place in most of your meetings. As a mentee, you can formulate your questions within this framework.
- Can you share a pivotal moment in your career that shaped your path?
- What challenges did you face early in your career, and how did you overcome them?
- How do you stay current in your industry or field of expertise?
- What skills or habits have been most instrumental in your success?
- Can you describe a time when you learned from failure?
- How do you approach decision-making during high-pressure situations?
- What advice would you give to someone aspiring to excel in this field?
- Who were your mentors, and how did they influence you?
Questions About Specific Circumstances
Specific situations can pose many questions that you ask your mentor. When asking a question in a specific case, it is important to determine exactly what the question is and ask the right question. However, if you cannot find the right question, you can find out which question you should ask with general questions with your mentor.
- What tips can you share for effectively discussing a promotion with my manager?
- I feel like I’m stuck in a specific role at work and want to explore new opportunities. What’s the best way to address this in your experience?
- If you were in my position, how would you handle the situation with X?
- Do you think it’s a good idea for me to take this new job offer?