Becoming a mentor is an incredibly rewarding role, where you establish a long-term professional relationship with a mentee to offer support, advice and guidance to them, helping them achieve their goals. Mentoring goes beyond typical learning and development, as it’s based on deep-rooted underlying behaviors such as trust and commitment.
Workplace mentoring can come in all shapes and sizes, and almost anyone can become one, but what does it mean to be a good mentor? This article discusses the common traits all good mentors have and how each trait can be used in the workplace for maximum impact and advantage.
1. Empathic
A great mentor demonstrates empathy by understanding and relating to the experiences of others. They can appreciate the emotions and challenges of their mentees by using emotional intelligence to relate to how various things affect the people they are mentoring.
This doesn’t necessarily come from experiencing exact scenarios themselves. Instead, it’s done through asking themselves questions such as “How would I feel if this issue happened to me?”
Using empathy means that mentors are much more effective at providing the right support in terms of actions and words.
2. Flexible
Great mentors need to be adaptable and flexible. They use a wide array of learning techniques and training programs to ensure that whatever learning preference and skill sets their mentee has, knowledge and guidance can be imparted effectively.
This requires good knowledge of adult learning processes, as well as being able to take feedback themselves and change an approach if told by the mentee that it isn’t working.
At work, mentors should also be flexible with goals, meeting structures and timings, and general mentoring techniques, in order to foster an approachable and effective environment.
3. Growth-oriented
The best mentors focus on the growth of their mentee as well as their own career growth. They understand the benefits of professional development, important for growing their own skills and designing appropriate mentoring programs for their mentee.
Great mentors are also passionate about continuous development; they stay up to date on industry trends and their own learning. They motivate their mentees to do the same, and will use mentoring meetings to understand their mentees’ long-term career goals, and put into place strategies (such as attending an online course) to help people work towards their goals.
4. Honest
Successful mentoring hinges on honesty. The best mentors don’t shield their mentees from bad news or difficult conversations, nor do they avoid challenging them when they are about to make — or have made — bad decisions.
They will find tactful but direct ways to share feedback and advice, in such a way that will motivate them to find a better way forward.
Mentors should also be honest with themselves. They should open up to their mentees and show vulnerability and their own development areas to reassure their mentees that mistakes and corrections are human nature and can happen to anyone.
5. Non-judgmental
Great mentors respect viewpoints and varying ability. This doesn’t mean that they turn a blind eye to errors or bad decisions; after all, we have already discovered that honesty is important as well. Instead, non-judgmental mentors empathize with differing viewpoints, and respectfully and impartially challenge them, or play devil’s advocate to encourage the mentee to see varying sides of the argument.
Additionally, non-judgmental mentors don’t let personal biases or perceptions about their mentee cloud their judgment or mentoring ability. Instead, they remain fair, equitable and impartial to anything their mentee is impacted by, whether it’s for personal or professional reasons.
6. Patient
Because mentoring is a long-term learning and development intervention, the best mentors understand that when it comes to seeing results and witnessing their mentee develop, they will be in this journey for the long haul.
When mentoring, patience is essential. Good mentors get that tangible progress will not happen instantly, and that for every two steps forward, the mentee might make one step back.
At work, mentors stay calm, supportive and understanding through this development journey, and use their patience skills to provide continuous support and guidance, however quickly their mentee is able to learn new skills.
7. Resourceful
Great mentors are appreciative and understanding of their resources and their skill sets and those of their mentee. They use the tools and information available to them to create bespoke professional development opportunities that impact their mentees in the right way, and if they don’t have these tools to hand, they will go out of their way to find them.
Effective mentors can also use their resourcefulness to overcome learning barriers or to find innovative new ways to support learning interventions. Finally, resourceful mentors also leverage their own professional networks, reaching out to people they know who can support the mentoring relationship or can provide their own unique support that can benefit the mentee.
8. Responsible
Whereas a big part of successful mentoring relies on the mentee to own their own development and take initiative at work, the best mentors take a high level of responsibility for their mentee’s success.
This includes scheduling meetings, setting up goals and development plans, adapting to their mentee’s needs and learning styles, and reflecting on what they could have done differently if the mentee didn’t achieve the expected results.
Responsible mentors also act maturely, such as keeping to deadlines and being professional at all times. Ultimately, great mentors understand the importance of the role and the opportunities effective mentoring can create. They respect their role and duties, and do everything they can to ensure success.
9. Respectful
A good mentor treats their mentee with respect, no matter what happens. As mentioned previously, they understand different levels of experience and learning speeds, and display patience, but also value differences in their mentees’ backgrounds and cultures.
Respectful mentors embrace diversity, equality and inclusion, and also actively encourage their mentees to come up with ideas, form opinions and contribute to the mentor-mentee relationship. Underpinning all of this is the mentor providing a safe space for their mentee to learn, and standing up for them when others are less inclusive or respectful.
10. Trusting
Trust is a vital component of the mentoring relationship, and if it’s broken or falls away, it can rarely be restored. The best mentors trust their mentees and believe in their ability to achieve great things.
In turn, effective mentors display integral behaviors — many of which are driven by other traits on this list — that result in the mentee trusting them fully. Mutual trust encourages the mentee to open up and share their confidences, ensuring that the developmental relationship will be high-gain and rewarding.
Additionally, good mentors show trust through being reliable and honoring commitments, such as one-to-one meetings, and maintaining confidentiality at all times.
Final thoughts
Being a great mentor doesn’t come easily. Effective mentors have worked long and hard on acquiring an impressive set of hard and soft skills that allow them to impart information effectively to their mentees.
A good mentor is a positive role model, displaying an impressive understanding of learning and knowledge-sharing principles and professional development programs, melding these with excellent interpersonal skills to ensure that the main purpose of mentoring — long-term guidance and support to a less experienced person — is fulfilled.
Similarly, becoming a great mentor requires a long-term approach, but if you put in the effort to develop yourself, then being a respected and effective mentor will happen with time.
What other traits do you think are necessary for a mentor? Let us know in the comments section below.
This article is a complete update of an earlier version originally published on December 26, 2018.
