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Not all mentorships are meant to be or work smoothly from the get-go. What are some common issues that mentors face and how do you get around them?
Life gets in the way! Up to a certain level, this is expected. In the time of remote work, having a communication path shutdown is problematic, though. As a mentor, you would have a hard time fulfilling your promise. That’s not a good feeling.
Let's take it back to the workplace: How do remote and offshore teams deal with communication? There are a few takeaways we can take into the mentorship sphere.
Regular meetings & standups
Call it standup, call it roll call, but most remote teams have a time either weekly or daily to sync up. This is not an optional event but a fixed anchor point in the work routine.
Establishing multiple channels
We've found that text communication works awesome to run the day-to-day of a mentorship; likewise, a call is amazing to catch up, look back at the efforts of the month or week, and sync up.
Explore the possibilities of videos, audio bites, long-form text, instant messaging and task managers to see whether anything works better.
Finding the root cause
Why are you or your mentee unable to find a time to link up? Is there a big-time difference that makes it tricky to talk? Is the medium not right? Or do you need to change how you are doing the mentoring?
Finding the root cause will help debug other aspects of your relationship too!
Unmeasured progress is subjective; while your mentee might be over the moon with what you've created, you might feel like you're not needed.
Think about measuring progress on a regular interval. For example, go through a quick mock interview once per month or look at metrics ever other week.
Even if initial expectations are aligned, during the course of a mentorship, the needs of a mentee (or the time constraints of a mentor) can change. This is natural!
The thing to figure out is whether one of the parties is flexible enough to accommodate the other – can the mentee continue their journey with less interaction? Or can the mentor shift some of their timings to host a few more calls?
In many cases, one of the two is possible, but sometimes it’s not.
Mentees often profit from a second opinion. If you can no longer get them all the way to their goal, is there a second mentor you could recommend? Maybe there’s even space to work together?
A mentorship is based on trust, first and foremost. A bad gut feeling can mean many things – maybe the mentee is leaving out some crucial information or being short on words. In any case, it’s not a good base to build a relationship upon.
As a mentor, you can try and improve your gut feeling by vetting a mentee thoroughly before committing. What is their goal? What steps have they taken towards it? What do they expect from you? What’s their biggest hurdle?
A few simple questions can help you get a better (or confirm your bad) feeling about a mentee. If the gut feeling is bad, don’t take them on as a mentee!
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