SIX
Getting to Know Each Other
Simply getting to know one another should be the focus of all or most of your first few interactions of the mentoring relationship. Sometimes these interactions happen live, in the initial mentoring meetings. Some mentors and mentees like to interact by email in advance of the first meeting. Like every other step along the way, getting to know each other requires reflection, planning, and (where possible) outreach to your mentoring partner.
Take Time to Build Trust by Getting to Know Each Other
Getting to know each other is not something you can check off your list in one conversation. Rather, it develops over a series of conversations early in your mentoring relationship. Let’s return to Mia and Christopher from Part 1 and step back a bit in time to find out how they first got to know each other.
Mia stepped into Christopher’s office and proffered an enthusiastic handshake. She told him that she was eager to learn about his career path. How had he achieved his stature and reputation? What would she need to do to follow in his footsteps as a go-to labor and employment attorney? She explained why and what she wanted to learn from him and expressed gratitude that he had agreed to mentor her.
Christopher could see that Mia was committed to her professional growth. Clearly, she had come prepared for their first mentoring meeting. A good sign. But she spoke so quickly, hurrying from one topic to the next, that he was thrown off his game. In response, he moderated the speed of his own speech, hoping that it would slow her down. When it didn’t, he realized he might have to address this issue, but it would have to come later in their relationship. Maybe she was nervous. Or maybe it was just a generational thing. He decided to ignore it for now.
When Mia finally took a breath, Christopher jumped in. “You have lots of questions, Mia, but I’d like to get to know you a bit before we get into all that. Tell me about why you became an attorney. And why did you choose labor and employment?”
Even though their early relationship was marred by miscommunications, Christopher was 100 percent correct to slow Mia’s self-introduction and try to understand her motivations for mentoring. In our work we long ago lost count of the number of times mentoring pairs have come to us wondering why they haven’t made consistent progress, only to discover that they skipped over the getting-to-know-you phase of the mentoring relationship and headed right to goal setting.
Like Mia, many of us have a bias for action, and we all want to feel as if we are making the most of our time together. We understand how tempting it is for people to skip right into what they think is the heart of the mentoring relationship: goal setting and goal achievement. Mentees want to feel like they are making the most of their mentors’ time. Mentors want to feel like they are adding value. Both mentor and mentee often feel like the trust will build organically over time. Yet as our mentoring model shows (see Figure 1.1), and as our discussion of the levels of conversation further illustrates (see Figure 5.1), preparing the relationship is an essential first step in building trust—a necessary part of meaningful mentoring conversation.
So how do you do it? This is where the time spent on self-reflection proves its worth. If you know who your prospective mentoring partner is ahead of time, exchange introductory emails before your first meeting. This allows you to set the tone for your mentoring relationship. We encourage you to be a bit vulnerable and model the free exchange of information that you hope will occur once you meet. Share something you have learned about yourself, your motivation for engaging in a mentoring relationship, and ask a few questions that prompt your mentoring partner’s reflection and help them best prepare for your meeting together. Allow enough time before the first meeting to send, receive, reflect upon, and reply to each other’s emails.
Making the connection—which is the essence of getting to know one another and building trust—is the most critical element in laying a strong foundation for a mentoring partnership. Even if you don’t know who your prospective mentoring partner is ahead of time, you can still reflect on what you want to share. This is an opportune time to revisit the identity iceberg discussed in Chapter 3. Think of a few elements of your personal iceberg that impact the way you are viewed and the way you view the world that you can share with your mentoring partner.
» YOUR TURN «
1. What three things about your identity will you share with your mentoring partner in an introductory email or in your first meeting?
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2. What is your motivation for mentoring? Prepare yourself to share why you are committed to mentoring.
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3. What are three things that you want to ask your mentoring partner in an introductory email or in your first mentoring meeting? Note that these should be questions that you are prepared to answer for yourself as well.
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Share Some of Your Own Guiding Principles
In our workshops we often ask participants to share a piece of wisdom they treasure that might help their mentoring partner understand what is meaningful to them personally or professionally. Whenever we do this exercise, it yields some rich quotes or truisms, and these help us learn a lot about their mindset and philosophies. We encourage participants to share these with their mentoring partners. Here are some examples:
» “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
» “People will forget what you did. People will forget what you said. But people will never forget how you made them feel.” (Maya Angelou)
» “The most important thing is to show up.”
» “Don’t shoot the arrow until you are certain your target is in sight.”
» “Make the time to take the time.”
» “Be so good that people can’t ignore you.”
Learning about your mentoring partner’s guiding principles can help set the stage for learning and may even help you learn more about yourself. Often, words of wisdom like these can help uncover cultural reference points that reveal very different ways of thinking about a particular topic. Here are some examples of different beliefs around certain concepts that reflect different viewpoints.
» “The squeaky wheel gets the grease” versus “Don’t speak unless it improves upon silence.”
» “Good better best, never let it rest until your good is better and your better is best” versus “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
» “The first to raise their voice loses the argument” versus “Silence produces peace and peace produces safety.”
Take the time to consider how your words of wisdom reflect and are influenced by your own culture.
» YOUR TURN «
1. Identify some guiding principles/concepts that you treasure and try to live by.
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2. Pick one principle/concept that relates to mentoring and that you would be willing to share with your mentoring partner.
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3. What are some examples of how you honor that guiding principle or concept on a regular basis?
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Share Your Career Highlights and Milestones
It may seem an obvious step but the utility of learning more about your mentoring partner’s career and work experience before your first mentoring meeting is worth stressing. For mentees, it can help provide context and open up potential connection points or questions they can ask their mentor. For mentors, it can provide context and points of connection with your mentee. To this end, it can be helpful to obtain a copy of your mentoring partner’s bio or CV in advance of the first mentoring meeting. One note of caution, however: do not use a mentoring partner’s CV solely as a vehicle for finding commonality. Remember that there is value in uncovering and inquiring about difference. The best way to use this information is to stoke your curiosity about each experience rather than to prejudge or simply look for the things you have in common.
Many years ago, coauthor Lois led a team of six evaluators that assessed student levels of intellectual and ethical development. To guide them in their assessments, they relied on a set of specific qualitative criteria. After each evaluator independently assigned numerical ratings, the team met to reach consensus on their ratings. While using a majority decision might have been easier and more expedient, the team needed to agree on the final ratings and that meant accommodating different points of view (not easy to do with six independent evaluators). There were often differences in their individual assessments. Each member of the team tenaciously held onto their own point of view and tried to convince the others they had the right answer. Lois realized that if team members didn’t get curious about where each of them was coming from, they were never going to make progress.
This proved hard to accomplish and took discipline. As the team’s conversations continued, relationships among the group members strengthened and everyone’s understanding expanded. Through this experience, Lois learned the value of asking questions to stimulate dialogue and get differences out on the table, a skill she continues to use in presentations, workshops, and group facilitations to this day. Lois’s mentees repeatedly tell her how much they appreciate the thoughtful questions she asked that led them on their own journeys of self-awareness and discovery. She tells her mentees this story to let them know in advance that she will be asking tough questions throughout the process. She also tells them why she thinks this is necessary.
» YOUR TURN «
1. Take the time to reflect on your career journey so that you can eventually share these with your mentoring partner. What opportunities helped you grow and develop?
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2. What did you learn about yourself as a result of each opportunity?
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3. What lessons will you share with your mentoring partner?
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Share Mentoring Stories
When Aesha learned that she was going to be a part of the mentoring program, she was excited, but a bit dubious about whether it would make a difference. The last mentor she had was when she was in graduate school. When she entered her master’s program in business analytics, she had been assigned Debbie, a PhD student, as her mentor. It seemed like Debbie’s role was to make sure that Aesha was equipped to get a job at management consulting, something Debbie and many other students aspired to. After the first two meetings (in which Debbie had provided Aesha with a checklist of qualities she needed to work on and had given her what seemed to Aesha to be meaningless assignments) the relationship had fizzled and Aesha remembered feeling more alone than ever.
She was glad that she would now have Heather to guide her at Any Healthcare, but she wanted to make sure that mentoring this time would be different than her experience with Debbie. Would it sound like she was complaining if she shared this story with Heather?
Aesha decided to tell Heather about her mentoring experience with Debbie and mustered the courage to share it at their third meeting. Heather listened, then told Aesha that she herself had not participated in a formal mentoring program before. “All of my experiences with mentors have been informal.” Heather acknowledged, “I always just found someone I could identify with who was doing what I wanted to do and tried to be like them.”
Heather heard herself say this and inwardly cringed. She realized that she had never consciously thought about the kind of leader she wanted to be. There hadn’t been many women in positions of influence when she had started, so she tried to emulate the men at the top. In many instances it worked, and she was given increasingly more complex work assignments and many promotions. But Heather never really felt close to anyone on the team and didn’t share much about herself with her colleagues. She wondered if that would ever change for her, but she didn’t share her thoughts with Aesha. Instead, Heather said, “I’m eager to try something more structured with you now. Maybe we will both learn something.”
Sharing stories about your mentoring experiences serves several purposes. First, it helps mentoring partners get to know each other better. Second, by reflecting on what worked and what didn’t, and on the other person’s depth of experience with mentoring, each person can get clues about how the other learns and how the mentee might be best supported and challenged. Finally, it provides helpful information when setting agreements about the mentoring relationship. (We’ll discuss setting agreements in the next chapter.)
» YOUR TURN «
1. What is your experience with mentoring?
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2. What worked and what didn’t?
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3. When you look back on prior mentoring experiences, what do you want to carry forward to your current relationship?
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Share Your Assumptions about Mentoring
As you learned in Chapter 5, unchecked assumptions about mentoring can lead to misunderstanding and miscommunication. If you feel the need for more clarity, ask for it. For example, Heather had assumed that her role as mentor was to impart wisdom. Accordingly, she relayed to Aesha the lessons she had learned from a difficult time in her career so that her mentee could avoid the struggles that Heather had faced. Aesha, for her part, had assumed that it was her role as a mentee to bring her own questions about learning, establishing credibility, and managing competing demands of work and family. Neither of these perspectives are wrong, and they may not even be incompatible. However, if they fail to discuss this early in the relationship, both Aesha and Heather may be left feeling disappointed in how they accomplished their own role, or on how their mentoring partner lived up to her role. Worse yet, they may feel like mentoring has not been a valuable use of their time because it has not met either of their expectations.
To avoid unmet expectations and potential disappointment, we encourage new mentors and mentees to go “assumption hunting” in one of their early conversations. The best way to do this is straightforward: ask your mentoring partner what their assumptions are about mentoring and about the role of mentor and mentee. Then discuss your own assumptions and reach a mutual understanding about the purpose of mentoring in general and of each of your roles in this relationship.
» YOUR TURN «
1. What assumptions have you brought to prior mentoring/working relationships?
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2. How did those affect the relationship?
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3. What assumptions are you bringing with you into this mentoring relationship?
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Determine Your Mutual Relationship Needs and Expectations
Once you have discussed your assumptions, it is time to switch focus to what you each expect and need from your mentoring relationship: what topics you might want to cover, what role you intend to play, and so on. You might reflect on how your expectations differ from or are similar to your assumptions and your mentoring partner’s assumptions. Take the time now to reflect on this and answer the questions below. Use your answers as a guide in your conversation with your mentoring partner.
» YOUR TURN «
1. What I want from our mentoring relationship is:
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2. What I intend to give to the mentoring relationship is:
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3. What I expect from my mentoring partner is:
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Let’s check in with Aesha and Heather after each examined her needs and expectations about the mentoring relationship.
At their next meeting, Heather thanked Aesha for her text and told her that she was glad Aesha thought things were going so well. “So do I,” responded Heather. She was trying to curb her tendency to launch into her story, so she waited for Aesha to begin. When Aesha remained silent, Heather said, “You said you wanted to talk about expectations, so why don’t you dive right in?”
Aesha hesitated. “Maybe you should start,” she said. Aesha had been brought up to be respectful and deferential. Interrupting, questioning, or contradicting anyone whom she considered senior or who held power and authority made her uncomfortable. Therefore it was not surprising that she deferred to Heather, and Heather started talking.
Aesha took copious notes. She shuffled the pages in front of her, looked up, smiled, and nodded. Heather noted that Aesha seemed to be reluctant to add to the conversation. Did Aesha’s silence mean she agreed with everything Heather was saying? Why didn’t she jump in if she had questions? Heather had never met anyone like Aesha before and found her hard to read.
As Heather reflected on this for a moment, it occurred to her that she had not invited Aesha to share her ideas on what she expected from Heather as her mentor. She assumed that if Aesha had any questions she would volunteer them but it occurred to her that she would have to ask Aesha directly. “So, I’ve talked enough,” Heather smiled, “what are your thoughts? I’d really like to know what you expect from me.”
Although Aesha still didn’t sense that Heather “got” her, she was relieved to be asked for her thoughts and was happy to share them. She left the meeting with a list of expectations and some ground rules and felt like she had contributed to the conversation. Heather had even given her an assignment: to come to the next meeting with some thoughts about her career goals.
This example demonstrates one of those areas in which cultural difference may be at play. As noted earlier, different cultures view boundaries differently. Like many in corporate America, Heather views boundaries as being specific, and she views the scope of her mentoring relationship to be limited to a specific domain: professional topics. For Aesha, whose orientation is more diffuse, it is not just appropriate but perhaps even expected for the mentoring relationship to spill over into other areas of her life.
Note that this is not necessarily an attribute of Aesha’s ethnic heritage. There are often divergences in perspective and expectation on scope that vary based on gender, life stage, personality, and other elements of one’s identity. For some people, having a mentoring relationship that extends beyond the work context may feel more like a need than an expectation. Perhaps, as it was for Aesha, there are pressing circumstances (her in-laws’ visit) that created the need to extend the scope of the mentoring relationship. This could be a temporary or a permanent need. The important takeaway here is to notice where expectations and needs are for both mentoring partners and to create a shared understanding of how to address different expectations without judgment.
Discuss Learning and Development Goals
Our concept of mentoring is focused on the mentee’s learning and developmental goals. It is important early on to set the stage for a relationship that will focus on learning and development. A focused discussion about learning goals increases trust and generates meaningful conversation. Rather than narrowing to particular goals, think of this conversation as one in which you are generating an expansive list of possible areas on which to focus. You can narrow this list later. Mentees should begin by reflecting on and discussing broad and open-ended questions such as the ones below with their mentors. If you need more time for reflection, ask for it.
» What are you really good at?
» What have been some of your biggest challenges?
» What do you want to get better at?
» What keeps you up at night when you think about your career?
Share your assumptions, expectations, and limitations candidly. To leverage your experience and expertise, it is necessary to take time to define desired learning outcomes. Table 6.1 has tips on this for both mentors and mentees.
» YOUR TURN «
Whether you are a mentor or mentee, make time to reflect upon and discuss these questions:
1. What are you really good at?
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TABLE 6.1 Tips for mentors and mentees
Tips for mentors |
Tips for mentees |
» At this stage in the relationship, many mentees are apprehensive about sharing vulnerabilities. Allow the space for reflection and start with a conversation about strengths. » New mentees are sometimes uneasy that they don’t yet know what they want to be learning. If this is true for your mentee, acknowledge the uneasiness, encourage exploration of possibilities, and revisit the conversation about goals periodically as themes emerge. » Resist the temptation to narrow the list to the goals you think are “a good idea” or “worthwhile.” In this stage you are still exploring options. You will narrow later. |
» There is no right or wrong on learning and developmental goals. Do not censor yourself as you enter this conversation. You may find that you want to learn about an area unrelated to your current role. This stage of the conversation is about creating an expansive list of possible goals. » Remember that mentoring is a conversation. Ask your mentor questions about their reactions and for suggestions of things that were helpful for them. Perhaps ask your mentor about what goals they set early in their relationship. What skills do they wish they had at your stage? |
Source: Authors.
2. What is your biggest challenge?
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3. What do you want to get better at?
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4. What keeps you up at night when you think about your career?
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Discuss Personality and Learning Styles
As you learn more about each other, you will want to talk about differences in your personalities and learning styles. You spent some time in Chapter 3 thinking about the way you process information and make decisions. Sharing this information with your mentoring partner will be helpful in several ways. When you have conversations about negotiating, as discussed in Chapter 7, you’ll understand better how to reach agreement. As you set goals and work on them, you’ll better understand how to create accountability, report progress, and celebrate achievements.
Earlier we discussed David Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory, noting that Mia and Christopher had opposite learning styles. Mia wanted to get right to task, make quick decisions, and move forward, while Christopher wanted to understand context first. To feel comfortable working on goals, he wanted to begin by developing the relationship and taking things a bit more slowly. There is no right or wrong learning style (see Table 3.2 for examples of learning style descriptors). The key is to recognize your learning style and that of your partner, understand how those are similar or different, and adjust how you communicate with one another in a way that honors the style of each of you.
Learning style is not the only personality/learning difference to discuss, and you may be familiar with others. The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a popular and useful instrument that measures individuals’ preferences on the following four continua:
1. How you gather your energy. This continuum specifies extraversion (E, drawing energy from action first) as one end point and introversion (I, gaining energy from time in reflection first) as the other.54
2. How you gather information. This continuum names sensing (S, trusting information that is tangible, concrete, and observed by senses) on one end and intuition (N, tending to look more at a wider context, relying on theory and possibility) on the other.
3. How you make decisions. This continuum specifies thinking (T, making decisions in a more detached manner, based on logic, consistency, rules) on one end and feeling (F, making decisions based on association, consensus, and feelings of those involved, including their own) on the other.
4. How you deal with structure and uncertainty. This continuum places judging (J, preferring structure and needing decisions made) on one end and perceiving (P, preferring adaptability and flexibility) on the other.55
We likely see MBTI-type difference (referred to in four-letter acronyms) at play with Aesha and Heather. Heather, an ESTJ, prefers to talk to sort out her ideas. She has a high need for detail (S) and makes decisions based on how she thinks (T) instead of how she feels. Aesha, an INFJ, needs time to process and reflect (I), is focused more on concepts and theories (N), and makes decisions based on how she feels (F) rather than on how she thinks. Being aware of these differences will be critical to their success. But it is less important for them to know each other’s MBTI type than it is for them to understand what the differences are between them and meet each other’s needs.
For example, as someone who makes decisions based on whether she thinks they make sense, Heather does not have as much of a need to feel good with a goal in order to be committed to it. However, for Aesha it is important to note how she feels about a goal for it to be something she is motivated to achieve. Once Heather is aware of this, she can check in with Aesha to see how she feels about the goal, about her progress, and about the results she anticipates. Similarly, because Heather tends toward extraversion and Aesha tends toward introversion, it is important that they recognize and discuss this difference. Heather may want to process her thoughts in the mentoring meetings or sort through options by discussing them with Aesha. Aesha may want to process decisions alone and then discuss them with Heather after she has had time to reflect. Discussing this difference will help avoid misunderstanding and allow each of them the space to ask for what they need and the ability to identify what the other needs to make the most of their mentoring experience.
There are, of course, many other assessments that are useful in identifying personality and learning styles. Some pairs like to decide on an assessment that they will each complete and then discuss the results together. If you and your mentoring partner decide that this is an approach you would like to take, there are several tools you can choose from (see the appendix at the back of the book for resources). If you and your mentoring partner are in the same organization, check with your learning and development team to see if there is a preferred assessment used by your organization.
Taking an assessment can be useful in learning from differences because it can help you understand your mentoring partner better. Whether you take an assessment is up to you and your mentoring partner. Discussing your differences in personalities, preferences, styles, and learning from any assessment is far more important. Holding an open discussion about these differences allows you to structure your relationship in a way that honors each of you and helps you get to know each other in a deeper way. Table 6.2 offers some suggestions for getting ready for your initial conversation.
In addition, here are some useful questions to discuss in your initial mentoring meetings, to give yourself a chance to get to know one another’s learning styles. If more questions occur to you as the conversation progresses, of course you should explore them.
» Do you need time to reflect on questions before discussing them?
» Will you need time to reflect on our mentoring discussions before making a decision about next action?
» Will you feel more comfortable or more constrained if we make an agenda or plan of action for our mentoring time together?
» When it comes to making decisions, do you prefer to do it based on what you think about the decision or how you feel about it?
» Do you need a lot of data to make decisions, or do you make them based more on a gut feeling?
Once you’ve gotten to know each other better, and have some idea of your learning styles, it is time to leverage what you’ve learned. In Part 3 of the book, we turn to the three remaining phases of the mentoring relationship: negotiating, facilitating, and coming to closure.
TABLE 6.2 Getting ready: Initial conversation
Source: Adapted from Zachary, The Mentor’s Guide, 124, Table 4.1.
Chapter Recap
1. Making a meaningful connection with your mentoring partner is the most critical element in laying a strong foundation for a mentoring partnership.
2. The time you have taken to lean forward into differences through self-reflection will help you learn more about your mentoring partner. To make a meaningful connection with your mentoring partner, you must be prepared to share your reflections with each other.
3. Unchecked assumptions can derail a mentoring relationship. To ensure that you and your mentoring partner are clear on your own roles, it is critical to determine the assumptions you hold about mentoring and about the roles of mentor and mentee before you meet with your mentoring partner. When you meet, check in with your partner to see if they are valid for them too.
4. Work toward good conversation that goes deeper. It’s easy to fall back and get caught up in everyday work problems and challenges.
5. Good conversation is essential. The Levels of Conversation Model (see Figure 5.1) can help you determine where you are in your own conversations and self-correct as needed.