The Mentee Experience—Acceptance vs. Invalidation

Another consideration for the mentor is the need to guard against a too rapid response to opinions and statements offered by the mentee, especially in the early part of the relationship.

In addition to listening carefully, as well as to phrasing questions that demonstrate sensitivity, mentors should also be alert to inadvertently creating the impression that they are reacting with instant disapproval to the views of mentees.

In fact, a mentor may not personally agree with a mentee’s ideas or attitudes. And the mentee may truly benefit from a challenge to an unsupportable belief or narrow perspective based on limited exposure to a complex world. But, in such cases, it is important that mentors refrain from too quickly communicating their very different interpretations of reality, because some mentees may actually interpret what mentors intend to be Socratic dialogues as harsh disputes in which their point of view is rapidly dismissed or overridden.