Mentors should remember that even in cases where the mentee responds with admirable self-awareness about problems, and formulates reasonable plans to modify unproductive behaviors or strategies, that insight itself is not a guarantee that change will immediately or automatically be the result.
The agreement to pursue new approaches that results from a successful confrontive experience should be viewed as a significant starting point rather than as a completed race.
Certainly, the more ingrained and complex the particular behavior under review, the higher the probability that productive change will evolve as a gradual series of small victories than as a major leap from negative to positive actions. Mentors should therefore attend to the sometimes more mundane and undramatic details of the change process as much as to the ideals that are often characteristic of the lofty rhetoric of confrontive dialogue.
Mentors should remain acutely aware that the confrontive dimension can involve risk to the relationship, and that the decision to pursue it as an option requires that serious consideration be given to the consequences of raising or not raising a specific issue with the mentee.
From the viewpoint of practical application, the conscientious mentor is faced with the decision of evaluating the confrontation in terms of the negative cost to the mentee and the mentoring relationship itself if a worst case scenario occurs, and the positive benefit to the mentee if the attempt contributes to significant personal development and professional opportunity.
Clearly, deferring or taking no action is sometimes as appropriate as pursuing the path of prudent risk.