The Mentee’s Guide

You own this relationship. Your mentor’s job is to help, not to drive.

The Mentee’s Primary Trap: Passive Waiting

From One Minute Mentoring and Lean In: The biggest mistake mentees make is waiting for their mentor to lead, guide, and fix things. This creates an unhealthy dependency and wastes everyone’s time.

Passive waiting looks like:

• Showing up without an agenda
• Asking “What should I do?”
• Waiting to be told what to work on
• Expecting your mentor to drive the conversation
• Not following up on advice given

Active ownership looks like:

• Preparing specific questions before each meeting
• Reporting back on how you applied previous guidance
• Driving the agenda and scheduling
• Coming with problems you’ve already tried to solve
• Treating your mentor’s time as precious

The “Will You Be My Mentor?” Problem

Bad approach:

“Will you be my mentor?”

This puts all the burden on them, is vague, and creates pressure.

Better approach:

“I’m working on [specific challenge]. You’ve [specific relevant experience]. Could I get 30 minutes of your time to get your perspective on [specific question]?”

Then, AFTER that conversation, IF it was valuable:

“That was incredibly helpful. Would you be open to meeting [frequency] to continue these conversations?”

Key principle: Start with a specific ask, prove you’re worth the investment, then formalize.

Your Responsibilities

Before Every Meeting

• [ ] Send agenda 24 hours ahead
• [ ] Prepare your ROE report (Return on Energy)
• [ ] Identify 1-2 specific challenges to discuss