Mentorship misconceptions: Ditching advice for empowerment

RIE Solutions
Jan 29
5 min read

I watched a webinar last year about coaching for managers. It was mainly useful, offering some good tips. But one line struck me as incredibly problematic.

“While mentoring is 80% mentor speaking and 20% mentee, when we’re coaching, this should be the other way around”.

Whoa there ….. Back up just a minute …..

I’m not sure if anyone else even noticed. But I think that in this throwaway comment, lies the assumption at the heart of most mentoring relationships:

The mentor is there to impart their immense knowledge and wisdom and the mentee is there to soak it all up, take it away and follow the advice they’ve been given.

I wholeheartedly disagree.

What’s the real purpose of mentorship?

When we step into the role of mentor, I believe that we should have one aim. To build future capability, confidence, and capacity. To support our mentee to think well and make well considered decisions.

Ultimately, to mentor someone to become better than us.

Mentorship

In Operations, mentoring can come in many forms. Perhaps you’re appointing a Practice Co-ordinator to support you, or developing team leaders in your business as the team grows. Perhaps you’re mentoring someone from a different business with less experience than you. Or you’ve taken on an apprentice or graduate and are mentoring them as they enter the workplace for the first time.

I think back to myself in all of those aspiring roles. I would have loved to benefit from the experience and knowledge that an experienced mentor had gained through years of hard graft, learnings, successes, and failures.

But here’s the rub.

I would not have wanted mentorship from someone who talked at me and expected me to follow every piece of advice that they offered (and maybe even said “I told you so” when I did something different and it went a bit awry). That would have felt constraining, even stifling. And I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that way.

When you’re an Ops or Practice Manager though, time is often pressured and the temptation to do the thinking for other people can be very strong. It’s a hard lesson that I’ve learned over the years. Often my advice and solutions have diminished confidence and empowerment in others. Achieving exactly the opposite of what I believe great mentorship to be.

What does great mentorship look like then?

I think really great mentorship consists of three things:

Listen well
Share experience and information (not advice)
Encourage and appreciate

Let’s look at each in turn.

Listen well

Most of us think we’re better than average listeners. Well, most of us think we are better than average drivers, don’t we?

When we’re listening to someone, it’s common to spend most of the time more interested in what we think about what we’re hearing. This distracts us from the full content of what the other person is saying. We get distracted by our own thoughts, ideas and egos, rarely listening fully, or until the other person is truly finished.

So, work hard on putting your internal monologue to one side. Can you listen for as long as possible, always wondering “how far can they go in their thinking before they need mine?”. Then when they think they’re done – check! Ask “and what more do you think?” and keep wondering how much further they can go.

Most of the time, people come to much better solutions on their own, if we create the right conditions for them to think independently and without interruption.

This has a huge added benefit if you are mentoring someone you hope to take work from you. You will hear the quality of their thinking, ideas, and decision making and that will naturally build your confidence in them.

Share experience and information (not advice)

What happens then, when our mentee seeks our input? That’s the point after all of having a mentor rather than a coach – they can help by adding their thinking into the mix.

Well firstly, if you’ve listened longer, you have much more information to go on. You’re responding to a much fuller picture than if you had interrupted and ploughed in after 30 seconds.

We still need to be careful though. Humans have a weirdly strong urge to give advice. Mainly because we want to be helpful.

But if I’m honest, for me, there’s some ego in there too. I love to have the answers – it feels good, doesn’t it?

But there are two major problems with advice giving.

First, we often give it unsolicited, or in areas that it’s not wanted or needed. Instead, try asking “so what’s the question that you would like me to answer here?” or “What do you need from me right now?”

Second, we get very attached to advice that we’ve given. If you’ve suggested how someone should solve a problem, you may find yourself watching to see if they follow your advice. Perhaps watching to see if they do something different and it goes wrong. You might even utter that old chestnut “well, I did say….”.

Instead, offer information and share your experiences. Share a story of something similar that you have been through – what you felt you did well and where you could have done better. What were the outcomes? Share a model, or a book, or some information that was shared with you.

Model vulnerability. Don’t be afraid to share your mistakes and what you learned from them.

Offer it as a gift, and watch as it weaves itself into their thinking and your hard won experience becomes something that they can learn from unencumbered.

Encouragement and appreciation

Another aspect of great mentorship is to encourage and appreciate your mentee regularly.

Chances are that if they are engaged with a mentor, they have a growth mindset. That means they are striving hard, sometimes winning, and sometimes getting smacked in the face by some hard won lessons. That can really knock confidence.

Many people come to me for coaching, having had their confidence eroded over the years. As a mentor, you have a great opportunity to do something about that. Simply offering advice, or telling someone to be more confident (yep, I’ve heard that one!) isn’t going to move the needle.

However, the honest, sincere appreciation of someone we admire and respect can help us keep the faith and boost us back up when we really need it. Over time, having someone championing us, reassuring us that our thinking is brilliant, and building us up after a fall rebuilds confidence.

It’s a wonderful gift that a great mentor can bring.

Ditching advice for empowerment

If all mentors focused on learning the skills which helped them to:

Listen well
Share experience and information (not advice)
Encourage and appreciate

I think the next generation would be more capable, empowered, and confident. A generation of future leaders primed to think for themselves, lead in their own way, standing on the shoulders of great mentors who were willing to be vulnerable and sensitively share their experiences.

I think that’s something worth striving for.

This blog was written by our guest author, Rebecca Timmins of when we think.