Performance Evaluation: Mentee

Don’t expect your mentor to evaluate your performance and don’t ask him to. Putting the mentor in that position makes things difficult for both people. It will almost always leave you, the mentee, feeling down. Your mentor is better than you in the area you are trying to improve, so he is likely to notice problems rather than being impressed with your skill. If he gives you an evaluation, you will feel like you can’t do anything right. The mentor also finds it difficult because he doesn’t want to tear you down, but he also wants to be honest.

Instead of putting your mentor in that situation, do an honest self evaluation before you meet with your mentor. If you are trying to improve your writing, for example, you might pick out some of the paragraphs from your work and say, “I think I could do better with these, but I’m not sure how.” If you are trying to improve your work ethic, you might mention some of the times you didn’t spend as much time writing as you think you should have and ask your mentor what you can do to improve. When you evaluate yourself, you own the evaluation and are much more willing to find a way to improve.