Why Shouldn't I Be Paid For Mentoring?

Mentoring is a valuable service, right? So, what is wrong with a mentor charging a mentee for that service? It is a valid question. Mentoring requires a time. Let’s say that the mentor sets aside an hour per month to meet with his mentee. That is twelve hours per year and when you consider that the mentor may spend a couple of hours getting ready for a meeting with a mentee, we could be looking at thirty-six hours per year. We’ll look at the benefits of being a mentor later, but what would be wrong with getting compensation for that time.

You may not realize it, but in many corporate mentoring programs, neither the mentor nor the mentee are compensated for their time, but the mentors not only volunteer to take on one mentee they often volunteer to take on two or thee. But as I said, we’ll look at that later. The real problem with the mentor being compensated by the mentee is that places the mentor in a position of not only being the employee of the mentee but also in a position of trying to maintain the relationship at a time when the mentee should be seeking a different mentor. If you are looking for a new car, you might go to various dealers. The salesmen will accentuate the positives of what they are selling. They may not be dishonest, but there are things that they won’t tell you. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were someone who would tell you the good, the bad and the ugly, not just what they think will encourage you to buy a car? That is what we are looking for with mentoring.

Mentoring is not a replacement for things like reading books or paying someone to edit your manuscript. It also isn’t a shortcut to getting your manuscript accepted by an agent. A writing mentor may sit down with the mentee and say, “What really helped me was that I read such and such book,” or maybe he tells the mentee that it would really help to have the manuscript professionally edited. If the mentor is a published author, the mentee might pass him his manuscript and ask, “Can you show this to your agent?” I think you see the problem. If the mentor is on the mentee’s payroll, it creates a conflict of interest, making it hard for him to tell the mentee that it wouldn’t be advisable to show the agent the manuscript at this time. That is part of why literary agents are paid the way they are, so that they are not in a position where they must show editors everything that crosses their desks.