What Should Happen When We Meet?

At its heart the mentoring relationship is about two friends coming together to talk about how the less experienced can gain from the experience of the other. How friends interact with each other is as varied as the friendships themselves. How you meet in a mentoring relationship is up to you. Do what works best for both people.

I was in a formal mentoring relationship set up by my employer. My mentor was a senior manager, so he had managers working for him who had other people working for them. The first time I interviewed him over the phone. I remember him cutting that conversation short, “There’s people in my office. Something must have broke.” Later, when we planned how we should meet, he told me that it would work best for him if we met away from the office because, if he were there for people to find, people would interrupt our meetings. We met for an hour each month at some of the local restaurants and discussed such things as setting objectives and wording for what should be on a performance appraisal.

The first time we had lunch together, really didn’t know how we would handle the bill. It is always somewhat messy when a ticket has to be split. I wondered if I should pay it, since I was taking advantage of his time. He made it easy for me. “I’ll pay this time and you can pay next time.” Here again, you do what works best in your situation, but I think it is best if both people pay their own way. It is best if the mentor be one to express how he would like for it to be handled.

The meeting itself can include some amount of small talk and probably should. It is easier to communicate if we know something of what is going on in the other person’s life. But mentoring sessions should not degrade into nothing but chitchat. Whether you are the mentor or the mentee, it is your responsibility to make sure that the primary conversation during these meetings is about what the mentee needs to be doing to reach the goals that have been defined. There should be some discussion of what the mentee has done since the last meeting. There should also be discussion of what the mentee should do between now and the next meeting. These meetings are also a good place to discuss things that may be coming up later and any goals that may need to change due to the current situation.

Mentoring meetings should happen at regular intervals, though they don’t have to fall on the same day each month, fortnight or week, as the case may be. Before the mentoring session ends, a time for the next meeting should be discussed. If a decision can’t be made as to time at that point, there should at least be a plan for setting that time in the near future. For example, one of the two might say that he will email the other when he finds out when his wife is off work.