Defining Success

You’ve probably had a number of mentees, someone in your position, and I’m curious, in a mentoring relationship, how should mentees think about their role and their responsibilities? And what do they need to do to be good mentees?

Well, I think the first thing you have to do is get clear on what matters to you and what success looks like to you in your career. The clearer you can get where you can say, these are my professional ambitions, this is what I think a fulfilling career would look like to me, what you aspire to, what your ambitions are, the more clarity you have with that, then anyone who is playing a mentor role to you is in a much better position to help you.
And then the question you can ask is, what are the most important things I can do now to give myself the highest probability of success later if this is what I’m hoping for? And then the question becomes very clear, and the role that the mentor can play becomes very clear. Again, it’s sort of like going back to defining success, if you can define success in this context, clearly, your chances of achieving it are higher and the fuzzier it is, the harder it is for any mentor to help somebody.