From the course: Being a Good Mentor

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Building trust and rapport with your mentee

Building trust and rapport with your mentee

From the course: Being a Good Mentor

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Building trust and rapport with your mentee

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A common early obstacle is that most mentees want to impress you. After all, who wants to start off by showing the vulnerable aspects of themselves? So they share only the positives. To shift the tone, you can tell them, I've heard the good things, and that's great. What do you want perspective or help on? That permission is powerful. Often the most effective mentoring isn't just good advice, but advice delivered in in a way that makes the mentee feel, wow, you really get me. Trust and rapport are at the heart of great mentorship. Remember, you weren't always you. You might be mentoring a younger version of yourself who didn't yet have your instincts, confidence, or pattern recognition. One way to build trust is to be appropriately vulnerable. This isn't about airing dirty laundry. Rather, it's about sharing a real failure. What happened? What did you learn? And how did you move forward? When you do this, you show them that struggle is normal and that growth is possible. I recently…

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