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How To Mentor an Employee: Best Practices for Mutual Success

Learn best practices for mentoring employees and finding mutual success. Our article covers key strategies and tips for effective mentoring.

How To Mentor an Employee: Best Practices for Mutual Success
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The rise of remote work and robots may have changed how people work and what they do, but one thing remains the same: Employees want mentorship. Younger generation workers are especially eager mentees, as they want their work lives to be as fulfilling as their personal lives. For these younger team members, the desire for guidance is so great that:

  • 82% of Gen Z workers said they prefer a boss who cares about them and can relate to them on issues beyond work
  • 73% said they are motivated to do a better job when they feel that their supervisor cares about them

These findings underscore what surveys have shown for years: Offering a mentoring program increases employee retention and engagement.

While many people think mentorship is primarily for developing employees to move up their career path, there are many other opportunities for mentorship. You may want to start as early as when you’re onboarding a new hire. Your employee mentoring program can also be used to strengthen company culture as people level-up their skills.

For example, in a practice called reverse mentoring, a less experienced employee mentors a more experienced team member. Reverse mentoring fosters connections between team members of different backgrounds as coworkers share trends and information like how to use AI at work and how to get back to work after a long break.

You don’t have to hold a certain role or have years of experience to be a good mentor. These key strategies provide a foundation for how to mentor someone professionally:

Establish a clear mentoring relationship

When you mentor an employee for growth, you’re transferring knowledge, much like a teacher or coach. So, the more you can work from mutual trust, candid communication, and respect, the faster you can help your mentee reach their goal. And to be honest, the more fulfilling the experience will be for you too.

Use your inclusive leadership skills to approach the relationship with an open mind and get to know the whole person, not just what they do at work. As author Simon Sinek learned from his own experience, great mentor relationships are formed when “both parties show up to teach and both parties show up to learn.”

To ensure a successful relationship from the beginning, be sure to:

  • Set a goal. Usually, the mentee knows what they want to achieve before your first meeting together. But if they don’t have a clear goal, help them determine what they want. And be specific about what success looks like. Some people set SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) and ensure their goals align with the company culture and values.
  • Clarify expectations. During your first meeting, be clear about what your mentee expects and your expectations of the relationship. Avoid any misunderstandings by reining in any over-the-top goals and clarifying what you’re able to provide.
  • Schedule regular meetings. You and your mentee have busy schedules, so it’s best not to schedule meetings simply whenever you feel like it. Respect each other’s time by establishing a set meeting schedule. You may also want to agree on:
  • How long meetings will last
  • How often you’ll meet
  • How you’ll meet (e.g., by phone, in person, or online)
  • How long the mentoring relationship will last
  • Make accountability mandatory. Mentors help mentees live up to their potential, which requires that both parties are committed to a successful mentoring relationship. This means everyone shows up to meetings promptly, gives each other adequate time to review any related material, completes assignments by their deadlines, delivers quality work, and does what they say they’ll do.

Read: How to Create an Employee Mentorship Program

Provide balanced support

Mentoring employees requires more than helping mentees achieve their career goals and offering advice. Mentorship is a structured relationship based on mutual respect and accountability. And the relationship requires that you serve the multiple roles of friend, coach, teacher, and cheerleader. To that end:

  • Let the mentee lead. Usually, mentees lead the conversations. Your job isn’t to tell them what to do but to guide them in figuring out how to achieve their goals and solve problems. Ask open-ended questions to uncover skill set and knowledge gaps. Use active listening. Help your mentee see different perspectives by sharing stories. Work together in crafting an action plan that will get your mentee where they want to be.
  • Speak candidly. Be direct and honest when giving feedback. You should be respectful and empathetic but don’t sugarcoat things or shy away from tough conversations.
  • Be an advocate. When appropriate, seek ways to champion your mentee. Give them opportunities to increase their visibility. You could introduce them to people within your network, champion them to lead an initiative, or nominate them for an organization.
  • Encourage them through tough times. Inspire your mentee through personal and career challenges by teaching them to leverage their strengths. Help them identify and improve areas that are required to reach their mentorship goal.
  • Share mindfully. People can overshare in an attempt to be authentic. But that can backfire in a mentoring relationship because you hold a bit more authority than the mentee. So it’s OK to be real, but be mindful of what your mentee may find uncomfortable.

Share knowledge and experiences

Good mentors are trusted allies. Mentees must trust that your guidance is based on relevant experience, that your information is accurate, and that they can rely on you to do what you say. This doesn’t mean you must be perfect; it’s OK not to know all the answers. In fact, you may be more effective when you share stories of struggle.

Sharing the good stuff and the bad makes sense when you think about whose advice you’d trust more, someone who seems to have things come easily to them? Or someone who’s struggled, learned from difficulties, and used the experiences to improve their lives?

Mentors offer guidance and knowledge. Showing vulnerability and how you faced similar challenges to what mentees are facing will encourage them to be honest and vulnerable. And they may be more receptive to your feedback.

Be sure to balance authenticity with awareness. When mentoring employees at the workplace, you may be viewed as having a position of power. So be especially careful to respect any hierarchical or cultural norms to keep the relationship comfortable for both of you and others in the workplace.

Foster growth and learning

A good mentor helps the mentee develop their skill sets and self-awareness to move them further along their career path in a fulfilling way. Don’t tell them what to do, but guide them to find the answers.

Instead of telling them what the next steps are, be an empathetic leader by listening with an open mind. Listen intently, be aware of your own biases, and encourage mentees to consider different perspectives and ideas. When you guide them in discovering the answers on their own, they’re empowered. When you cheat them of their self-discovery by telling them what to do, they’re merely enabled.

During the mentoring relationship, mentees will try new things. Some will turn out well; when this happens, make time to celebrate them. Some of their efforts will crash and burn and that’s good too. Talk about these experiences and learn from them. Mentees improve when they take steps to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and why their efforts failed or succeeded.

Evaluate the mentee’s progress and adjust

You and the mentee should have agreed on a measurable goal when you first established your mentoring relationship. It’s vital that by the end of your first meeting, you clearly established what success looks like and have a way to measure that success. Their goal could be:

  • Focused on the business: Raise my team safety rate from 15% to 39%
  • About their career path: Lead an initiative that is critical to meeting a business goal
  • Oriented toward their leadership skills: Improve my management evaluation score from 46% to 61% positive

With their goal in mind, regularly ask yourself: How is the mentee tracking toward their goal? What do I need to adjust to ensure they attain it?

You’re there to help the mentee succeed, so commit to gathering data and being open to new ideas and the mentee's feedback. Work together on problem-solving and decision-making in the process of achieving goals. Be prepared to pivot from original plans if progress indicates a need for new thinking.

In addition, seek feedback on how you can improve as a mentor. Adapt your approach as you learn about the mentee’s needs and preferences.

Adapt your mentoring approach for a remote workplace

Remote work is becoming so common that you may have to mentor employees through a video chat at times. You may lose some of the voice and body language nuances you get in face-to-face interactions, but virtual mentoring offers unique advantages:

  • Record conversations. Most online meeting apps allow you to record and share calls with a single click, which makes it easier for you and your mentee to reflect on past conversations. What’s more, many apps also offer free transcriptions of the conversations as an added convenience.
  • Increase diversity and inclusion. Translation apps enable you to mentor a more global workforce. Closed captioning apps and being able to meet from anywhere enable you to include people with disabilities.
  • Expand equity. Anyone with a stable phone or internet connection can receive mentoring, which increases opportunities for nearly all employees.
  • Respect emotional and cultural needs. Meeting through a screen is less intimate, which may reduce anxiety in situations where cross-gender mentoring may create discomfort for the mentor or mentee.

Virtual mentoring also has its disadvantages. Here are some of the top ways experts recommend mentoring remote employees for common obstacles:

  • Lukewarm connection. It’s harder to connect with a bunch of pixels on a screen than a live person. You can encourage connection by being an active listener, remaining open-minded, and avoiding assumptions. Make the mentee feel safe to confide in you by reiterating how you’ll keep all discussions private and confidential.
  • Zoom fatigue. Having to meet online for work everyday and then for mentoring meetings can get tiring fast. Once you or the mentee burns out from screen time, the relationship may feel more like another task-focused work meeting than a supportive experience. Prevent video fatigue by doubling down on boosting your human connection. Tap into your empathetic leadership skills to find similarities between you and the mentee, make time to understand them more deeply as a whole person—not just who they are at work—and to prevent biases and stereotypes.
  • Communication overwhelm. Since you and the mentee can’t run into each other in the hallway to ask a quick question, it’s easy to bombard each other with questions online. During the first meeting, set expectations regarding the frequency of communication, times of availability, and which tools to use (e.g., email, messaging, video).

Elevate your mentorship relationship with experts on Upwork

You have the skills and knowledge to positively impact an employee more than you may realize. What’s great is that being a good mentor is neither complicated nor technical. Most mentoring tips and strategies boil down to the same elements required of any successful relationship: open communication, mutual respect, and a commitment to a shared goal.

If you’re mentoring someone for the first time, or you’ve done it for years and want to enhance your effectiveness, Upwork can help. Visit the Talent Marketplace to connect with independent experts like executive coaches to fine-tune your skills. You can also go to the marketplace to consult with industry experts to gain a greater understanding of your mentee.

While you’re there, why not find a mentor for yourself? Upwork offers such a broad and deep range of talent, you’re sure to find the right person to connect with.

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Author Spotlight

How To Mentor an Employee: Best Practices for Mutual Success
Brenda Do
Copywriter

Brenda Do is a direct-response copywriter who loves to create content that helps businesses engage their target audience—whether that’s through enticing packaging copy to a painstakingly researched thought leadership piece. Brenda is the author of "It's Okay Not to Know"—a book helping kids grow up confident and compassionate.

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