The Mentor Mentee Relationship Has To Be A Two-Way Street

Author:
Gary
PUBLISHED ON:
June 16, 2021
June 26, 2023
PUBLISHED IN:
Leadership And Mentoring

Imagine you’re stuck in a lift with a bunch of geniuses. Maybe Microsoft magnate Bill Gates is leaning against one wall, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is by the other and in between are the world’s best scientists, lawyers and authors.

Once the nerves wear off you’re ready to start picking their brains and ask a few of your burning questions – but to your surprise, they’ve got almost as many things they want to ask you!

Why? Because mentoring isn’t just about learning from the most experienced and successful people, it’s a tool for those mentor figures to see things from a different perspective  – hence it’s no longer a simple one-way street.

In fact, 87% said they feel empowered by their mentor mentee relationship and have developed greater confidence – highlighting that it’s really bringing value to both parties. And this blog post will explain how…

The mentor and mentee relationship, roles and changing dynamics

The mentor

Mentors are people in the know! They’ve been around the block and built up a wealth of skill and experience. They’ve got plenty to teach but that’s not their only role in the mentor mentee relationship…

A good mentor won’t simply spoon feed the answers, they ask great questions, prompt the mentee to bring ideas to the table and help them set out plans they can put into practice. We’ll have more on that later, but it’s worth pointing out that a mentor should give them the time and space to try these solutions independently and in the right moments.

Bob Mosher made this point on an episode of L&D Disrupt, but we have to start building learning with the moment of application in mind and that’s another way the mentor mentee relationship and dynamics are changing.

It’s no longer enough for a mentee to ask a question and a mentor to prescribe the answer – they need to go back to first principles, discuss the desired outcome and dismiss any preconceptions about the best way to get there.

The Mentee

And while we’re on the subject of an evolving mentor mentee relationship, let’s move onto the role of the modern mentee. We often talk about how important curiosity is as a learner and this is a great example.

When a mentor is sharing their experiences, the mentee can hold up a mirror and help them reflect on why they’ve done it that way and if there’s still some room for improvement. Especially if that mentee is coming armed with probing questions around how they got to that technique, when they refined it and the outcomes it produced. What we’re saying is that both the mentee and mentor have wisdom to share in this relationship!

If that wasn’t a big enough argument for the evolution of the mentoring relationship, we’ve got the idea of helping a group of people reach new heights. Something that’s really driven by the advancements in learning technology and platforms – especially in a period where classroom training has become almost non-existent.

Group mentoring

And, unless you want a group mentor tearing their hair out, you’ve got to give them a tool to connect, monitor and measure how their mentees are progressing. In HowNow, it’s as simple as creating a learning group for your mentees – allowing you to share resources with every relevant person in a matter of clicks.

But it’s more than that, it’s about creating courses where people can come together and share their thoughts, all while being able to check in on individual performance. It’s those insights that give you that personal touch despite the group element, allowing you to see pain points and address them individually.

Here’s everything you need to know about building a mentor mentee relationship using HowNow.

Why The Modern Mentor/Mentee Relationship Is A Two-Way Street

Why The Modern Mentor Mentee Relationship Is A Two-Way Street

Creating an effective mentor mentee relationship

Connecting the right people

A good mentor mentee relationship begins by understanding which people have particular skills and knowledge to share, and working out what people in your teams want to learn. The big conundrum for a lot of companies is measuring skills and keeping a record – otherwise this all important first step feels a lot like guess work.

That’s our belief anyway! And it’s why we offer you the tools to create a dynamic skills profile for each person, based on self and peer review.

Adding A Skill In HowNow

How building a skills profile can accelerate your mentor mentee relationship

That’s the basis for a successful mentor mentee relationship, but it also ensures that crucial relevance between  both the mentor strengths and mentee issues. All of which play their part in setting clear expectations and goals that focus on solving problems…

Establish clear goals and expectations

Following on from that skills theme, you might decide that improving their proficiency in a certain area is one of the goals from your relationship – measuring their skill level before and after would be a clear and tangible outcome. But the relationship might be centered around completing a certain project or initiative – in which case you might choose to break it down into smaller tasks and set out a clear timeline.

However, with your mentor hat on at this point, it might not be as cut and dried. Your mentee might come to you with a goal or problem and it’s tempting to simply prescribe something based on what they’re demanding.

But it’s better to have consulting conversations and get to the heart of their problem. A mentor mentee relationship is no different to any other, it’s a case of asking the right questions to work out the bottlenecks or the true goal they’re trying to achieve .

Managing communication and ensuring structured mentoring

A good mentor mentee relationship requires commitment – both parties have to agree to regular check-ins and ensure they’re covering all the key goals and milestones. You’ll see an example from HowNow below, but these are tips you can apply when you’re creating any mentoring course. You need to have a structured process, with established goal-setting sessions, meetings, assessments and relevant resources – it’s just better if that’s all in one place ????.

And hosting it all within one course allows you to add notes and ideas following each session, to turn on our Discussions feature and communicate directly on your resources and to add new sections as and when you need to.

Mentorship course gif

A flexible and an evolving relationship

It would be really simple if the process went something like: brainstorming, mentor advice, mentee success and wrap-up celebrations. But nothing worth having is ever that simple! You might try something that fails or needs a little more time in the mentee oven before it’s ready. More hurdles might pop up that require a change in approach – and that’s fine too.

In a mentoring relationship, both parties need to be flexible and willing to divert course if it appears a new route is required. It’s important, however, that they document their successes, failures, goals and tactics as that evolution happens. Why? Because it may well help others further down the line.

Sharing what you’ve learnt with others

Now, one of the key reasons we’re arguing that it’s no longer JUST a two-way street is that you’ll typically find lessons learnt through mentoring are useful to other people within the team. If you’re going to build on the compound knowledge of everyone in your team, you have to recognise there are more than just two parties in the mentor mentee relationship.

Let’s say you pair a new leader together with a world-leading mentor from outside the company. They’ll learn a hell of a lot, take that and put it into practice. As they do that, and build their skills, they establish how the mentor advice can be applied in the context of your company. Naturally, there’ll be countless colleagues in similar positions who could really benefit from their newly-built wisdom.

And it’s why it’s important that all your learning lives in one platform, where everyone has access to it.

For example, a senior sales figure mentoring a more inexperienced person on how to reopen seemingly closed doors might provide everything needed for an employee cheat sheet – something that would help everyone in the sales team. So, alongside the platform, it’s important that everyone has this mindset as they enter mentoring relationships. When knowledge sharing becomes part of culture, it can extend the reach of coaching throughout the company.

Measurement and tangible outcomes

It’s something we’ve touched on already, but measurement is a key part of any mentor mentee relationships – especially if you’ve established clear goals. From a mentor perspective, reporting can help you understand where a mentee is stuck in the learning journey or which content they’re engaging with most frequently.

This not only helps you gain a better understanding of the mentee and build a better relationship, it can help you determine which resources are most useful to someone hoping to build a certain skill or learn a particular topic – which links back nicely to that idea of sharing relevant knowledge with others and making mentoring more social in the process.

But who do the people building mentoring programs go to for advice!? We’ll happily lend you an ear to discuss your needs and help you build successful mentor mentee relationships every time, just drop us a message here.

Updated mentoring relationship advice for 2022 and beyond

Ensure better development conversations are happening (this will set up a successful mentoring relationship)

There is no crystal ball at HowNow, but we do have an edit button that lets us update posts when new information emerges. And boy has some good research popped up that’ll help you build a successful mentor mentee relationship!

In a nutshell, development conversations are happening frequently but not at the desired standard for many employees.

HR Trends Performance Conversations

Now, a good mentor isn’t always a manger, but the quality of their interactions with mentees hinges on a clear progress plan and having solid direction. If development conversations aren’t nailing root causes of problems, establishing the skills an employee will need and setting clear goals, mentoring will soon become misguided.

The same Clear Review report had this to say:

“We ask employees how meaningful the conversations they have with their managers are, and 31% of them said they feel the conversations they do have are basic or bad, with little or no focus on wellbeing or development.”

Build a consistent approach across in-person, remote and hybrid employees

Another issue to contend with is the consistency in your mentoring offering, regardless of where people work! A mentor mentee relationship needs to run smoothly regardless of geography and working preferences, something many companies are still struggling with.

Leaning on learning and development data from Beezy, we can see there’s still a real disconnect between in-person and remote experiences, and it’s incredibly likely this translates to mentoring.

Differences in learning and working between in person and remote employees


Like refereeing decisions in football, all your people want is consistency. For example, if contact time is better for in-person employees, that’s not fair to remote employees. If mentoring budgets differ or the methods used vary too widely, that’s not a recipe for happy people or fruitful mentor mentee relationships.

Check out our other leadership development resources