Over the course of the past year I’ve had the opportunity to mentor and coach a number of students, engineers, and startup founders on …
Over the course of the past year I’ve had the opportunity to mentor and coach a number of students, engineers, and startup founders on a variety of topics mostly centered around entrepreneurship, engineering, and product development.
As I’ve gone through the process, it’s been brought to my attention that people don’t always value mentorship. Some people are just looking to me for all the answers to their personal predicaments. I’m not equipped to handle such needs because I’m not trained therapist.
While others reach out to me once, and I never hear from them again. It leaves me feeling like they just wanted to “pick my brain”. I cannot blame them, because there maybe more to their situation than I know.
However, this is not my style, I prefer to offer some level of guidance once I’ve gotten to know someone for awhile, and then leave the exploration process and decision making up to the individual. This requires an investment in time both on my part and the mentees.
After being through a number of situations, I’ve had some time to reflect. What I’ve noticed is that I tend to have better, meaning, more professional relationships, with people who were at some point in time a student of mine, and had participated in a course or we had a formal agreement consulting agreement in place. Teaching or working with them for awhile lets me get to know them, and then provide better guidance. Teaching in particular also gives the students more structure and context. They can bring up specific needs based on what they’ve learned or maybe missing from the curriculum, and I can address those needs through 1-1 mentoring.
Therefore, going forward I have formalized my mentoring process. Those who participate in one of my courses will receive mentoring as part of the course, and for those who aren’t enrolled they’ll need to apply to my mentoring program in order to receive mentorship from me. If you’re interested, please see this document for all the details and feel free to contact me here.
