Geared Up Issue 2 2015 | Page 47

availability of your mentor, and establish a regular meeting schedule. Be a good mentee. Just as there are specific characteristics of a successful mentor, there are attributes that make a good mentee. Remember, a mentor is doing this from the goodness of his or her heart, so being a good mentee is the best way to ensure the relationship enjoys a healthy, purposeful existence. A mentee needs to be committed, willing to ask for help, open and receptive to learning and trying new ideas, able to accept and act on feedback, able to communicate appropriately and effectively, able to meet on a regular basis and be personally responsible and accountable. How to Become a Mentor: Becoming a mentor can boost your own professional development, as well as help others. Through constant reflection on your own best practices and mistakes, your continuous self-reflective analyzation often reveals myriad characteristics that may have gone overlooked. However, good mentors, must not only be successful and experienced within their own positions, but must also desire to develop other people, seeing their growth and success as their own. Define your Goals. Establish guidelines for the relationship early on with your mentee. They may have concerns about specific issues such as confidentiality, so talk those through in your initial meetings. Your ultimate goal is to empower your mentee and it can be more effective to ask constructive yet challenging questions. Ergo, your role is to guide, not enforce. If your mentee turns out to not be fully committed to the process, reaffirm your boundaries for the relationship. Your time is valuable and mentoring should be enjoyable and mutually benef