Mentor: Not Their Personal Google

Google has changed our lives. A vast amount of information, advice and opinions, is available literally at our fingertips. Almost any question answered at the push of a button.

Mentors beware! If you become someone's personal Google you do them, and yourself, a disservice.

You may have a wealth of life experience, highly valuable expertise and an abundance of ideas that you want to share. Your human instinct, as a mentor who has volunteered to assist another person is to provide answers and solve problems. Yet if you answer questions too quickly you may:

• Build dependence;
• Risk answering the wrong question; and
• Create a status imbalance and resistance.

Dependence

When you give answers too quickly, people may become reluctant to think for themselves, take responsibility or develop trust in their own decisions. Often people already have the answer and all they need is confidence. Most people value most mentors who are a sounding board.

Answering The Wrong Question

Often, the first question articulated by a person is not the actual issue. It may take a while to establish the real need underlying it. Simply providing information may keep mentoring at a superficial and unsatisfying level.

Status

Knowledge is power. When you know something someone else does not, they may feel inferior. In relationships, when one person's status is perceived to be lower than the other, the brain and the body perceive it as a threat. Subtle biochemical changes take place induced by emotions that remain below awareness. At the first hint of any kind of danger, the brain and body is aroused to scan for and react with fight, flight, freeze. This pre-emptive action reduces people's ability to listen, learn and relate to one another.

So, of the three key strategies that mentors use when responding to mentoree questions, answering the question is the last one.

Strategies

• Ask questions
• Suggest resources
• Offer information

Ask Questions

My mother taught me that it is wrong to answer a question with a question. Yet this is exactly what I recommend mentors do! Questions get people to think critically about issues, explore their values and priorities and make decisions for which they can take responsibility.

Suggest Resources

You don't have to have all the answers or be the source of all wisdom. If you can get people to research information themselves and bring it to the table for discussion your mentoring will be much more powerful and satisfying. The value you add is in the conversation about what the information means and how it can be applied.

Offer Information

Finally, offer information, ideas and opinions. This empowers mentorees to make their own decisions and choose their own actions and respects their ability to assess what is right for them. You can help them think through how their choices align with their personal values. You can lead them to consider the consequences of possible actions and you can prompt them to think of alternatives.

You have far more to offer in a mentoring relationship than being someone's personal Google. Answers are only part of the equation. A mentoring relationship, where people feel safe to express themselves, share their dreams, admit their problems, celebrate their success, air their feelings, think out loud is way more important. That's how mentoring works.