Author:: Gwen Moran
Full Title:: The Best Mentors Ask These 8 Questions
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Notes::
What Does Success Look Like To You?
What Is The Outcome You Want?
“If [the protégé] is facing a really complicated situation, that is often the best question you can ask to help them lift their head up and start to look at the situation from an entirely new angle,”
What Do You Want To Be Different In Three To Five Years?
answers may reveal how the protégé wants to grow, or fundamental changes they need to make in order to achieve their goals
What Are The Obstacles You’re Facing?
protégés may be reluctant to share the challenges they are facing, or may not have really thought them through. Asking about them outright allows the mentor to explore the challenges with which the protégé is struggling
What Can You Control?
Shifts the focus from external factors to internal agency
What Are The Options You’ve Come Up With?
Allows the protege to own the solution instead of only going to an outside source to solve it
Tell me more
Asking for more detail can help uncover biases or blindspots that are impacting their judgment
What are you reading?
Getting to know a person holistically can radically inform advice
First added October 24th, 2021
“For mentors, the most important thing, really, is to ask questions, to be this guide on the side, rather than the sage on the stage”