The article Ngozi Adebiyi’s Business Nuggets: Mind Your Mentor has an interesting list of questions mentees should ask themselves about prospective mentors that are quite different from other lists I’ve seen:
1. What truly draws them to you?
2. What other conversations are they mentoring you about your personal life which you’re allowing taint the very core or your being? You’ll wake up five years from now and rationalise these matters.
3. What have they sacrificed along the way? Might that be your path?
4. Is their mentoring you supposed to be just seasonal and you’re looking to make it a lifetime task for them?
5. Might you have outgrown them by crossing into another space which they are unable and equipped to take you forward? Why hang on?
6. Have you considered how some of their values that border on being warped have sort of become “normal” to you since they influence you in other key areas of life?
Ngozi Adebiya concludes her article with the advice for finding a mentor in 2017 with:
Iron sharpens iron. Ensure you’re with iron not brass or an iron exterior with brass interiors and values then focus on getting sharpened in 2017!
That’s advice I can totally agree with!
Mentoring of entrepreneurs is truly an international phenomenon today and it’s interesting to see a different perspective, from outside the typical Silicon Valley/New York/Boston entrepreneurial axis.
Mentorphile 