Questions to Ask a Mentor to Further Your Professional Development

In a professional mentorship, a more experienced professional takes on a teaching role for somebody with less experience in their field. The arrangement allows the mentor to pass on their knowledge and help the mentee develop more quickly. As the recipient of the advice, you benefit by learning valuable lessons from your mentor through their experience and years of hard work. In this article, you can learn the benefits of finding a mentor, and the questions you should consider asking them.

Why is it important to ask a mentor questions

There are two primary professional benefits to having a mentor. The first is the enhanced networking and career opportunities that may be opened as a result of your closer connection with a more senior professional, but that’s not the only important benefit. If you pick the right mentor, you have access to a deep library of professional knowledge that your mentor likely learned through a combination of trial-and-error and learning from their own mentors. This is a more efficient way for you to learn and grow professionally, allowing you to find more success in your field.

In order to get the most out of the relationship, however, you not only need to find the right person to look to as a mentor but also need to make sure that you’re learning the right information. While there is no golden collection of questions you need to ask, there are still strong general questions that are broadly applicable. Many of the most important questions will be those specific to your job or even to a particular event or problem you are addressing. These questions provide you with a solid base to begin building your professional mentorship.

Valuable questions to ask your mentor

If you aren’t sure what to ask your mentor, these questions are a great starting point:

Where do you seek out and find your inspiration and motivation?

When applying knowledge from your mentor, it’s important to have a strong understanding of how they operate in order to relate it to your own preferences. This question lets you see what drives your mentor professionally and can potentially provide guidance for ways you can stay motivated and goal-oriented, as well.

What are the core values that guide your professional career?

Similarly to knowing what drives your mentor, it’s useful to know what they hold to be most important in a professional setting. This can be used both as a tool to help you discover new values to consider as well as to look for how close of a match there is between yourself and your mentor if you receive an answer that strongly aligns with or opposes your own personal beliefs.

How do you maintain a healthy balance of professional and personal time?

Finding a good balance between work and play is important. Too little emphasis on work can hinder your career progression, while too much exposes you to potential burnout. By understanding how they manage the balancing act, you can take their structure and adjust it as needed to match your lifestyle while still building on a strong framework.

What are some key pieces of media that helped you develop professionally?

Knowing what your mentor turned to when they were looking to expand their professional skills can clue you in on some excellent resources. While this question may once have been more directly focused on professional books, now there are various forms of media that can be used to learn and develop skills. From printed materials to online streaming seminars, consuming the same media is a great way to take the overview you get from your mentor and expand it out with more of the underlying details and training.

What advice do you wish you had been given when you were in my position?

One of the biggest benefits of having a mentor is learning all the things they didn’t know when they were in your shoes and learned later down the line. By asking them to pull out the single biggest thing they wish they knew earlier you are likely to learn a piece of highly valuable professional information.

What do you spend the largest portion of your workday doing?

Whether your mentor has a similar job to you with more experience at it, or is higher ranking and holding a position you’d like to rise to in the future, this is a great way to learn what this professional you look up to is actually doing at work. The answer may be expected, in which case you can ask a follow up about how they carry it out, or you could get surprised about what your successful mentor actually does and instead learn about something new you may want to consider.

Do you have any recommendations for professionals I should reach out to?

Just because you have found a mentor you trust doesn’t mean they have to be your only one. Unless you are in a situation where your mentor both considers you a protege and is also possessive of that idea, your mentor will likely be happy to provide you with more references. Building a larger pool of mentors both lowers the burden on any given mentor and also increases the overall information you have access to.

What can I do to help you?

The best relationships are never one-way streets. Just because your mentor is in a better position to help you than vice versa doesn’t mean you can’t help at all. Asking how you can assist them allows you to pay back some of the effort they have put into you, and will be appreciated by your mentor.