How can I get the most out of mentoring?

It’s probably no surprise that I’m a big fan of mentoring.

I’m Eleanor Steele and I’m the MedComms Mentor after all.

But mentoring can be challenging. There are many different approaches and not all of them will be right for you. It also can sound very formal and off-putting, but mentoring could just be one simple, helpful conversation with somebody who can help you with a particular challenge.

That might just be a conversation between you and a friend. Maybe you are helping each other with something that you are each good at and the other needs. It could be a professional relationship. It could be entirely in your own head. I talk about that a bit more in my previous video on how freelancers can find support.

This video is one of that series, inspired by my article for the EMWA journal ‘Medical Writing’ around how freelancers can use coaching or mentoring to build a sustainable career.

But this video isn’t just for freelancers. Yes, I use a couple of examples based around freelancing scenarios, but mentoring is useful for everyone. We all have skills we want to develop or things that we can’t necessarily figure out completely on our own.

In an agency, you might get mentoring support from your line manager, but you might not. It’s OK to need support from someone else. Diverse perspectives help us develop by giving us a new angle, something we couldn’t have thought of or considered otherwise. Also your line manager isn’t omniscient, and they may be very busy.

Somebody else to help out and mentor you with specific things might be just what you need to help your progression. Also, senior people, I think, need mentoring even more than more junior people may. At this kind of level, learning and development is more about attitudes and behaviours rather than specific skills – sort of knowing how to do a specific project – and mentoring is more useful for this kind of thing than didactic training.

 If you’re a freelancer though, you don’t have a line manager, I would assume. But that can be a benefit – there’s no default person that you’re going to turn to for support, because a line manager may not be the right person to give support, even if it’s available to you. They may not be able to help you with your particular challenge or help you in the right way for that particular challenge.

Now if you’re freelance, that doesn’t mean that you can’t get support. There are other options available. There might be somebody in your network, someone you used to work with, maybe someone in a broader community that you’re part of, or maybe a professional. That could be me, but there are other MedComms experts out there who also offer mentoring.

I’m getting ahead of myself though. Let’s first of all, think about why you want a mentor in the first place.

1. Define a specific goal

Just saying that you want some mentoring is a bit nebulous. Before you talk to anyone or even think about who you could talk to, you need to be clear on a couple of things.

First of all, what is the specific challenge that you need support with?

You might realise if you dig into this, that mentoring isn’t actually the most appropriate support option. I talk about this more in my previous video about how to get support as a freelancer, where we look at other potential support options depending on what your challenge is, including training and coaching.

But if mentoring is the right option for you, think about why it’s the right path. Defining this will help you explain to potential mentors why you want their help, and it might help you decide who you want to approach in the first place or decide between potential mentors if there are a couple of different options.

 The last thing to consider is what outcome you’re hoping for. So what would success look like after you’ve had some mentoring?

Let’s think of a couple of examples.

Maybe you are currently working in an agency and you’re not sure whether you want to go freelance or get a new job in a different agency.

You might want mentoring to talk through the different options, think about how you work, what your broader career goals are, how your work needs to fit in with your life. And you’d also want to understand what freelancing would actually be like and talk about other agency possibilities with someone who has experience across more agencies than you’ve worked at.

Success in this scenario would be a clear idea about the next step in your career and defined actions for you to follow so that you can get there.

Or maybe you are freelancing, but finding that running a freelance business is pretty different from just doing the writing in-house at an agency. And maybe finding the time for business development is hard while you’re in the midst of a contract, and then you get gaps between contracts that feel very insecure, or you end up saying yes to too much work and end up feeling very burnt out.

In this scenario, you would need support on creating a business development strategy that would be sustainable – both in terms of the time and effort needed while you are actually working on a contract, but also so that you can have a sustainable workload over the long term.

Success would be a business plan defining how much you need to be working each week or each month to meet your financial and lifestyle targets, and then clear steps that fit into your workload to build your client network and bring in work at a manageable pace.

The cherry on the cake here would be finding the right kind of work with the right kind of clients, so things that are interesting and the right level of challenge, projects that you enjoy working on, maybe therapy areas that you love, and working with clients who pay their invoices on time.

I talk about this a bit in my video on how to take control of your freelance career, so that you are defining exactly what you want to be working on and putting into practice the steps so that you are getting the right kind of work.

But mentoring can definitely help you define those things and work out strategies to put them into practice.

Once you’ve defined the challenge that you want mentoring support with, and you know what success will look like, it’s time to find your mentor.

2. Find the right mentor

If you are working in an agency, don’t dismiss people because they’re not your line manager or not your officially assigned mentor. It’s OK to work with different people on different challenges, and it’s unrealistic to think you are going to get everything that you need from one person.

If you’re freelance though, there may not be anyone obvious, but don’t dismiss people just because they work in an agency and you don’t, or they’re also a freelancer, so they’d see you as a competitor.

Look at your network and think about previous colleagues. Is there someone who springs to mind?

Reaching out to someone who you haven’t been in touch with for a while can feel quite nerve-wracking, but sending a short message, suggesting a chat or a catch up – maybe mentioning the challenge, but not setting specific expectations, will help you explore them in a bit more detail when you actually talk to them.

If you don’t hear back, they’re not the right person to help you. And even if they don’t respond, they’re unlikely to be angry that you’ve reached out, even if it feels really off-putting. Most people will be flattered by a request to help, even if they can’t actually give the help in the end.

Maybe they’re not able to commit to the support level that you would need, but if they can’t help, they may well be able to suggest somebody else who can, and they might even be able to put you in touch with them.

If you can’t think of anyone that you would be able to reach out to from within your network, it would be worth joining networking groups. Maybe reading posts, commenting and engaging in conversations, especially about the topic that you are particularly interested in, and also attending events, whether that’s online or in-person, and asking questions, connecting with the other attendees and speakers.

This could lead you to someone who could help and working your weak ties like this, is something that’s always going to be valuable to building your network and you never quite know where it’s going to go. This is something that is covered in an episode of the Squiggly Careers podcast from Amazing If, and there’s a link to the episode along with its supporting resources in the video description below. It’s really well worth a listen, and the pod sheet that goes with it has a lot of other things in included too.

Now going for a coffee or something with a new contact or just reaching out or making that first connection, means that you’ve probably got a long way to go before you are able to initiate mentoring, unless it’s something that they are looking to do as well.

So it’s probably not going to be a quick fix doing it like this. But it is worth finding the right person and cultivating the relationship so that you’re more likely to get what you need. But again, developing your network is useful even if you’re not doing it with a specific objective in mind.

Sometimes there won’t be somebody that you know or somebody within your network that you can find, or maybe you won’t have the time to cultivate that new contact. In this kind of scenario, a professional mentor or coach might be the most appropriate solution.

Obviously, I offer professional mentoring, but I’m not the only person with MedComms experience who does this.

My approach or my experience might not be right for the challenge that you are currently facing. It might still be worth reaching out to me though, I’ll tell you if I don’t think I’m the right person to be able to help you, and I’ll do my best to suggest someone else who might be better suited to supporting you.

Also, I always try to offer potential resources or things to try, even if we don’t begin a professional mentoring relationship. Professional coaches and mentors usually offer a free introductory conversation, so that you can see from both sides if it’s going to work.

Can they help you? Do you feel comfortable talking with them? Do they work in a way that fits with your brain?

It’s definitely not a one size fits all approach. Don’t just go with someone who looks good on paper. You won’t get the most out of mentoring if you don’t feel like you can be honest and vulnerable during these kind of conversations. That’s where the good stuff is.

Listen to your instincts about this, especially before you pay for any support.

3. Clarify boundaries

Once you’ve found your mentor, the first step of a mentoring relationship is setting it up so that you each know how it’s going to work, and have clear expectations from both sides.

Depending on whether you are working with a professional mentor or someone in your network, this might be in an introductory call before you start working together, or it might be in your first session.

Firstly, you’ll need to talk about what you are hoping to get out of mentoring. So look back at the specific goal that you defined using the first part of this video.

Talk to them about it. Ask for their thoughts on how you could work together, how they could help you.

Do they think your vision of what success would look like is realistic?

What would they suggest that you start with?

It might be that their answers make you think they’re not actually the right person that you should work with, and that’s OK. If it’s not going to work for you, it’s better to talk about that at the start and maybe find someone else to support you, rather than going through a process that’s just a waste of everyone’s time because that’s what you had originally agreed.

Being open might also clarify what you want to focus on and help you steer them towards approaches that might be more helpful than their initial suggestion. It has to be a collaborative process right from the start after all.

It’s also good to begin by agreeing the frequency of sessions and potentially how many sessions you’re aiming to have.

Remember, it doesn’t have to be a never ending series of one hour, weekly meetings, same time, same place. Sometimes all you’ll need is one conversation. Sometimes it’ll be a couple of chats over a few months. Other challenges might need a longer term commitment from both of you.

I usually work with people for 2–6 sessions, very often 4, but it all depends on the challenge they’re facing and how we’ve agreed to approach it.

Remember, you don’t have to stay faithful to one mentor for the rest of your life. It’s perfectly valid to need different mentors for different things, and to say that you are ready to move on from a mentoring relationship if you’ve achieved what you were hoping to, or if you feel like you’ve plateaued, you’re no longer making the progress that you’re looking for.

You’ll also need to agree whether you’re going to be meeting in-person, maybe having lunch or coffee every so often, or whether you need to meet online. Maybe that’s Teams or Zoom or Google Meet or whichever platform. Maybe even just having a chat over WhatsApp or on Teams or some other kind of instant messaging platform.

Asynchronous text-based conversations may be the best way for you to get your head around the conversation and process your thoughts before replying. Not everyone can get the most out of mentoring verbally and live. Think about how your brain works, and what your schedule is like, and give your mentor the opportunity to do the same.

It can also be useful to agree some expectations for the process – how you want to actually work together within the sessions, and what kind of contact you might have between sessions, a sort of mentoring contract. There are some great resources from the Academy of Medical Sciences around mentoring relationships, and how mentors and mentees can work together.

There’s a link in the video description below, and you could both look at these and then come together to agree on a framework that you want to use.

Once you’ve got all of this agreed, it’s time to schedule your first session and get cracking.

4. Prepare for your sessions

When I’m working with a mentoring client, I’ll always send them a few questions or prompts to consider in the run-up to each session.

These are based on the objectives for our mentoring work that we’ve agreed before starting out, and during that process we also usually define a purpose for each of the sessions that we’re going to have, but this can change as we go through the process.

It’s always good to have a starting point for the conversation, though it helps keep things on track and means you’re less likely to forget key things.

Depending on who you’re working with, your mentor might also do this, but they might not. It’s still a good idea for you to think about what you’re hoping to come out of the session, whether or not it’s something that your mentor provides.

What do you want to focus on?

It’s good to break down your overarching challenge into smaller chunks or look at it from different angles in each session.

Thinking about the key questions that you have for your next session helps you make the most of your time.

If you are writing them, you could also send them over to your mentor so that they can prepare for the session too. They might appreciate the heads-up, but this is something that you should talk to them about while you’re laying down the ground rules.

Once you’ve got a list of the questions or things that you want to talk about, prioritise them. You might not have time to cover everything.

We are not very good at estimating how much we can cover in a given amount of time, and you don’t know what your mentor might say, the ideas that they might have, or the questions they might ask you as you are digging deeper into the topic.

You might only have time to cover one or two of the things that you have defined, but it’s still going to be valuable even so.

Try to make your list of questions a few days before the session so that you’ve got time to let it percolate through your mind, and then block out some time immediately before the session.

Back to back meetings don’t do anyone any favours, but even going from working on a project straight into a mentoring session isn’t ideal. Even 15 minutes will help. You’ll have time to look through your priorities for the session, maybe look back on notes from the previous session, reflect on anything that you’ve tried since then – all of this will help you get into a reflective and receptive headspace so that you can get the most from the process.

5. During each session

OK, the time has come. You are in a session with your mentor!

If you haven’t already shared it with them, let them know what you are hoping to cover during that session. Look back at your prioritised list, maybe tell them everything on it, and then go back through each item individually. Maybe just go for the first thing, talk about that, cover it, and then move on to the next thing – whichever works best for the two of you.

Remember, it is OK if things have changed since the last session. It’s probably best to give them a heads up though if you’ve done a complete 180.

Maybe you got in touch with them because you were looking for more freelance clients and wanted help with the business development side of things, but actually decided on reflection you want to get an agency job. Your mentor needs a chance to change gear so that they can help you properly.

But good mentoring is flexible and will work with your priorities, and how things evolve for you during the process rather than trying to force you down a particular road just because that’s what you said you wanted in the beginning.

Once you’ve actually got the conversation started, you’re probably going to want to make some notes. If it’s available to you, I would recommend making notes by hand. Using your computer or your phone can mean that you are exposed to other distractions. You know, seeing emails popping up will split your focus and take you out of the conversation.

It’s also, and I say this as a massive, massive stationery addict, a really good excuse for a new notebook. You can use it just for your mentoring sessions, noting down your questions when you’re preparing for the session, making notes during the session, and then reflecting back after the session. We’ll talk about that one in a moment, but back to the session that you are in.

Making notes might actually be distracting from the conversation, so it could be useful to just record it instead. This is very easy if you are meeting online using something like Zoom or Teams, because there’s literally just a button you can press to record the session and then download it to look back later.

If you are meeting face-to-face, you can just record using voice notes on your phone and do the same, but you could even upload the recording to an AI tool like Descript or Otter, and get a transcript of the recording so that you can read back through it rather than having to listen to the full thing. Again, links in the description below.

Now you don’t want to forget an action that’s been suggested, or an idea that you want to think about, but you also do need to actually focus on the conversation itself.

Active listening is key to getting the most out of mentoring. We are not very good at listening as a species. Conversations are often just an opportunity for us to wait for our turn to speak, and then speak.

We need to focus on what our mentor is saying rather than be preparing what we are going to say in response. Silence is OK during a mentoring session – if you need to take some time to process what’s being said and then reflect back or ask questions to dig deeper, you can use that silence to squeeze every last drop of goodness out of your time together.

6. Absorb your sessions

After a mentoring session, it’s a really good idea to block out some time just like we did before the session, so that you’ve got capacity to absorb what’s happened.

You can use that time to jot down some notes, maybe list some actions that you want to take after the session. Maybe think about things that you want to look up or things you want to ask about in the next session.

Once you’ve got a list of next steps or actions that you want to take, look at them and prioritise.

We can’t do everything in one go.

And if we set expectations for ourselves that are too high, we may well be pushing ourselves into burnout, or we just risk giving up. It feels too overwhelming, so why even start?

On the other hand, if we set small manageable goals, then we are going to be in a more realistic position. We are more likely to get more done in the long run.

Also, when I’m mentoring a client, I often have other thoughts after we’ve spoken to. I might think of an article they should read, a podcast they should listen to, maybe even think of someone else that they should talk to too. So I will write a quick summary of everything that we’ve talked about and include these additional ideas to when I send them over.

Another reason to block out some time after a mentoring session is because it is quite likely to feel tiring. It’s a very focused time. You are thinking hard, it might be uncomfortable or challenging, and you may well need a bit of time to decompress. Go for a walk, let your mind wander, and you may well have other good ideas too.

You can use that unpressured time to reflect on how you felt during the conversation too.

Good mentoring will often include totally new approaches or things that you haven’t considered because they were outside your sphere of experience. It might take you a while to get your head around them, and you might need to think about them from different angles to really get to grips with it.

Your immediate emotional response can help you understand what’s really important. This isn’t always about things that you feel eager to do or feel like something is instinctively right. It might be around feeling reluctant or feeling some discomfort.

That can be an indication that this is where we really need to focus to make the progress that we are looking for, especially around mindset work, changing our minds about something, changing our approaches or our processes. These things aren’t easy or comfortable, but they’re worth it in the long run.

And then, once you have had that time to decompress, had a bit of a think about things, it’s probably time to go back to section 4 of this video and start preparing for your next session. Rinse and repeat until you’ve achieved the goal that you defined.

Download the PDF summary

Mentoring is a very individual process, but my experience of both mentoring and of being mentored has shown me that there are some simple things you can do to help you get the most out of the process:

1. Starting off by defining the specific challenge that you want support with, including a clear outcome that you are aiming for
2. Will help you find the right mentor – someone with the right experience who you feel comfortable opening up to
3. Then you can clarify the process that you’re both going to use for the mentoring relationship, including boundaries and expectations
4. Always prepare for each mentoring session, trying to block out some time immediately beforehand so that you go into it in the right frame of mind
5. During a session, use active listening and try to make sure there’s some kind of record, whether that’s an actual recording or simply some notes
6. Try to block out some time after the session too, so that you can absorb the discussion and squeeze every last drop of goodness out of it

There’s a free PDF summary that you can download of everything that we’ve covered today, including links from the video description below, and you can also get links to the EMWA article and the other resources that I’ve mentioned from the video description too.

Please do let me know in the comments if you have any questions about any of this, or any other topics for videos that you would like me to make, I’d love to hear from you.

If this has been useful, please do like the video and maybe share it with a friend who might benefit from some mentoring.

And next time, I’m going to be talking about how you can be a good mentor.

So see you then!