I remember the initial stress I felt when I had been assigned a VP business mentor. It was a benefit of being in a leadership program which seemed really great until I had to think about what to say to her. Up until that time, I had only met with mentors who were in IT, so we had a common language and understanding about what our roles were.
There were three reasons this mentor meeting brought me a bit of stress. I was going to need to have an agenda of topics to send to her in advance. I needed to come up with some good questions to ask her that were thoughtful and would help me the most. The second reason was that she was a VP. I felt the added pressure of representing my leadership program and IT in the best way. I could also see her as a potential sponsor for me and she would need to see me as someone that she might consider sponsoring. Lastly, I wondered if we would have a good connection and be able to have conversations that would help me. This mentoring partnership was intended to last for a year and if we didn’t connect that could be a difficult experience.
Here are some things that I did to prepare that you could use before you meet with a new mentor or sponsor. I asked others who knew her what she was like, how she had been as a mentor or sponsor for them, and what they did to prepare for meetings with her. I just wanted a sense of what she was like since we had not met before. I also prepared a list of topics and questions that we could talk about. We ended up having a great connection and she was very helpful for me. I was happy that I had prepared so we did have good conversations and I knew what to expect.
I found this article by Jo Miller that I thought could be helpful to you. It contains 40 great questions to ask a mentor. You could also share with anyone you may be mentoring to help them prepare for a meeting with you.