Mentoring at Work Is More Than Giving Advice

When I was asked to run through mentoring best practices for colleagues involved in the Dell Mentor Connect programme as mentors, my first reaction was, “How can I add value to these seasoned professionals?”

These were senior leaders in my organisation who had only known me in my role as an Executive Assistant, and who were largely unfamiliar with the coach and mentor side of my work. Wanting to serve them well, I brought my draft slides to my own mentor, Pei Ying Lim from Innerwork Circle, and worked through how I could better meet the needs of my audience.

That experience in itself became a powerful reminder of why mentoring at work matters so much.

In the workplace — especially among high‑performing professionals — mentoring often happens informally. We give advice, share war stories, solve problems quickly, and move on. All of this comes from good intent. Yet effective mentoring is not about fixing, directing, or rescuing. It is about supporting growth while preserving ownership.

At its core, mentoring is a developmental relationship where an experienced professional supports another’s growth by sharing perspective, insight, and experience. Rather than being told what to do, the mentee is invited to consider new ways of seeing a situation through the mentor’s lived experience. When the mentee arrives at their own conclusions through increased awareness, the learning tends to stay.

One of the mentors I met at work embodied this beautifully. I met Xavier DUMANS, APAC Expert, Client People focused when I was working at Johnson Controls. Instead of telling his team what to do, Xavier consistently asked thoughtful questions about what we were observing and how we were thinking about the challenges we faced. What emerged felt like an equal partnership — through dialogue, he and the team would arrive at strategies together.

Over the years, I saw leaders in that team grow significantly, and to this day, I still carry many of the lessons I learned from him about managing relationships and building buy‑in for what truly matters. Beyond individual growth, this approach strengthened the team spirit in a lasting way. At a gathering a few months ago, both Xavier and many members of the team reflected that those years working together were among the best times of their working lives — a powerful testament to what thoughtful mentoring can create.

This is why it’s important for mentors to remember that they are not consultants, managers, or problem solvers. Their role is to open doors to perspective and to help mentees think — not to tell them what to do.

As a guide, a typical mentoring conversation might begin by clarifying what the mentee wants to work on and why it matters to focus on this now. From there, the mentor explores where the mentee currently is, what has already been tried, and what challenges may lie ahead. Only then does solutioning come into play.

In the dance of mentorship between mentor and mentee, it’s important to take time to fully unpack the issue and understand the broader context before moving into solutions. Often, the presenting issue is not the real challenge. For example, a mentee once shared that they struggled to reject additional work requests from a senior colleague. Through deeper exploration, we uncovered an underlying belief — shaped by a past experience — that saying no would inevitably damage relationships and cause them to "look bad" to their manager. In this situation, beyond sharing what I might have done, we spent time examining that belief and whether it is true so the mentee could develop a new perspective to draw on in the future.

The mentor’s role here is to check in, share experience lightly, and invite resonance rather than impose direction.

To ensure learning carries forward, mentors also play an important role in helping mentees integrate insights — by reflecting on what has shifted, what new possibilities have emerged, and how these insights might translate into action.

So what distinguishes a mediocre mentor from an excellent one? It’s not the number of questions asked or the depth of advice given, but how the mentor listens.

Good mentors listen for context, not just the issue. They resist the urge to jump into solutions before the mentee has had space to deepen their own thinking. They use language that offers perspective instead of prescriptions, options instead of instructions, and trust instead of control.

What struck me most in preparing and delivering this session was how relevant these reminders are — even, and especially, for experienced professionals.

Mentoring isn’t about being perfect; it’s about showing up with curiosity, humility, and respect for the mentee’s context and if a mentee leaves a session with more clarity, confidence, or a new way of seeing things, then the mentor has done their job.

And perhaps the most important question each of us can hold is this: what kind of mentor do I want to be remembered as?

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