Skip to main content
Mentoring is the transfer of experience. A mentor has been somewhere the mentee is trying to go - and can share what they learned along the way, the mistakes worth avoiding, and the doors worth knocking on. It’s one of the most effective ways to accelerate someone’s development that doesn’t involve them making every mistake themselves 🧑‍🏫

​
How it differs from coaching

Coaching helps people find their own answers. Mentoring shares yours. A coach asks questions; a mentor tells stories, gives advice, and draws on personal experience. Both are valuable - they serve different needs. The confusion happens when a mentor defaults to coaching (“what do you think you should do?”) when the mentee actually needs direction, or when a mentor gives too much advice when the person just needs space to think. Knowing which mode to be in, and switching deliberately, is a skill worth developing.

​
What makes a good mentoring relationship

Clear purpose - the best mentoring relationships have a shared understanding of what the mentee is trying to achieve. Career transition, skill development, navigating a specific challenge. Without a purpose, sessions drift into pleasant but unproductive conversations. Honesty - the value a mentor provides is partly perspective and partly honesty that a manager or peer might not give. A good mentor tells you when your plan has a blind spot or your narrative doesn’t add up 💡 Consistency - sporadic check-ins are less valuable than a regular cadence. Even monthly is enough if it’s predictable and protected. Reciprocity - the best mentoring relationships aren’t entirely one-directional. Mentors learn from mentees too - about how new generations are approaching problems, what the market looks like from a different vantage point, and how their own experiences look from the outside.

​
Being a good mentee

The responsibility isn’t only on the mentor. Good mentees come prepared, follow through on what they said they’d do, and are honest about what’s actually going on rather than presenting a polished version of themselves. The most common mentoring failure is a mentee who wants advice but isn’t ready to act on it. A mentor’s time is only useful if it changes something 🙌

​
For PMs specifically

Kate Leto’s Hiring Product Managers touches on the role of mentoring and coaching in PM development - the craft of product management is learned largely through practice and reflection, and a good mentor accelerates both. Lesson learned: the mentors who made the most difference for me weren’t the most senior or prestigious people I knew. They were the ones who were genuinely interested in my progress and honest enough to tell me things I didn’t want to hear.