Mentors are great sources of knowledge and they can help you achieve your goals.

Knowing the right questions to ask your mentor is key to a great mentorship experience.

In this post, we will look at 10 essential questions to ask your mentor for a great mentorship experience

Let’s dive in

1. How do you spend your time on a daily basis?

This is a very important question because how you segment your time in a day says a lot about what you’re going to get done that day. If you want to make progress then you need to avoid going aimlessly from one task to the other.

Asking your mentor this question would help you plan your daily, weekly and monthly calendar in a way that would match with your overall goal. 

This calendar would help you break the steps that will lead you to your long term goal which is your success point.

It is important to learn about what time your mentor wakes up, what they do when they wake up, what are their rituals, every successful individual has a daily ritual.

2. What used to be your biggest weakness?

This question is essential because if you are not real with yourself you’re never going to make it. 

Asking your mentor about their biggest weakness would help you understand yours and would prevent you from going over and over the same weakness and from repeating the same mistakes. 

Learning what your weaknesses are will help you strategise better, you can hire someone who is better at a particular task to do it because you cannot be the best at everything.

3. What is the best decision you’ve ever made?

Asking your mentor about their best decision can make them think, sometimes they realise that the best decision can be a small moment or a step they decided to take that turned out to open doors and it caused someone to see their talent and put them in front of the right people.

This is a powerful question because it can help you to see opportunities that you might overlook that could be critical.

4. What is the worst decision you’ve ever made?

This is essential because this is what you can use to try to avoid the same mistakes, it saves you the stress of trials and error. 

If your mentor made that decision at some point along the way, it could mean that at that moment they thought it was a good decision because they didn’t have the life experience to recognise it was a bad decision.

Asking this question can help you recognise some of the things they didn’t see at that point, you can use that knowledge to avoid making similar decisions and mistakes.

5. When you face a setback or disappointment what do you do?

Success requires resilience, there is no way to be successful without being able to navigate disappointment, challenges, mistakes, failure because they are inevitable on the journey to success.

Asking this question of a mentor allows you to see how they think, see their perspective, see some of their thoughts that have empowered them to deal with challenges and use that insight for your own challenges, setbacks and disappointment.

6. What is the wisest step you think I should take right now?

This is a question that tells them you are open to advice. Their responses are things you need to take note of. 

Make sure you are paying close attention to what they are saying and listen to them. 

If you always go with just your opinion of things then you probably will mess things up. 

This is similar to asking for direction to somewhere you are not conversant with. Not asking for direction would imply wasting too much time trying to figure out your destination.

7. What do you see as my strength and weakness

Lack of acceptance of natural criticism hinders success. If you want to learn, you should be able to accept criticism, make the necessary corrections and move on.

Understanding what you are good at would help you position yourself for the right opportunities and your mentor is in the best position to help you discover your strengths. Their assessment can help you during a job interview.

8. What accomplishment are you most proud of?

Accomplishments can come in various forms, for example, promotions, achieving a goal, overcoming a challenging issue etc. 

Asking such questions would help you set your own goals. 

Your mentor’s perspective on career accomplishments can help you value improvement as well as measurable success. 

This can give you an idea of what to expect for your future accomplishment.

9. If there was one thing you wish you had known when you started out, what would it be?

Here you are asking your mentor "if you look back and you can talk to your younger self, what is it that you would say or what do you wish you had known?"

The answer to this question can be directly related to you because you might be in the same position your mentor’s younger self was. 

It unfolds the knowledge that would carry you through the journey to achieving your desired goal.

10. How did you start your career?

Your mentor is in a more advanced position than you are, asking them about their career journey can help you restrategize if you are not on the right track. 

You get more knowledge on the particular profession that can change your life, for example, job opportunities, seminars that made a difference in their career journey and books/ resources that has contributed to reaching their goal. 

Your mentor’s professional journey can serve as an outline to follow or provide you with options you may not have considered.

Remember, asking the right questions is key to a great mentorship experience. As a tip, getting a Mentortribes mentor is key to a successful career journey. The best time to get yourself a good mentor is now.

Now I’d love to hear from you, 

Which of the questions from today’s post would you start asking your mentor?

Let me know by leaving a comment below right now