How Will You Initiate Your Mentorship Relationship?

In the first meetings that you will have with your mentor, you need to determine your expectations, the rules that you will follow, and the goals that you will be working on. Some of the issues that you may talk about during these meetings could be as follows:

• Define your roles in the mentorship relationship.
• Talk about knowledge, skills, sources and so on that you think about sharing in your work.
• List the concrete set of skills that you would like to learn.
• Talk about the knowledge that you would like attain.
• Talk about situations that might affect your work, if any.
• Talk about how you would like to address issues that concern privacy.
• Talk about the communication channels that you prefer: phone, e-mail or face-to-face.
• Decide on the duration of the meeting and plan the dates and hours of the meetings beforehand.
• Agree on a method to inform each other in case you won’t be able to participate in the meeting or you will be late.
• Agree on when and through which channels you will communicate.

Sharing your expectations and wishes with your mentor creates an honest and open communication model. You will begin to feel more at ease once you start to realize your shared expectations.