Inspiration from interaction
When we connect to others we do this with our own personality and habits. We have seen that we need trust to really connect to somebody and open up to learn. The mentor has a great responsibility when somebody asks him/her for guidance. The mentee needs to take his/her call for help serious. So both have a responsibility towards each other. This makes mentoring so cool in my opinion: if done right their is no hierarchy, just a journey together (Metro). Easily a mentor can be a mentee - and maybe even his/her mentee - regarding a different challenge in life.
The mentor can not leave him/herself at home when encountering a mentoring relationship. It does note matter if you are a mentor or mentee. Pay attention for your own personality, your basic psychological needs and typical ways of doing. So your attention should be towards yourself in the beginning, moving to others when becoming a mentor. We have seen in the former chapter that accepting yourself and other people with their own personality and maybe sometimes their ‘peculiar’ ways of acting is essential for building trust. For us the search for a good method for structuring mentoring began when we started thinking about how the activate a mentee on his/her own journey to growing. We had the opportunity to test different methods with clients in different psychology practices, and found the iGROW method to be highly effective. We invite you to try it out yourself.