Do you find it confusing to start a certain field? If so, it’s time you need to get the support of a mentor. Indeed, you can learn various interesting things from your mentor, like valuable guidance or useful advice to overcome your challenges. But how do you get this knowledge from your mentor? Let’s try having several good questions to ask a mentor.
In this article, we will show you a range of questions to ask your mentor, which relate to the five following topics:
- Professional skills
- Personal experiences and concerns
- Achievements
- Organization structure
- Use feedbacks
Well, let’s get in!
Table of Contents
5 Common Topics Of Questions To Ask A Mentor
To help you understand your mentor and professional tasks better, we have just prepared around 50 questions to ask a mentor. We believe that they can make you feel more comfortable in any conversation.
#1. Professional skills
Learning professional skills at work is one of the most important concerns in effectively promoting your values and career. If so, don’t miss the best questions to ask a mentor on this topic:
- What are the most rewarding aspects of your work?
- Which challenges have you ever confronted when working in this position?
- Which skill do you find most beneficial for your job?
- How do you deal with criticism in your work?
- How do you measure your success in your work?
- What is the biggest failure in your work?
- How do you balance your personal life and work?
- Which important concerns do you think I should learn?
- What should you do to attain the short-term goals?
- What do you do to adapt to the organization’s culture?
#2. Personal experiences and concerns
The second topic relates to personal concerns. Sometimes, you can take them as questions to ask a mentor for the first meeting to build your early relationship with your mentor. Let’s check our following suggestions:
- What motivated you most in your work?
- Where do you find inspiration in your work?
- What is the biggest fear when working in this position?
- Why do you decide to become a professional mentor?
- What would you do to overcome stress at work?
- How do you celebrate your achievements or reward yourself?
- Do you have any principles in your work?
- How do you do to maintain physical and mental well-being?
- How do you handle uncertainty to make a decision?
- What do you do when you want to learn new things?
#3. Career development
With questions to ask a mentor about career development, we will mention the most common suggestions, such as:
- What are your long-term career goals? How did you set them?
- What are the most important competencies when pursuing this position?
- How do you pursue new opportunities at work?
- What did you do to achieve a lot of success today?
- How do you lead others in your department or team?
- How do you collaborate with others?
- How do you promote your creativity at work?
- What habits do you have to be more productive?
- Which leadership skills do you find challenging to develop?
#4. Organization structure
In this list of questions to ask a mentor, you can’t ignore organization structure-relating questions to deepen your current position and company. That’s why we come up with the following questions:
- How many departments are there in our company?
- What are the main functions of our team?
- How does the organization respond to changes in the external environment?
- How do our company take care of the employees?
- What are the important values of our company that I need to know?
- How do you handle conflicts between departments in our company?
- Does our company promote a culture of learning?
- How do you cope with pressure in the company?
- Who inspires you in the company most?
- How do I become more strategic at work?
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#5. Useful feedbacks
Whenever you need to get useful feedback from your mentor, the questions to ask a business mentor below can support you easily:
- Do you think I should promote this concern?
- Are there any mistakes in my report?
- What do you see as my weaknesses?
- What should I do to overcome the first challenges in our company?
- What could I have done differently in this specific situation to improve the final outcomes?
- Do you think I need to draw additional ideas for my presentation?
- Do you have any feedback about my presentation today?
With these questions to ask a mentor, we think that the conversations between you and your mentors will be improved significantly. It is great to build a long-term relationship with her/him.
What Are Other Good Questions To Ask A Mentor?
Besides the topics above, you can also consider other mentoring topics, such as:
- Emotional balance at work
- Workplace culture
- How to solve a problem
- How to build cross-networking
With the questions to ask a mentor relating to these topics, you can easily have a deep understanding of one specific concern. For example, you can see how to solve a problem or achieve emotional balance, which is a “professional skill.” Thus, depending on your demands, let’s have smart questions when having conversations with your mentor.
FAQs – Questions To Ask A Mentor
What are good questions to ask your mentor?
If you want to have questions, ask your mentor. Let’s refer to our suggestions below:
What do you see as my weakness?
How do you do to overcome challenges?
What should we do to confront conflicts at work?
What motivates you most at work?
What are some icebreaker questions for mentorship?
With this topic, we will list several suggestions, including:
– What are your short-term and long-term goals in this position?
– What skills do you want to develop in the future?
– What in-life concerns do you want to grow in?
What questions should I ask a speed mentor?
When you get a speed mentoring program, it’s ideal to ask some questions such as:
– Can you suggest several leadership skills that are useful at work?
– What is your most rewarding accomplishment?
– What did you do to overcome difficulties when being a mentee?
How do I prepare for a mentor meeting?
To get the best knowledge from a mentor meeting, it’s important to prepare various topics to discuss. For example, you can collect typical questions to ask a mentor about professional skills, career development, or even personal concerns. However, remember to be polite in any conversation.
Conclusion
Our blog has just introduced you to nearly 50 common questions to ask a mentor at work. Whether you are an intern or fresher, it’s ideal to take a look at this list to learn useful skills from your mentor. To discover similar topics, let’s refer to our Live World Cloud Generator.
Every great conversation starts with a question. So, still questioning and staying curious!
