What to Expect from Mentoring, with Kristin LaRonca Parpel

In October, I opened the topic of mentoring on my blog. We looked at what mentoring is, what the benefits are and I shared with you my history with mentoring. You can read the post HERE.

Last week, I sat down with the executive coach, consultant and mentor Kristin LaRonca Parpel, to talk about what brought her to Prague, why she stayed and how she got her dream career. Read the first part of the interview HERE.

In this part of the interview, Kristin shares everything you need to know about mentoring before making the decision to look for a mentor. Who is it for? What do you need to invest in as a mentee? How to tell a good mentor from a bad one? Let’s have a closer look.

Who is mentoring for?

“It’s for somebody who is willing to look in the mirror. Someone who is brave and who wants to work on their personal development.”

Kristin

“If I talk to a potential coachee or mentee and I don’t feel they wanna be there for whatever reason, I tell them – why don’t you give it some time? Why don’t you come back when you’re ready / when you have more time / when you know what you wanna work on? It’s like if you wanna stop drinking or go on a diet – do you really want to do it?”

If your answer to Kristin’s question is, “YES!”,  you might wonder, “What does it require from me to become a mentee?” Let Kristin tell us more about it.

What does a mentee need to invest in?

1. Be vulnerable and open

“If a mentee wants to get the most out of it, they have to be willing to be very honest with themselves,” says Kristin. “They really have to dig down and pull out topics that are truly important to them. Rather than just saying – I wanna get better at my work; I wanna get a promotion – they need to answer – why? Why is that important for me? 

2. Put in the time and do the work

“A mentee has to be committed to the process. It’s like getting a gym pass but if you only go once a month it’s not gonna do much for you. The real work usually happens between sessions because hopefully, you discovered something you want to work on.”

3. Be proactive and bring the agenda

“As a mentee, you carry the agenda and your role is to be the proactive one in the relationship. The mentor is not gonna come up with topics and not gonna be chasing you and not gonna be pushing you. And it’s ok if the agenda changes over time. But come with one,” Kristin stresses.

“I realized that those thoughts were circulating in my head and never got anywhere”

So, how does that apply in real life? Kristin shares with us her experience of being a mentee: 

“For the past few years, I was thinking  in the back of my head – how can I bring my business to emerging markets?” Kristin opens. “It’s something I’ve been passionate about for years and when I had kids, and I wanna make clear that I chose that I wanted to be home with my kids when they were little, but it meant that the dream to work in emerging markets was put on hold.”

“But now my kids are getting older. Pretty soon they will be out of the house. And I like new challenges and as much as I like working in the Czech Republic, everything functions pretty well and it’s not that exciting anymore,” we share a laugh. “And I realized that those thoughts about emerging markets were just circulating in my head and never got anywhere. They never got on a piece of paper, never got to someone to discuss it with.” 

So Kristin decided to send her application to a mentoring program and signed up to be a mentee. “I think it was hard for them to pair me. Because I couldn’t be matched with anybody I worked with. First I wouldn’t feel comfortable opening up and it would be a conflict of interest. They did a great job though and they matched me with a coach and a therapist from Ostrava. We don’t run in the same circles so there was enough distance between us.”

“Being a mentee was a bit of a lifesaver”

Kristin went into the program with the goal to enter emerging markets. However, the mentee’s agenda can sometimes change in an unpredictable way. “During the year, Covid came and there was no chance of acting on my goal. Being a mentee was a bit of a lifesaver for me because I really went through some months of depression during the lockdown. I felt like I lost my freedom for the first time. And that was something I never knew as an American.”

“They say every therapist should have a therapist,” Kristin continues, “I’m not a therapist but being a coach, it has some similarities. My day is focused on the agenda of somebody else. Always. It was great that every time my mentor and I had our calls it was all about me,” she chuckles. ”It was hard in the very beginning. I’m used to being the one who is asking the questions and it was hard to focus on myself. I felt…” she looks for a word, “I felt a bit selfish at first. But the timing was almost magical. He really helped me to get through that time.”

What were the three greatest benefits of being a mentee for Kristin? “Self-reflection,” she answers without hesitation. “I usually put no time aside in a day for true self-reflection. Then letting go of being in control. I’m used to always being the one running the show. So letting go was challenging for me in a good way. And the third thing was realizing I had recurring themes. They were in my subconscious but I didn’t make time for them before. Now I’m aware of those themes and can address them.”

Mentor’s DOs 

You want to work on yourself, you have the time, you have the agenda and you’re committed, so what should you expect from a mentor? 

“Every mentor needs to be open and have a true interest to do it.”

Kristin

It’s actually quite simple. As we learned in the first blog post on this topic a mentor should be able to listen and ask questions that will challenge the mentee to identify the course of action they need to take in regards to their own development. And a mentor doesn’t need to be a qualified trainer or an expert in the role the mentee carries out.

Mentor’s DON’Ts

But what to watch out for? What a mentor shouldn’t do according to Kristin is:

1. Try to impress
2. Be there for wrong reasons – just to put it on their CV
3. Advise

“Now, that one is tricky,” Kristin deliberates, “Because sometimes you have mentors who are there to share a trade with their mentee. But there’s a difference between sharing and telling someone what to do. They need to find the very fine line between – let me share how I did it – and – you should do it this way because I know, I’ve done it.”

4. Have an agenda

“If I’m coming in to be your mentor and I have some agenda about what I think you should do, it can be a manipulation. That’s why when you pair mentors in a company you want to make sure that you’re pairing people that are not in the same division. I personally can’t coach or mentor somebody that I’m very close to because I have an opinion. That can make me biased and that’s very dangerous.”

“It was the only time that I let my own agenda and my own fantasy get in the way”

Mentors are just people and even Kristin has made some mistakes. Let her share how a mentor should react when that happens.

“Once I was paired with the director of a women’s prison. I thought – that’s so cool! And before we even met I started to think about what we can talk about. As a mentor, my paper should be completely clean. But I was watching Orange Is the New Black,” Kristin makes me chuckle. “Yeah,” she laughs too, “that was my reference to what a women prison is like. And I was thinking – I’d love to volunteer! I could coach the women and my friend can help them make their CVs and I know a woman who cuts hair… I had this grand plan of this pro bono program we could do for women when they are leaving prison.”

“Now, it was based on a Netflix show and it was total bullshit,” Kristin laughs again. “I was good the first couple of sessions and then one time I was like, ‘Hey Gabi, would you like to do a program like this?’ It was innocent and naive but totally inappropriate. No harm was done because she’s a smart woman and she was like, ‘Oh, that’s an interesting idea.’ And instead of telling me, ‘Kristin, that’s never gonna work,’ she went, ‘Why don’t you visit me at the prison?’ Because she knew once I saw the prison I would realize it was absurd.”

“That was a big mentoring mistake. Big. But that was in all of my years of mentoring the only time that I let my own agenda and my own fantasy get in the way. We are all people and we make mistakes. But be aware of it and admit it. When this happened with Gabi, rather than putting my nose high and pretending that it was ok I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m so sorry, that was stupid.’ One is never done being a better mentor. It’s a continuous process. I learn something new every day,” Kristin reflects.

“Lot of people have some hidden talents that have been pushed down”

“I truly believe that every single person has a gift and a talent and very often people are not  tapping into it, because their father wants them to be a lawyer, or their boyfriend, or their husband… I often feel that people have some hidden talents that have been pushed down for whatever reasons and circumstances,” Kristin thinks. 

So is there something you might have pushed down and want to explore? Now you should have all the information to make your decision whether mentoring might suit you. And if you’re ready to search for your mentor read the Prague-Expat-Friendly Guide on Where to Find a Mentor. 

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