Bad Mentors | How to Survive and Thrive Through Relationship Adversity

When you want to speed your track to success and make your bigger life vision a reality, finding a mentor is a must. You cannot quickly accomplish everything you want to do on your own. It is far more efficient to work with someone who has already travelled the path you want to take, because they can give you their insights and guidance to help you avoid obstacles they have already overcome, or impart wisdom that only comes after much time and experience in the field. In addition, your mentor will not be as emotionally involved in your business as you are.  When there is high emotion, there is low intelligence.  A mentor will be able to help you navigate emotional issues from a place of experience and wisdom, rather than emotion.

But what do you do when you feel the mentor you have selected isn’t the right one for you or you have a bad mentor? 

Like any relationship that is going through troubled times, there are steps you can take to survive a bad mentor and thrive through this kind of relationship adversity. 

What does a bad mentor look like?

This really is an interesting question because a mentor that works perfectly for someone else, might not work for you. It is a question that requires some internal work and consideration to find the right mentor. 

Before you work with anyone, you must think about and consider having a written agreement outlining:

• Your current skill set and where you want development,
• What kind of guidance you need, how much of it, and how often,
• Your communication preferences,
• And your expectations for the mentorship.

That last point is key. When any relationship isn’t working, it is typically because expectations haven’t been met, yet all too often, those expectations haven’t been communicated. It is unfair to be upset with someone over an expectation that has never been expressed. Communication and clarity of expectations are a must in order to build strong relationships of any kind, and especially in your mentor relationship. 

If you have clearly laid out your expectations, agreed on how you would work together and were specific about the outcomes you wanted to achieve, and that person is not holding up their side of the agreement, then you need to move to the next phase, which is dealing with a bad mentor. 

How do you deal with a bad mentor?

Before you go into a meeting with your mentor to discuss the lack of follow through on their part, it is important to get very clear about the issues for yourself.

1. What exactly are the problems, from your perspective? Take your time thinking about this and detail how each issue makes you feel. Specify the things that are holding you back from achieving your goals with this mentor. 
2. What are the behaviors that need correcting? It is important to talk about behaviors versus attitude. An attitude is subjective and can be argued, whereas behaviors are quantifiable – they either happen or they don’t. That is much easier to discuss.
3. What outcome or outcomes do you want from the meeting? List everything and be specific. From there, you can touch on each point and be sure that you cover everything that is necessary to move forward in the relationship with clear expectations and objectives.  

Once you know what you want to talk about, the behaviors that need to be addressed, as well as the specific outcomes you want, it is much easier to come to an agreement and adjust how the relationship will work moving forward. 

If you get no satisfaction with your mentor after that, or you really feel this is not the right mentorship for you, then it’s time to end the relationship.  

How do you end a bad mentoring relationship?

Terminations, of any type, should be a short conversation. If you have addressed your concerns, talked about behavioral changes, as well as your expectations, and that person still does not follow through, there is no need to get involved in a long-drawn-out conversation. Simply thank them for their time and express that you no longer wish to mentor with them. That’s it. Since everything would have been covered previously, further conversation and detail is unnecessary. 

Once you take these steps, you will give yourself and your mentor the opportunity to error correct and foster a better mentorship, or you will open yourself to new mentoring possibilities. Either way, you will be able to survive working with a bad mentor, and move yourself to a place where you can thrive through relationship adversity and find the mentor that is right for you. 

If you would like a mentor who can help you recognize and utilize your unique abilities, help you overcome obstacles and adversity, and rise to higher levels of success, I invite you to apply for my mentoring program. CLICK HERE to learn more.