If you work in cybersecurity, you know how important and career-defining it can be to have a mentor.
But…once you have found a mentor, then what?
Mentors are full of useful knowledge and experiences. Some of this knowledge and experience will be irrelevant to you at a certain stage of your career. Some will be priceless and will spur you forward.
Do not assume, anyway, that a mentor knows that (especially if they don’t know you and your goals extensively…nobody is a mind-reader!) or that they know how to best tell their story so that you can benefit from it.
This is why mentorship is not a one-way relationship!
The key skill that a mentee needs to learn is how to ask better questions.
Questions are like keys that unlock the really precious-to-you pieces of knowledge that a mentor has stored away somewhere.
Open questions are good, but questions that are too open could lead to rambling away.
Closed questions are good too when you feel you need a yes or no answer…but they might give you only part of the picture.
My advice is to do a mix of both and build your own effective questions, something like:
– What are two things that – in your experience – I really need to know about xyz?
This is an open question but forces the other person to narrow it down and simplify to select only the very best they have, resulting in a clearer answer for you.
– I have been applying for several SOC roles without success and you mentioned you have experienced the same thing in the past. How did you overcome that and what should my next step be?
This question allows you to draw from a specific experience of the other person but ties it back to your own experience. So you get information that you can apply directly to your situation.
Have fun building your own questions and seeing the different results 🙂
ps. Also, mentors, if you are unsure whether your mentee is getting what they need from you, ask them. 🙂
Did you know that working with a coach is the best way to learn to become a coach or a mentor for the people around you?
If you’d like to start your journey to becoming a better communicator, feel free to book a free 30 minutes coaching consultation with me, and let’s make that happen.