Menteeship Skills Posted on October 19, 2007 Being a good mentee requires certain skills, states Harold Pincus (bio).

One needs to think about what are the ideals and capacities and the expectations for a mentee, because there are menteeship skills, as well as mentorship skills. And menteeship skills means that, number one, you have to be persistent. Often times, mentors are very busy people and that while they may be open and friendly and want to work with you, that in fact there's a lot of things on their plate, and that your persistence will make sure that it follows through. You have to be disciplined. Make sure that the things that you commit to, you actually do, which means that you have to be dependable as well.

Often times, you may have to add more structure to the relationship so that when you meet with your mentors, to come in and actually have an agenda of issues that you want to talk about, to keep reminders to yourself about what you talked about last time, and what you promised to bring in, and what, for example, drafts of a proposal or drafts of a paper that you wanted to go in and discuss with a mentor. Or, for example, that - a set of questions of you have based upon comments that the mentor made earlier that you didn't quite understand; that you are keeping track in some ways so that you can make sure that there's continuity to the relationship.

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