One of the major causes of procrastination is the amount of choices you need to make in your career. According to Maribel Lopez, my first guest on the “Mentor from Afar” podcast, a mentor’s job is to help mentees “prioritize the top 3 out of 5 activities”.
Mentees are frequently faced with determining how to move forward when they have many choices to make. A mentor is in a trusted position to help prioritize with the mentee.
Simple steps to take include:
- Listen First. Many mentors make the mistake of leaning in on their past experiences and projecting those onto their mentees. Listen to all of the priorities first because the the mentee has already stated what they want. They may just be looking for confirmation.
- Time vs Importance. Help mentees evaluate choices by looking at those choices in the frame of time vs importance. For example, perhaps a mentee needs to choose between applying for a new job and taking a college course. The college course starts soon and would be applicable to the types of job for which they are applying. In this case, the mentor suggested from a “time” perspective, the course would be a better option than applying for a job right now.
- Consider the “Fly-Wheel”. Many behaviorists state that doing a set of small tasks and working up to larger, more difficult tasks can be successful in accomplishing tasks.
- Be There Throughout. Sometimes no matter what the options are, there is not one choice more important than the others. In that case, be there for the mentee throughout choosing one of the options. You can reward them for making a choice that worked out, help them pivot to another choice if the path was incorrect or just being a sounding board can be beneficial.
You can be a mentor on Gunschu today! Download the mobile app on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.