Hi Dan,

Mentoring is something which is very close to my heart and I enjoyed reading your article, thank you. I liked the principle of it and 100% agree with the fact that mentors can help you at various stages of your career but I’m not sure if I agree with your point around “Mentor/mentee relationships should not be transactional.”

For someone who’s either new to a firm or in the early stages of their career, it is practically impossible to expect HR/your boss to know who should be your mentor, who you’d ‘click’ with. Your ambitions, career decisions may be very different to what they were when you first got your job.

As you said, creating a portfolio of mentors is important, I agree but if the initial match is not transactional, how can one know whether that’s the right mentor for you? Today’s generation (including myself) learns in very different ways. Promotions need to happen faster, skills want to be developed quicker and waiting for someone to help you on specific answers is a no-no.

I agree with all your points around building long-term relationships based on trust and respect with mentors and I believe that can only happen when you know the reason you were connected in the first place, and I think that’s transactional. We need to create a portfolio of mentors because different people bring different values/advice to the table for different reasons. I think that is somewhat transactional.

Thanks again for a great read,

Dimple