10 Ways to Be a Great Mentor

Carleton Chinner is the Managing Director of MagniStrat, a Brisbane, Australia-based project consultancy specializing in program capability maturity improvement. Carleton works on large complex projects and is often called upon to speak about his experiences.

  Career Development   Talent Management  

In the 1984 movie Karate Kid, a young Daniel asks the wise master Mr. Miyagi to teach him karate. Miyagi hands him a cloth and points to his car, telling his young apprentice to “Wax on, wax off.”

Daniel bridles under the imposition of having to clean the master’s car, unaware that the repetitive motion is teaching him the forearm block. It may appear to be an inefficient way of teaching a simple skill, but what Miyagi is actually doing is building his apprentice’s muscle memory so that the action can later be performed without thinking. This is what being a great mentor is all about. Teaching imparts knowledge, but it doesn’t always provide the confidence that comes from experience. As a mentor, your goal is to make your mentee a better project manager through guided experience.

A while ago, I had to work with a project manager who reported to a separate department. This project manager—while clearly enthusiastic about their assigned project—…

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