Mentor Tips: Reflective Essays for Those Who Guide Mentees
There are moments when the role you have carried begins to shift in a way that feels unfamiliar, because the clarity you are used to offering is no longer readily available to you. You may find yourself in situations where your own questions feel unresolved, where your confidence feels less certain, and where the direction forward is not immediately clear. In these moments, mentoring invites you to recognize that the need for guidance is not something you move beyond, but something you continue to experience in different forms over time.
Mentoring has long been understood as a relational and developmental process that involves mutual growth, where both mentors and mentees are shaped through their participation in the relationship. Foundational perspectives emphasize that development occurs through ongoing interaction, reflection, and engagement with others, rather than through fixed roles that separate those who guide from those who receive guidance (Freire, 1970; Rhodes, 2005). When you begin to see mentoring in this way, you recognize that needing support is not separate from your role, but part of how that role continues to develop.
As you reflect on these moments, you may begin to notice that your own development as a mentor is shaped not only by what you offer, but by what you are willing to receive. Research on mentoring experiences shows that mentors often develop new skills, perspectives, and forms of understanding through their participation in mentoring relationships, particularly when they encounter situations that challenge their assumptions or require them to think differently (Martínez Oquendo et al., 2022). When you allow yourself to engage with uncertainty and seek guidance, you continue to grow in ways that deepen your ability to support others.
At the same time, your willingness to receive support is often connected to the motivations that led you into mentoring in the first place, as those motivations continue to evolve over time. Studies on mentor motivation show that individuals are often driven by a combination of personal values, relational commitments, and a desire to contribute to the growth of others, and that these motivations can expand to include a deeper awareness of their own need for connection and development (Rangel et al., 2021). When you acknowledge that need, you create space for your role to become more reciprocal, allowing mentoring to function as a shared process rather than a one-directional act.
You may also find that the environments in which mentoring takes place influence how and when you are able to receive support, particularly in contexts where expectations around leadership or guidance are strongly defined. Research on mentoring contexts highlights that mentors often navigate complex environments where they are expected to provide direction while also managing their own learning and uncertainty (Boyd et al., 2021). In these situations, recognizing your need for support becomes an intentional act, one that allows you to remain grounded even when the expectations around you suggest otherwise.
Over time, you may come to understand that needing someone else to light the way is not a contradiction of your role, but an extension of it. You begin to see that your ability to support others is strengthened by your willingness to remain open to growth, to seek guidance when needed, and to engage with your own development in an ongoing way. This understanding allows you to approach mentoring with greater humility, recognizing that growth is not something you facilitate for others alone, but something you continue to experience yourself.
As you continue to reflect on these moments, you may recognize that mentoring is sustained not by fixed roles, but by relationships that allow movement between giving and receiving over time. You remain committed to supporting others, while also acknowledging your own need for support, and in doing so, you participate more fully in the relational nature of mentoring itself. The light you offer is shaped by the light you are willing to receive, and it is through that exchange that mentoring continues to grow.
Explore This Further in the Mentor Training
If you want to deepen how you think about moments like this in your own mentoring, you can continue exploring these ideas through the Lightstand Project’s free mentor training. The training is designed to help you grow in how you respond in real situations, build relationships over time, and support meaningful development through your presence and practice. You can explore the training below.
This reflection is informed by research on mentoring relationships, mentor development, and community-based support.
References
Boyd, et al. (2021). (Details from uploaded study).
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum.
Martínez Oquendo, P., VanWyngaarden, K. N., & Cutucache, C. E. (2022). Lived experiences of former STEM undergraduate mentors of an afterschool mentoring program: An interpretative phenomenological analysis. The Qualitative Report, 27(10), 2157–2173.
Rangel, V. S., Jones, S., Doan, V., Henderson, J., Greer, R., & Manuel, M. (2021). The motivations of STEM mentors. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 29(4), 353–388.
Rhodes, J. E. (2005). A model of youth mentoring. In Handbook of youth mentoring (pp. 30–43).
