When an effective mentor is engaged, there can be a tendency for them to become emotionally invested in the outcome. It might be that you want your mentee to make what you believe are better choices, or to change certain behaviors or tendencies. And perhaps your mentee is not as responsive to your suggestions as you’d like them to be. If we are motivated to experience the pleasure of what we see as a successful outcome or the gratification of the mentee getting it right, then when their actions fall short of our expectations, we may feel frustrated.

The extent of your involvement is to advise, support, help, guide – and that’s all. So this can provide a helpful boundary for you, which will help you to relax about what happens outside of your mentoring conversations. By adopting this principle, you are remaining impartial to potential outcomes. This doesn’t mean you are not interested in what your mentee does –merely that you will retain a balanced view of it. If you accept that empowering someone else is more valuable than fixing things for them, then this principle is logical and hopefully acceptable to you.