It is tempting to think that mentoring means having answers. An engineer brings you a problem, you recognize the pattern, and you explain what you would do. The conversation feels efficient, but the mentee leaves with a borrowed decision instead of a stronger way to make decisions.
The better approach is to share stories rather than instructions. A story can carry context, tradeoffs, and consequences without pretending that two situations are identical. It gives the other person material to reason with while leaving the final judgment in their hands.
I like Adam Grant’s distinction between good and great mentors. Good mentors see a younger version of themselves and help that person follow the same path. Great mentors see someone’s potential to become a better version of themselves and help them discover a path of their own.
That changes the unit of mentorship. The goal is not to solve the immediate ticket, rewrite the pull request, or dictate the next career move. The goal is to develop repeatable behaviors: how to clarify the business value of work, how to ask for feedback early, how to recognize a recurring responsibility, and how to communicate when progress stalls.
A useful mentoring relationship needs an operating system. Agree on what the mentee wants to develop. Meet frequently enough to build momentum, keep a shared document, turn insights into small homework, and follow up. Give each other feedback about the relationship itself. It is also fine to stop when the relationship is no longer useful.
Honesty matters, especially when the feedback is mundane. Some professional habits are like caring for a pet: they are not exciting, but they remain your responsibility every day. When the same feedback keeps returning, the issue is no longer whether the task is interesting. The issue is whether you can build a reliable habit around it.
The best signal that mentorship is working is not that the mentee starts sounding like the mentor. It is that they make clearer decisions, explain those decisions in their own language, and need the mentor less over time.