The Mentee Who Wants a Script
You are a senior manager and have been assigned as Daniel's formal mentor. Daniel is two years into his career, technically strong - his delivery ratings are 'exceeds' - but his stakeholder communication is rated 'needs improvement.' In your first three sessions he repeatedly asks you to 'just tell me what to say' at the upcoming steering committee, which is in ten days. He has also just declined a stretch assignment leading a cross-team initiative, saying he is 'not ready.' His line manager thinks he should be pushed harder; Daniel says he wants to be developed but keeps asking for answers rather than questions.
1. How do you respond to Daniel's request for a script for the steering committee?
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The request is diagnostic, not a problem to be solved directly. Before answering, I need to know which gap I am looking at:
- Skill gap - he has never been taught how to build a stakeholder message. Then telling him is appropriate; withholding information to 'coach' would be withholding a tool he has no way to invent.
- Confidence gap - he knows roughly what to say and freezes. Then a script entrenches the dependency and gives him one more thing to read off.
A practical test is to ask what happened the last time he presented and what he would write if he had to draft it in five minutes. If he produces something directionally right, the gap is confidence.
My response is a hybrid, not a lecture: I model once with think-aloud ('here is how I'd decide what makes the cut'), then he drafts three bullets and I critique them. He owns the draft before the meeting, not after. Written script on the day is a fallback, not the plan.
What would change my answer: if the presentation is to a high-stakes external audience, I would script it fully - the learning can happen on a lower-risk occasion.
2. Daniel declined the stretch assignment. His manager wants him pushed harder. What do you do as mentor?
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Two things are running in parallel and should not be merged: Daniel's development, and his manager's delivery needs. As mentor I own the first and must not quietly do the second.
First, get past the label. 'Not ready' is a conclusion, not a reason. I would ask what specifically he imagines going wrong - capacity (he genuinely has no hours), capability (he does not know how to run a cross-team initiative), or exposure (he fears failing publicly). Each has a different remedy.
If it is exposure, the answer is rarely 'push harder.' It is shrinking the exposure until it is survivable: co-lead with a peer for the first six weeks, a defined scope with one deliverable, an explicit safety net. If it is capacity, the honest move is to tell the manager no and say why.
I would also flag one boundary: a mentor who relays the manager's pressure loses the trust that makes the relationship useful. With Daniel's permission I would feed the real reason back to the manager, framed as a sequencing issue rather than a refusal.
3. How will you know the mentoring is working, and where are the boundaries of your role?
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Success is not 'Daniel is more confident' - that is not observable. I would track dependency-reducing behaviours over the next quarter:
- He brings a draft to sessions rather than a request for an answer.
- He raises the stakeholder problem before the deadline forces it.
- He initiates contact with a stakeholder without asking permission first.
If by session six he is still asking for scripts, my method is not working and I should change it - not conclude he is unmotivated.
Boundaries matter more than milestones. A mentor is not the appraiser and not the disciplinarian; I should not be the person who decides his rating while he is telling me where he struggles. I would be explicit about confidentiality and its limits up front: what stays between us, and the narrow set of things I must escalate - a wellbeing concern, a safety or compliance risk, or a performance issue that has become the manager's legitimate business. Absent those triggers, the manager gets themes with Daniel's agreement, not transcripts.