Many of us regularly use our knowledge and experience to help and guide…
2026
Many of us regularly use our knowledge and experience to help and guide others. But this type of help and guidance isn't just useful for our friends and family. By mentoring in the workplace, you can help people increase their effectiveness, advance their careers and create a more productive organisation. Being a mentor can also be very rewarding.
Mentoring is a relationship between two people - the "mentor" and the “mentee”. As a mentor, you pass on valuable skills, knowledge and insights to your mentee to help them develop their career.
Mentoring can help the mentee feel more confident and self supporting. Mentees can also develop a clearer sense of what they want in their careers and their personal lives. They will develop greater self-awareness and see the world, and themselves, as others do.
For an organisation, mentoring is a good way of efficiently transferring valuable competencies from one person to another. This expands the organisation's skills base, helps to build strong teams and can form part of a well-planned succession planning strategy.
There are two main types of mentoring: Developmental mentoring - This is where the mentor is helping the mentee develop new skills and abilities. The mentor is a guide and a resource for the mentee's growth.
Sponsorship mentoring - This is when the mentor is more of a career influencer than a guide. In this situation, the mentor takes a close interest in the progress of the mentee. The mentor "opens doors", influencing others to help the mentee's advancement.
To be a good mentor, you need skills similar to those used in coaching, with one big difference - you must have experience relevant to the mentee's situation. This can be technical experience, management experience or simply life experience.
As a mentor you DO NOT pass on _____ to the mentee.
- A.
knowledge
- B.
insights
- C.
valuable skills
- D.
self-awareness
Attempted by 5 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
A mentor's role rests on a key distinction: knowledge, information and skills are external and teachable, so one person can hand them to another through explanation, demonstration or advice. An internal state of mind such as self-awareness, however, cannot be transferred this way — a person can only build it through their own reflection and lived experience.
Applying this to the passage: it explicitly states that "As a mentor, you pass on valuable skills, knowledge and insights to your mentee" — so skills, knowledge and insights are all things a mentor directly gives. Self-awareness, however, is described differently: the mentee will "develop greater self-awareness and see the world, and themselves, as others do" — something the mentee builds through their own reflection, with the mentor only helping it emerge, not something handed over.
knowledge — explicitly named in the passage among what a mentor passes on.
insights — explicitly named in the passage among what a mentor passes on.
valuable skills — explicitly named in the passage among what a mentor passes on.
self-awareness — explicitly framed in the passage as something the mentee develops, not something the mentor hands over.
So the thing a mentor does NOT pass on to the mentee is self-awareness.