Mentoring a High Achiever

Congratulations for being matched with a potential superstar in your organization. Mentoring a high achiever is an honor that can be rewarding. You will have the opportunity to help them reach their full potential and more. However, it also comes with some downsides.

While it can be a challenge to provide guidance to someone who thinks of themselves as the smartest person in the room, your role as a mentor is to help them see beyond where they are now and help them continue to grow.

Spend time getting to know your mentee. Even high achievers have more to learn. As you build your relationship, encourage them to have a growth mindset. While they may feel as if they don’t need as much mentoring as others in your organization, help them to see that becoming a lifelong learner will have a significant impact.

Encourage them to take advantage of every opportunity your organization provides for skill development. Introduce them to books, podcasts, and webinars to instill in them the joy of learning something they can build on. Send them to industry conferences for learning and networking opportunities.

Challenge them whenever possible. Push them beyond their comfort zone to provide them growth opportunities. Be patient with your high achiever who thinks they don’t need help. Give them as many tools and lots of encouragement so they build even more skills.

Help them to focus on developing their emotional intelligence abilities. Unfortunately, some high achievers aren’t as aware as they should be of their need to better understand themselves, how they make decisions and how they relate to others. Your role as a mentor is to point out when they fall short or fail and help them learn from that experience. Give them examples of decisions they have made where the outcome wasn’t what they wanted it to be and help them see what they might have done differently.

One of your roles as a mentor is to help your mentee develop their professional network. Introduce them to people who think differently from how they think. You want to help them connect with people in different fields and to facilitate their ability to develop more than superficial relationships.

Mentoring a high achiever can be frustrating at times. Find ways to help them not take themselves as seriously as they may be prone to do. Maybe even find ways to interject some fun into your mentoring sessions. Encourage them to take time away from work from time to time to relax and regroup. Being a high achiever can be stressful.

While mentoring a high achiever is an honor and privilege, it can also be challenging and frustrating at times. Nevertheless, the rewards are great.

Remember, mentorship programs are powerful employee career development tools. Learn more in our free e-book that you can download here:  Essentials of Employee Mentoring Programs