GETTING STARTED
1. What do you hope to accomplish through our mentoring relationship?
2. What characteristics are you seeking in a mentor?
3. How might I mentor or coach you? Do you like me to be really honest and to the
point, or is there another way that works for you?
4. What principles should we develop to manage confidentiality?
5. What are your expectations regarding this mentoring relationship?
6. What questions do you have about our mentoring relationship?
7. What should we do if we find we are not compatible?
VALUES AND VISIONS
1. What have been the greatest achievements on your life journey and how did you
attain them?
2. What turns have you taken on your journey that you did not expect to take?
3. What are your life dreams?
4. In what way have your dreams turned into plans?
5. What would you like your life to be like in five years time?
6. When you think about yourself ten years ago and compare yourself with who you are
today, how would you describe the differences and similarities?
7. How does your vision match the vision or mission of your organization?
8. How can you ensure that your work life is meaningful and relevant to you personally
and professionally?
9. What five values – in order - are most important to you?
10. When are you most naturally, comfortably and fully yourself?
11. What is your greatest talent?
12. How can you get paid for doing what you love?
13. Who are your most inspiring role models and what values do they have?
14. How can you best be of service to others?
15. To what degree do you believe you are living up to your potential??
16. What legacy would you like to leave?
17. What is one thing you could stop doing, or start doing, or do differently, starting
today that would most improve the quality of your life?
GOALS AND ACTIONS
1. What important goal in your life would you like to give more attention to?
2. What is it that makes that goal important to you?
3. What do you need to achieve your life goals?
4. What challenges are you facing right now at work?
5. What are your current work goals?
6. How do you measure your goals?
7. What is the most difficult goal for you to accomplish at work?
8. What are you currently doing to overcome this difficulty?
9. If all the problems at work magically disappeared overnight, what would you notice
that was different when you walked into the office tomorrow?
10. What would you attempt to do, if you knew you could not fail?
11. What is the worst thing that could happen if you attempted that thing – and failed?
12. If you had to change one thing about the way you work, what would it be?
13. What work goals would you like to achieve in the next three to six months?
14. What is attractive about these goals?
15. How realistic are the goals?
16. What resources are needed to help you achieve your goals?
17. What kind of time line needs to be established to help with your goals?
LIFE AND LEARNING
1. What worries you the most at work?
2. How do you behave when you get worried or anxious at work?
3. What are ways that you cope with stress and deadlines?
4. In what areas would you describe yourself as highly flexible?
5. What ethical principles govern your decision-making?
6. In what areas would you describe yourself as highly inflexible?
7. What sustains you when everything and everyone around you seems to be in chaos
or against you?
8. When has your attitude to a difficult situation helped you achieve something
important and how did that happen?
9. When have you failed at something that was important to you and what was the
experience like?
10. What have you learned from your own mistakes, failures or disappointments?
11. How are do you manage the balance between your work life and your personal life?
12. How can you become more creative or innovative in your work?
13. When have you taken risks at work and what happened?
14. What role does learning play in your life?
15. What has been the most difficult lesson you have had to learn?
16. When you are trying to learn something new, how do you typically go about it and
how does that work for you?
17. What do you typically do to help another person learn something?
18. What factors affected your success in helping another person learn?
19. What metaphor would you use to describe yourself as a teacher?
RELATIONSHIPS AND CHANGE
1. What are five rules you have – or would like to have - for relating with your
colleagues?
2. When you are in conflict with another person, how do you typically go about
resolving it and how successful are you in fully resolving it?
3. When you consider confronting another person, what metaphor would you use to
describe yourself?
4. What experience have you had standing up for someone even though you didn't
agree with him or her?
5. What are your most important work relationships and how can you improve them?
6. If you were communicating the best that you could, what would they be doing
differently?
7. What can you do in your organization to remove, reduce, or eliminate negative or
toxic forces?
8. What metaphor would you use to describe how you respond to change?
9. What is your most satisfying experience of being involved in a change process?
10. How do you go about managing resistance to changes you are trying to implement?
11. What would be your five principles for effective change?
COACHING EVALUATION
1. To what extent are you meeting your goals through the mentoring process?
2. How would you assess the quality of our mentoring relationship?
3. In what ways can we strengthen our mentoring relationship?
4. What are three strategies that could improve our mentoring work and how can we
put those strategies into practice?
5. When you consider our mentoring, what would you like us to do less or more or ?
6. What insights have you gained from mentoring?
7. What things/skills/attitudes/knowledge have you gained from mentoring that will be
useful to you in the future?
