She Mentors 8 Women. Yet Never Knows What to Ask Her Own Mentor.
The question she never has an answer for.
A client of mine mentors eight women informally.
Junior engineers, mostly, people two or three rungs below her who come to her with real problems and leave with something useful.
She's good at it. She'd tell you that herself, matter-of-factly, the way she'd tell you her job title.
Mainly because they seek her out.
She also has a mentor of her own. Has done for years.
A senior woman, well-regarded, generous with her time.
And every single session, Marnie never knows quite what to ask her.
"I sit down, I’ve got a million things in my head," she told me, "and yet in that moment I've got nothing."
She said it like it was a small personal failing.
Something personally wrong with her, but you and I both know, it isn't.
What a mentor is actually built to do.
A mentor has usually walked a version of your path already, likely had a similar job, if not the exact same one.
That then shapes their help and advice.
You bring a situation; they tell you what worked for them in a similar spot, once, years ago, in circumstances that were never quite yours.
That's incredibly useful, as far as it goes.
But it's also why it's hard to know what to ask.
You have to arrive already knowing which problem is the real one, specific enough to hand over, before the conversation can do anything for you.
Most weeks, Marnie didn't know that. She just knew something was off.
A niggle, and a desire in that moment to address superficial challenges that hopefully the mentor recognises.
It’s not designed to unpick the bigger questions, the ones she’s afraid of, but that will shift so much more for her.
There's a second thing worth naming plainly: a mentor's advice was shaped by their own career, their own risk tolerance, their own connections and priorities and even sometimes their own unfinished business.
A generous mentor tries to set that aside.
Not all of them do, and even the honest ones can't fully separate "what worked for me" from "what I wish I’d known."
None of that makes mentoring worthless. Far from it.
It makes it a specific tool, good for certain jobs, but not built to answer a question you haven't found the shape of yet.
What changed when the question moved.
What Marnie actually needed most wasn't advice.
It was somewhere to think out loud until the real question surfaced; something closer to what she tries to gives the women she mentors, but laughs with me that she knows she can’t because she’s not a coach.
She’s an expert in her field; the things her mentees identify with.
That's the part coaching does differently.
I'm not there to tell Marnie what worked for me.
I don't have a stake in which choice she makes, which is precisely what lets me ask the question that finds the actual problem.
A few coaching sessions in, Marnie stopped bringing polished questions and started bringing whatever was actually taking up mental space; a colleague she'd been avoiding, a project she'd said yes to for reasons she couldn't quite defend.
From there, the real question usually found itself within ten minutes.
The part she hadn't expected.
What surprised her wasn't the insight.
It was how much faster she got there once she wasn't the one holding both roles; the person with the problem and the person who has to work out how to frame it for someone else.
She continues to meet her mentor; after all she gives great advice based on her own experiences.
But she no longer expects that relationship to do a job it was never built for, and she's stopped feeling like the flaw was hers.
Want the deeper version of this?
My free Women in Tech Promotion Playbook is for senior women who are quietly brilliant, often the ones everyone else turns to, and still going without the one conversation that's built around them.
If this resonated, I write about moments like this every week the ones senior women in STEM recognise immediately and hadn't quite named yet.
Real stories, fresh client insights, and the conversation most people around you aren't having, or sharing.
Subscribe on the front page of this website.
Welcome to my Blog
I'm Dr Suzanne Doyle‑Morris and I support professional women working in STEM.
Whether you’re seeking your next promotion, aiming for leadership, or simply looking to make your mark, this blog is created for you.
It's written for the ambitious woman in STEM ready to advance and succeed on her own terms.
Blog Categories
FREE GUIDE
The Women in Tech Promotion Playbook
Your roadmap to advancement with balance.
The Women in Tech Promotion Playbook is a practical, evidence-based guide.
It's designed solely for ambitious women in STEM who want to advance their careers without burning out.
Drawing on over 25 years of coaching, research and consultancy, I outline five strategic steps that help women move from being overworked and under-recognised to confident, visible leaders.
Latest on the blog
The Women in Tech Promotion Playbook
Your roadmap to advancement with balance
The Women in Tech Promotion Playbook is a practical, evidence-based guide designed for ambitious women in STEM who want to advance their careers without burning out. Drawing on over 25 years of coaching and research, I outline five strategic steps that help women move from being overworked and under recognised to confident, visible leaders.
