How to Set Goals With Your Mentor That You Will Actually Pursue

A mentoring goal is the thing you and your mentor return to at every meeting, and the reason the meetings keep happening. Many goals written at the start of a mentoring program fade within a couple of months, quietly, because they were never really the mentee’s own, or because they described an activity rather than a change. This guide shows how to write a goal you will actually pursue: what a good one looks like, a light method for arriving at it with your mentor, worked examples for four kinds of mentee, what to do when the goal changes, and how it connects to the forms your program asks you to fill in.

What makes a goal one you will actually pursue?

Three tests separate goals that survive from goals that fade: whether they describe a state or an activity, whether they are yours or expected of you, and whether they fit the time you actually have.

• State, not activity. “Have more one-on-ones with senior people” is an activity; you can complete it and be no further forward. “Know by March whether I want to move into management, and have told my manager either way” is a state: you can tell whether you are there. Ask of any draft goal: if I achieved this, what would be different, and who would notice?
• Yours, not expected. Many first goals are borrowed: what a manager suggested, what the program’s example said, what sounds serious. A borrowed goal produces polite meetings and no action between them. A test that works: would you still want this if nobody ever asked about it?
• Fitted to the time. A six-month program with monthly meetings gives you six hours with your mentor and perhaps twenty hours of your own work in between. “Become a confident public speaker” does not fit. “Give the next team presentation without reading from notes, and get written feedback from two people who were there” does.

An example of the rewrite: a mentee’s first draft reads “improve my leadership skills.” After ten minutes of questions it becomes “run the weekly team meeting myself for the next two months, and get my manager’s honest view on how it went.” Same underlying wish, but now there is something to do this week and something to look at in two months.

Which method works without turning into paperwork?

A light one, in five steps, most of which take minutes.

1. Draft alone. Before the first meeting, write one or two goals in plain words, and beneath each one the situation that produced it. Do not polish. This is material for a conversation, not a submission.
2. Refine in the first meeting. Read the draft to your mentor and let them ask about it. Expect the goal to change shape: narrower, more concrete, occasionally a different goal altogether that the questions uncovered. Leave with the revised version written down, in your words.
3. Break it into next-meeting steps with dates. Not a full plan. One step you will complete before the next meeting, with a date, agreed at every meeting. Six meetings, six steps, and the goal moves.
4. Review at every meeting. Two minutes at the start: did the step happen, what did you learn, is the goal still the right one. This is the part that makes the goal real; skipping it is how goals fade without anyone deciding to drop them.
5. Change on evidence. If something you learned means the goal is wrong, change it. If you simply had a bad two weeks, keep it. The difference matters, and the review is where you tell them apart.

Your mentor’s part in this is to ask the questions that sharpen the goal, to say whether it seems realistic given what they know of the path, and to share how a similar goal went for them. What they do not do is set the goal for you, find you the job it points at, fix the manager who stands in its way, or make the decision at the end. Those stay with you. How to prepare for a mentoring meeting covers how to bring the goal into each meeting without turning it into a status report.

What do good goals look like for different mentees?

The same three tests, applied to four situations.

An employee, three years in, feeling stuck.

• First draft: “Get promoted.”
• Why it fails: the decision is not yours, and the program ends before the next promotion round.
• Better: “By the end of the program, have a written list of what the next level requires, my manager’s honest assessment of where I am against it, and one gap I am visibly working on.”
• First step: ask the manager for a 30-minute conversation about the next level, and write down what they say.

A final-year student choosing a direction.

• First draft: “Figure out my career.”
• Why it fails: too large to act on, and no way to know when it is done.
• Better: “Talk to three people doing the two jobs I am considering, and by the end of the semester know which one I am applying for and why.”
• First step: ask the mentor for one introduction, and find the other two through the university’s alumni network.

A founder in an accelerator.

• First draft: “Grow faster.”
• Why it fails: an activity with no end, and mostly not about the founder.
• Better: “Decide, with evidence, whether to keep both customer segments or drop one, and have made that call before demo day.”
• First step: pull the numbers for both segments and bring them to the next meeting.

A professional returning after a career break.

• First draft: “Get back to where I was.”
• Why it fails: it measures against a past that has moved on, and it is more anxiety than goal.
• Better: “Within four months, be current on the two tools my field adopted while I was away, and have had one conversation with a hiring manager about what a realistic first role looks like.”
• First step: ask the mentor what changed in the field in the last three years, and write down the two things that matter most.

Notice that every better version names something to do this month, and every one of them is about the mentee’s own actions rather than someone else’s decision.

What should you do when the goal changes?

Expect it to. A goal written in the first meeting is written with the least information you will have at any point in the program. Changing it is a sign that the meetings are working.

• Change on evidence, not mood. You learned that the role you wanted is not what you thought, or your situation moved, or the original goal turned out to be your manager’s. Those are reasons. A discouraging week is not.
• Say it at the start of a meeting. “I think the goal has changed, and here is why.” It takes two minutes and gives your mentor the context for everything that follows.
• Rewrite it, with the same three tests. State, yours, fitted to the time that is left. A goal changed at month four should be smaller than the one it replaces.
• Update the record. If your program tracks goals in a form or on the program page, put the new version there, so the coordinator and the closing feedback refer to the goal you actually pursued.

A student who set out to choose between two careers and discovered by month three that she wanted neither did not fail at goal-setting. She had done exactly what the goal was for. The new goal, to find a third option and test it with two conversations, was better than the first, and it only existed because the first had been pursued.

How does the goal connect to the program’s forms?

Most structured programs ask participants to fill in a few forms over the cycle: something at the start, a short note after each meeting, a mid-program check-in, and closing feedback at the end. They are easier, and more useful to you, if the goal is written in a form that answers their questions.

• The start. Write the refined goal from the first meeting, not the draft. If the form asks for a goal before you have met your mentor, write the draft and update it after.
• The post-meeting note. One line on the step you agreed and whether the previous one happened. On Mentornity this form sits on the meeting page, so it is quick to do while the conversation is fresh.
• The mid-program check-in. This is the moment to ask honestly whether the goal is still the right one, and to say so if it has changed. Coordinators use these to spot pairs that need help; a candid answer is the most useful thing you can give them.
• The closing feedback. Measure against the goal you actually pursued, including any change along the way. “I set out to do X, learned Y, and ended with Z” is a complete and honest account, and far more useful to the program than a tick against the original wording.

A goal that lives in your notes, in your mentor’s notes, and in the program’s forms is one that three people are quietly keeping alive. That is most of what it takes to pursue it.