Finding a mentor is a powerful way of working towards achieving you goals and ambitions, regardless of where they lie. A mentor can be many things; someone who you go to for advice, a sounding board to bounce your ideas off or someone who can help you hone a particular technique or skill.

This links back to the point about the mentee taking the initiative in a relationship. What do they want to achieve? At the end of the day, it is the mentee who will be making the achievement � not the mentor. The hard graft has to come from the mentee themselves. Of course the mentor can provide training and guidance along the way but ultimately it is the mentee�s responsibility to take the bull by the horns and work towards those goals.

A common misconception is that a being mentee is a passive role, when quite the opposite is true. For a mentoring relationship to flourish, it is down to the mentee to be the driving force in the relationship. The mentee must assume the initiative to seek out and engage his or her mentor to secure the training or advice he or she needs.

For a mentoring relationship to flourish a mentee should exhibit a number of qualities.