Formal mentoring — Why structure makes a difference
Summary
Formal mentoring is simply mentoring with intention. It creates a clear purpose, regular meetings and agreed expectations around what you want to develop.
Structure makes mentoring more likely to actually happen. Putting conversations in the diary creates dedicated time for career development that can otherwise get lost in day-to-day work.
It creates accountability. A mentor can help turn broad career goals into actions, then challenge you to follow through on them.
The mentee needs to own the relationship. Come prepared, bring real challenges and questions, organise the meetings and act on what you discuss.
You don’t need to over-engineer it. Agree on your goals, meeting frequency, timeframe and expectations. The aim is enough structure to make mentoring purposeful — without making it feel like another meeting.
Most people understand the value of having a mentor. Someone who has been a few steps ahead of you, who can offer perspective when you’re navigating a decision for the first time, and who is willing to share what they learned along the way.
The problem is that mentoring is often left surprisingly undefined. You meet someone you admire, have a great conversation, suggest catching up again, and then work gets busy. Months pass. The relationship is still valuable, but it never quite becomes what either person imagined it could be.
That is where formal mentoring can make a real difference.
Formal mentoring doesn’t need to mean rigid agendas, paperwork or a heavily managed program. At its simplest, it means making the relationship intentional. Both people understand why they are there, there is some structure around how often they meet, and there is a shared expectation that the conversations will focus on the mentee’s development.
So, what actually makes mentoring ‘formal’?
Sometimes formal mentoring happens through an established program (like Lead by Example), where mentors and mentees are matched and supported over a defined period. Other times, it can be much simpler than that. You may already know someone whose career you respect and whose perspective you value, and decide to ask whether they would be open to mentoring you in a more structured way.
The distinction is less about where the relationship comes from and more about the intention behind it.
Instead of catching up when calendars happen to align, you agree to meet regularly. Instead of talking generally about work, you identify the areas you want to develop. Instead of leaving the relationship open-ended, you might agree to work together for six or twelve months and review it from there.
That little bit of structure can completely change the value of the relationship.
How do you find a formal mentor?
There is no single way to go about it.
A structured mentoring program can be a great option because it removes one of the biggest hurdles: access. It can introduce you to someone you may never have met through your existing workplace or network, and often gives both sides a clear framework from the beginning.
But you can also create a formal mentoring relationship yourself.
The starting point is not necessarily asking, “Who is the most senior person I know?” It is thinking about what you actually want help with.
Perhaps you’re preparing for your first senior leadership role. Maybe you want to become more commercially focused, strengthen your executive presence or understand what it takes to progress towards CFO. You might be trying to navigate a career move, lead a larger team or become more influential with senior stakeholders.
Once you know what you want to learn, it becomes much easier to identify someone whose experience is relevant.
And when you approach them, specificity helps. Rather than simply asking someone to “be your mentor”, explain what you’re hoping to develop, why you value their perspective and what you have in mind. Asking whether they would be open to meeting once a month for six months is a much easier request to respond to than an undefined commitment to mentor you indefinitely.
Why formalising the relationship matters
Career development is important, but it is rarely urgent. There will always be another reporting deadline, board pack, stakeholder issue or meeting that demands your attention first. That is one reason informal mentoring relationships can easily become sporadic, even when both people genuinely value them.
Formalising the relationship gives career development somewhere to live.
A regular meeting creates protected time to step outside the demands of your current role and think more deliberately about where you are heading. It creates room for questions that often get pushed aside in day-to-day work: What skills do I need to build next? Where am I lacking exposure? What opportunities should I be seeking out? What habits or behaviours might be holding me back? What do I need to demonstrate before I’m ready for the next level?
Those conversations are hard to have consistently if you are relying on them happening by chance.
Structure creates accountability
There is also a difference between thinking I really should work on that and knowing someone is going to ask you about it again in four weeks.
A good mentoring relationship creates some healthy accountability. If you talk about putting your hand up for a stretch project, having a difficult conversation with your manager or improving how you communicate with executives, your mentor can come back to it next time.
That doesn’t mean they are there to manage your career for you. Quite the opposite. A good mentor helps you take greater ownership of it.
They can challenge your thinking, help turn broad ambition into practical actions and point out when you may be avoiding something that needs attention.
Over time, that consistency can be one of the most valuable parts of the relationship.
What should a formal mentoring relationship actually look like?
There is no perfect mentoring formula, and too much process can quickly make the relationship feel forced. But agreeing on a few things at the beginning helps both people get far more out of it.
A useful starting point is to establish:
What you want to work on. Identify two or three broad areas where you would particularly value your mentor’s perspective.
How often you’ll meet. Monthly or every six weeks can provide enough consistency without becoming onerous.
How long the relationship will run. Six or twelve months gives the relationship a natural timeframe and a point to review whether it should continue.
Who owns the meetings. In most cases, the mentee should take responsibility for scheduling the sessions and coming prepared.
What confidentiality looks like. Particularly important when conversations involve workplace dynamics, career moves or sensitive challenges.
How you want to use the time. You might bring one or two specific topics to each session rather than relying on the conversation to find its own direction.
How honest you’re prepared to be. The most useful mentoring relationships are not just supportive. They make room for challenge, direct feedback and uncomfortable questions.
That is often enough structure. You don’t need a ten-page mentoring plan or a formal agenda for every meeting. The aim is to create consistency and purpose without removing the natural conversation that makes mentoring valuable in the first place.
The mentee needs to do some of the work
It is easy to focus on finding a great mentor, but the quality of a mentoring relationship is just as dependent on the mentee.
Turning up and asking, “So, what advice have you got for me?” places all the responsibility on the other person. A much stronger mentee arrives having thought about what they want to discuss.
That could mean bringing a real situation they’re grappling with, asking for feedback on how they handled something, revisiting an action from the previous session or using the mentor as a sounding board for an upcoming decision.
Most importantly, there needs to be follow-through.
If every session involves talking about the same development goal without taking any action in between, the value of mentoring quickly plateaus. The mentor can offer perspective and challenge, but the mentee still has to do something with it.
A mentor isn’t there to give you all the answers
Perhaps one of the most useful things to understand about mentoring is that the best mentor is not necessarily the person who tells you what to do.
Often, their greatest value is helping you think differently.
They may have lived through a similar situation, but that doesn’t mean their answer should automatically become yours. A strong mentor shares experience, asks better questions, offers an external perspective and helps you see options you may not have considered.
The career remains yours.
Formal mentoring simply gives you a dedicated space to think about it more deliberately.
Good mentoring rarely happens by accident
Informal mentors can be enormously valuable, and many of us will have people throughout our careers who influence us without ever officially carrying the title.
But there is something powerful about deciding that your development is important enough to give it structure.
Formal mentoring creates consistency where good intentions can otherwise become occasional conversations. It creates accountability, access to experience and dedicated time to think beyond the role you are doing today.
And it gives both mentor and mentee permission to move past the surface-level career conversation and talk honestly about where you are going, what might be getting in the way, and what you need to do next.
Sometimes, the difference between having someone whose advice you value and having a mentoring relationship that genuinely shapes your career is simply formalising it.
Find out more about Atlas Partners women in finance mentoring initiative Lead by Example.
