This is NPR's Life Kit with tools to help you get it together.

Hey everybody, Mary Elcigara here.

There's this thing that happens in life. Once you get some experience at work or with a hobby or with parenting

whatever, you may want to share it to pass along what you're learning to make things a little easier for the next person who's climbing the mountain behind you.

You want to be a mentor. On Life Kit today we have a special episode about mentorship.

It's a conversation between me and Micella Dukeley, the head of workplace strategy and innovation at the Media and Advisory Firm Charter.

And we did it live in front of an audience at OnAirFast in Brooklyn, an event for audio makers.

We talk about who can be a mentor, share tips on how to structure these relationships, and

we even do a little role play where she's the mentor and I'm her wide-eyed mentee.

So I want to talk early on about what a college professor of mine would have called the Whiffum.

Okay. I took this speech class in college and she would write up on the board

WIFM, which meant what's in it for me.

And I try to remember that in any speech, but just in general if you're talking about something it's like,

I'm sure we're all interested in being mentors out of the goodness of our hearts, but also it's not a one-sided relationship, right?

Like there are other reasons to be a mentor.

1,000%. So my organization charter, we recently actually partnered with Qualtrics to do some research on

mentor-menti relationships. And specifically like we were trying to kind of figure out, can you have a solid mentor-menti relationship

virtually? And the fact is that you absolutely can.

But one of the other findings that we realize was that like successful mentor-menti relationships,

the mentor often feels like they've gained something. And so I think what's really unfortunate is that we'd have a tendency to assume that

if you're a mentor, you're just like kindly giving out of like your heart and so lovely and really nice.

But it really shouldn't be that way. When you think about what can a mentor get, I'd say first and foremost,

...