What Good Business Mentoring Actually Looks Like
By Debbie Frith, Boost and Beyond Business Solutions
Business mentoring is often described in terms of strategy, accountability, and structured sessions. But some of the most important work a business mentor does happens when the session takes an unexpected turn. In this blog, business mentor Debbie Frith draws on a recent week of back-to-back client sessions to explore what good mentoring really looks like for SME owners, and why knowing when to hold steady is just as valuable as knowing when to push.
Most people who come to me for business mentoring have a version of what they expect in their heads. Structured sessions, a clear agenda, strategic questions, and accountability for what they said they would do. And yes, that is a fair description of how business mentoring works much of the time.
But there is another side to it. One of the things that separates genuinely useful mentoring from a glorified progress meeting.
To highlight what I am talking about, recently I had three mentoring sessions on three consecutive days. Different clients, different businesses, different stages of growth. All three are SME owners at meaningful points in their journeys:
- One is building a team and trying to step back from the day-to-day after years of carrying everything alone
- One is planning a carefully considered exit from a business built over decades
- One is working through a painful setback that has knocked their confidence at a moment when they needed things to go well
I went into each session with a plan. A sense of where we had got to last time, what we had agreed, and what I wanted to explore next. That preparation is essential, and I don’t show up without it.
One of the three sessions went largely as planned. The preparation paid off, the client was ready, and we covered the ground we needed to cover with focus and momentum. The other two were different.
When the plan changes
One client arrived carrying the weight of a month that had beaten them up and left them feeling incredibly deflated. A client relationship they had invested in and recruited for had ended badly and without the respect they deserved. They were still processing it. The financial implications were real. Their confidence had taken a hit they had not anticipated, and they were not in a place to think strategically about the next twelve months.
Another arrived with a head full of noise. Their business is progressing well, the team is developing, and the systems being built are starting to work. But on the day of our session, none of that was visible to them. They were buried in operational clutter, stressed and overwhelmed before the session had even started.
In both cases, I held steady.
What holding steady means
Holding steady is not the same as stepping back or lowering your standards as a business mentor. It means remaining calm and grounded when the person across from you is not. It means not filling the silence with reassurance before they have had a chance to say what they feel. It means keeping a clear view of where this client is heading, even when they cannot see it themselves, and trusting that the strategic work will still be there when they are ready for it.
What both clients needed was to feel heard, to get some practical clarity on the most pressing priorities, and to leave feeling less alone with it than when they arrived. So that is what we did, and in both cases, it was the right call.
Knowing when to hold steady and when to push takes experience and attention to the person in front of you. It also takes enough trust in the relationship to say, out loud: “I can see today is different. Talk to me about what is going on.” Most clients, when given that permission, will tell you what they need from you.
Challenge still has its place
Holding steady is not letting someone off the hook indefinitely. Accountability does not disappear. Challenge does not go on permanent hold. The difference is that you are choosing the right moment for it, rather than applying it mechanically, regardless of what is happening in the room.
A mentor who cannot hold that tension, between the longer view of where a client needs to get to and an honest read of what they can engage with today, will either push too hard at the wrong moment or allow clients to drift without ever being stretched. Neither serves the client well. With both clients this week, I listened first and understood what they were carrying before I offered anything. The challenge will come, and it will be more useful because of that.
What makes business mentoring different
This is one of the things that distinguishes a mentoring relationship from other forms of business support. A business mentor who knows your business well, who has been in the room with you through the difficult periods as well as the good ones, can read the difference between a client who needs to be pushed and a client who needs to be steadied. That reading becomes possible through accumulated knowledge and investment in the person over time.
If you are considering working with a business mentor and wondering what it feels like, this is part of the answer. It is structured and strategic, and it holds you to account. But it is also responsive to you as a person, not just to you as a small business owner with a set of objectives. The two are not separate; you cannot address one without the other.
The business mentoring relationship works best when clients bring the business challenges they want to work through, and the honesty to say when something bigger is going on. That honesty is what makes the work real.
If that sounds like the kind of business mentoring partnership you have been looking for, I would welcome a conversation. You can find out more about how I work at www.boostandbeyond.co.uk or get in touch directly with me at debbie@boostandbeyond.co.uk.
Debbie Frith is the founder of Boost and Beyond Business Solutions, a business mentoring practice based in Dorset. With over 30 years of hands-on commercial experience across hospitality, manufacturing, and business support, she helps SME owners and solo business owners make better decisions, build sustainable businesses, and stop trying to do it all alone. Debbie is a member of the Association of Business Mentors, a Dorset Ambassador and an Ambassador with the Total Business Network.