A relationship that was valuable for four years has become a pleasant conversation twice a year in which nothing is at stake.
Neither party will say so. Both are fond of the other, both remember what it was, and raising it would seem to diminish what it had been.
Why they run past their usefulness
The relationship changes character without either party noticing, and the mechanism is straightforward.
The junior person’s situation moves. The problems they now face are ones the senior person has not encountered, or are in a domain where their experience does not transfer, or belong to an organization they do not understand.
The counsel available becomes general rather than specific, and general counsel is the least valuable thing a senior person holds.
What remains is warmth, which is genuine and is not what the relationship was for.
Four signs it has finished
Nothing live is brought. The conversation is about how things are generally rather than about a decision in front of the person.
The senior person’s answers have become recognisable. Both parties know roughly what will be said before it is said.
The junior person has stopped disagreeing. Not because they agree, but because the exchange has become social and disagreement would be out of register.
Either party is rescheduling. The most reliable indicator, and the one both interpret as busyness.
Ending it without diminishing it
The framing that works treats the ending as evidence of success rather than of failure, which is accurate.
The relationship existed to help somebody through a period. A person who no longer needs it has arrived somewhere, and continuing it out of obligation implies they have not.
What can be said plainly, by either party: the regular thing has done what it was for, and I would rather we shifted to being in touch when something specific comes up. That preserves everything and removes the schedule that had become the obligation.
A term set at the outset makes this unnecessary, which is the strongest argument for setting one.
Ending it because it is not working
A harder case. Some relationships never took, and both parties know within a few meetings.
Where the arrangement was assigned, either party can attribute the ending to fit rather than to the other person, which is generally true and is the reason introductions work better than assignments.
The junior person is usually the one who cannot raise it, because withdrawing looks like rejecting somebody senior who gave their time. Which puts the obligation on the senior person to offer the exit: I am not sure I am the right person for what you are working on, and I would rather say so than have us both keep meeting.
That is a kindness, and it is frequently accompanied by the most useful thing available — an introduction to somebody who is the right person.
When the counsel has become wrong
The case that requires the junior person to exercise judgment about somebody they respect.
Advice formed under conditions that have changed can be confidently wrong. Somebody whose experience of an industry, a technology, or a labour market ended fifteen years ago may be giving counsel that was correct then and is not now, and they will give it with the authority of having lived it.
Which is an argument for having more than one, made in the earlier entries and reinforced here. A single source of counsel is a single point of failure in exactly the way an institution’s single expert is.
The person being mentored retains responsibility for their own decisions. Deferring to a mentor’s judgment against your own reading of a situation you know better is not respect; it is an abdication, and the consequences land on you.
What continues afterward
Ending the regular arrangement is not ending the relationship, and this is the part people fear losing.
What generally persists is more durable than the meetings were. Somebody who can be called when something genuinely difficult arrives, who will take the call for the rest of their life, and who has watched enough of your work to give a straight answer quickly.
Most people who have been mentored well describe that as what they actually retained, and they retained it because somebody had the sense to stop meeting monthly about nothing.
Edited by Patrick J. Wolf, PhD