Schedule an appointment

If AI can teach people almost anything, what is the role of mentoring now?

by | Sep 23, 2026 | Advice for Leaders, Alignment, Artificial Intelligence, Facilitating Learning, Group Mentoring, Growth and Development, Making Mentoring Work For You, Mentoring Communication, Mentoring Questions, Mentoring Relationships, Mindset, Supporting Mentors and Mentees

Imagine a new hire, fresh from college, top talent recruited for a high-performing team. We can call her Whitney.

Whitney is six months into her role. She is bright, capable, and resourceful. When she gets stuck, she opens an AI tool.

She asks it to explain the new market she is working in. She asks it to draft an email to a senior stakeholder. She asks it to summarize notes from a meeting she barely understood. It does all these things, well and quickly.

In many ways, Whitney is moving faster than she could have a few years ago. She is not waiting for someone to teach her the basics or wondering where to start.

Her company sees this as a win. They are so pleased with the efficiencies of AI that, instead of investing in mentoring, they have invested in AI coaching as their primary development tool. The message, though no one says it quite this plainly, is: Why build mentoring when people can get answers instantly?

For Whitney, something is missing.

AI can’t identify which stakeholder really needs to be consulted before the proposal goes forward. AI can’t help her understand why one very influential leader nodded enthusiastically in the meeting but sent a skeptical email afterward. It can’t help her discern whether her colleague’s stony reaction is par for the course or a sign of misalignment. It can’t teach her, in context, how to raise a concern without sounding difficult, or how to tell whether silence in the room means agreement, resistance, or fatigue.

She feels disconnected from context and isolated by her independence. AI cannot help her with that.

Whitney’s manager holds her accountable for performance: the report, the deck, the deadline, the client response. But no one is holding her accountable for her growth. No one is asking what she is learning, where she is stretching, what patterns she is noticing, or what kind of judgment she is developing.

Whitney’s work looks good enough that everyone assumes she is fine.

She isn’t fine. Her skills are underutilized. She is producing without developing. She is answering questions without building confidence. She is surrounded by tools and still has nowhere to turn.

Eventually, Whitney realizes she needs more than answers. She needs people.

She reaches out to someone in another department whose judgment she admires. Not with a grand request to “be my mentor forever,” but with a specific invitation: “I’m trying to get better at reading stakeholder dynamics. Would you be willing to talk with me once a month for the next few months?”

That relationship changes something.

Her mentor does not simply give her advice. She provides context. She helps Whitney see the organization more clearly. She challenges Whitney’s assumptions, shares her own mistakes, and points out patterns Whitney had missed.

Over time, Whitney begins to use AI differently too.

Instead of asking AI for the answer, she asks it to help her prepare: What questions should I bring? What assumptions might I be making? How can I reflect on what I heard? Where do I need more context from a human being?

AI becomes a tool for preparation and reflection. The relationship becomes the place where judgment is built.

This is where the question gets real: If AI can teach people almost anything, what is the role of mentoring now?

The answer is that mentoring was never just about teaching.

At its best, mentoring is about development. It is about connection, reciprocal learning, shared sense-making, feedback, encouragement, perspective, accountability, and access. It is not merely the transfer of knowledge. It is a relationship that helps people interpret experience, build judgment, navigate complexity, and become more capable than they would be on their own.

In an AI-shaped workplace, that role becomes more important, not less.

This relationship is just a starting point for Whitney. She does not need one all-knowing mentor to hand her every answer. She needs a developmental network: a mentor who can help her make sense of experience, a connector who can help her understand the unwritten rules, a challenger who will sharpen her thinking, a sponsor who will say her name in rooms she is not yet in, a peer who will compare notes honestly, and a manager who sees development as more than task completion.

Organizations need this too. They cannot simply give people AI tools and assume growth will follow. Output is not the same as development. Efficiency is not the same as judgment. Access to information is not the same as access to wisdom.

AI does not replace the human relationships that help us make meaning, build courage, exercise judgment, and contribute fully.

AI hasn’t made mentoring obsolete. It has made human intelligence and connection even more essential to ensuring talent is fully realized.

For more information and resources, visit:  www.centerformentoring.com or www.lisazfain.com

AI and mentoring

The AWE Question: How Wonder Opens Better Mentoring Conversations

by | Jun 18, 2026 | Advice for Leaders, Facilitating Learning, Group Mentoring, Growth and Development, Making Mentoring Work For You, Mentoring Communication, Mentoring Questions, Mentoring Relationships, Mindset, Supporting Mentors and Mentees

Have you ever been struck by something outside yourself that filled you with a sense of awe?

For me, it happens in the middle of ordinary moments. Like this: I might be driving down I-90, thinking about my day, when I glance up and see that, as we say around here, “the mountain is out.” There’s Mt. Rainier in the distance, vast and luminous against the sky.

And suddenly, the short winter days in Seattle feel like a fair trade. The rain, the gray, the early darkness all fade into the background. And in the summer, when daylight stretches late into the evening, the mountain feels like icing on the cake, an invitation to squeeze in a weeknight hike and still make it home before dark.

It feels breathtaking. At once calming and invigorating. It takes me out of my head and away from my thoughts. It makes me more present and helps me feel part of something grander than myself.

That is what awe can do.

It pulls our attention beyond the tight circle of our own concerns so that we pay attention instead to what is in front of us.

When we are no longer focused only on ourselves, we become more available to wonder. Wonder is what happens when we pause long enough to notice that there is more here than we first understood. It does not rush to categorize, solve, or control. It lingers. It looks again.

And in that looking again, wonder becomes a doorway to curiosity.

Curiosity is wonder put into motion. It asks: What else is here? What else might be true? What else have I not yet seen?

That same spirit belongs in our mentoring conversations.

Michael Bungay Stanier popularized one of the simplest and most powerful coaching questions in The Coaching Habit: “And what else?” He calls it the AWE Question. It is a memorable acronym for a deceptively small question, one that asks us to stay curious a little longer before advising, solving, interpreting, or steering. It’s a great question for coaching, and for mentoring.

In mentoring, the first answer is often the polished answer. The practiced answer. The answer the mentee gives because it is the one most available to them in the moment. “And what else?” gently opens another door. It says, “I’m still with you. I’m still interested. There may be more here.”

Research supports this intuition. In a recent article in The Chronicle of Evidence-Based Mentoring, Jean Rhodes summarized research on listening, curiosity, and connection in mentoring relationships. One key finding: follow-up questions are not conversational filler. They are among the most reliable predictors of connection. Studies cited in the article link thoughtful follow-up questions to greater liking, perceived responsiveness, trust, autonomy, relatedness, and willingness to disclose again in the future.

In other words, curiosity is not simply a nice mentoring quality. It is a relational behavior people can feel.

This is powerful because mentoring is not merely the transfer of advice from someone more experienced to someone less experienced. At its best, mentoring helps people hear themselves think. It helps them locate their own judgment, name their own desires, and see possibilities they might otherwise miss.

A mentor who moves too quickly to advice may miss the deeper layer.

A mentor who stays curious can help the mentee find it.

“And what else?” gives that deeper truth room to emerge.

A mentee can also use the question for themselves: “What else might be possible here?”

The question is not only useful inside a formal mentoring relationship. Moving Beyond Mentoring, “And what else” is a great question to ask ourselves when we think about our developmental networks – the relationships we need to help us, and others, grow). In a developmental network, growth does not come from one wise person with all the answers. It comes from a web of relationships that help us see more fully. Curiosity activates that web. It helps us ask better questions of peers, sponsors, managers, colleagues, direct reports, friends, and even ourselves.

Within mentoring, the AWE Question deepens the conversation.

Beyond mentoring, it becomes a way of moving through the world.

It asks: What else is true here? What else might be possible? What else am I not seeing? Who else might help me grow?

The next time you feel the urge to give advice, pause.

Let wonder do its quiet work.

Then ask: “And what else?”

 

For more information and resources, visit:  www.centerformentoring.com or www.lisazfain.com

View of Mt Rainier from freeway