From the course: Being a Good Mentor

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Manage a toxic protégé

Manage a toxic protégé

- Let's learn about the three types of toxic proteges and discuss how to cope with them. The first toxic protege type is the flake protege. The flake protege can be simply unaware and thus relatively benign, or be engaging in passive aggressive warfare. For example, I had a protege ask me to connect him with an LMU alumna who worked at Google, so I reached out to this alumna and she graciously agreed to talk with my protege. I hate to tell you this, but my protege dropped the ball and failed to follow up with her. This made us both look like flakes. If you have a flake protege, here is what I recommend. First, I suggest that you clearly set your expectations with your protege. So after that experience, I always tell proteges that I expect them to follow up within one week of an introduction. Second, you need to make your protege responsible for a task. For example, if a protege wants me to connect them, I have them do research and prepare questions to ask ahead of time. Third, if the…

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