By Shawn Johal, an entrepreneur, business growth coach and member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) in Montreal, Canada. 

What is mentorship, really?

The mentor-mentee connection is a unique one—one that I never really understood before. The company I had co-founded in 2009, DALS Lighting, was thriving and we would soon have over 40 members on the team. I felt lucky that employees mentioned they “looked up” to me, but was I mentoring them? I had never been mentored by anybody in my life, and I didn’t know what it looked like.