Keep your Mentee motivated

I've been writing blog post on Motivation and then realized that wrote much about mentee, so I've decided to put in another blog post.

Mentee

In one of my tweets I've already mentioned that I got mentee to work with. I'm really happy to coach/mentor person who isn't spoiled by the years of being working in environment that did not aid his motivation.

My tips regarding of how you should deal with your mentee

Each new employee has a good motivation and you should keep it on the level it was when he came at first day! It is very important, but sadly not many cares about this. I did not read a lot of books on motivation, but I know what motivates me and have an idea about what can motivate others. I'm using this technics:

• I'm trying to publicly praise what he is doing, because he definitely deserves this and besides this is the way how he can quicker accommodate into new working environment.  
• Do not correct and highlight each of his mistake/gap. Yeah, I said that. Possibly it is better to allow him do mistake. Sometimes when you say to person that he/she did something wrong it can disappoint to such extend that after knowing right way of doing things person will not have desire to apply those ideas.
• Throw him our of comfort zone and then try to manage the stress he got. Ok with throwing him and challenging him I'm more or less fine, but cannot find enough time to manage. I'm glad that he comes to ask many questions, but I feel that I do not have enough control about what is going on with code he is writing. 
• Give him 3rd learning sources not directly related to work. For example, I love that we both started reading "CLR via C#" 3rd edition. (Ok, I read CLR via C# already... This time it will be almost third time.)

Listed above is just some list of recommendations/ideas that I'm currently using and I do not pretend to say that this is full comprehensive list of what you should do to keep your mentee motivated.