There’s a moment in every mentoring conversation where the real work happens. Not when advice is given, but when someone finally hears themselves say something they hadn’t quite admitted before.
Mersina Mouhtaris, Head of Compliance Australia at RBC Capital Markets, has spent close to thirty years learning how to create that moment for others. In a recent episode of the Mentoring Unlocked podcast, she sat down with Maud Lindley to talk about the mentors who shaped her career, and what she’s learned from years of mentoring emerging leaders through the Women in Banking and Finance (WiBF) Mentoring Program, supported by Serendis.
What came out of the conversation was a genuinely practical picture of what good mentoring looks like, built from experience on both sides of the relationship.
Relationships Have Always Been the Focus
Mersina didn’t set out to become a compliance leader. She started out wanting to be a criminal defence lawyer, drawn to advocacy, before work experience showed her how emotionally demanding that path would be. Banking came next, and a previous manager first suggested the idea of compliance, a discipline she admits she knew almost nothing about at the time.
Looking back, she describes her career less as a plan and more as a pattern. Whatever the role, the constant has been building relationships.
“My every day is always different, but the common thread is having to build relationships and trust and intimacy in a work environment where you’re able to influence without necessarily the authority.”
This is a good reminder of what actually makes mentoring work. The technical experience someone brings matters less than their ability to build trust quickly and maintain it.
The Mentors Who Challenged Her
Mersina has had many mentors over her career. One former manager saw Mersina’s drive for perfectionism and gently challenged it, pointing out that not everyone delivers at 110%, and that’s okay. Understanding what motivates people and meeting them where they are often gets better results than holding everyone to the same, often impossible-to-achieve standard.
“It wasn’t anything groundbreaking. It didn’t need to be, in any sort of exaggerated way. It was more around just tweaking the edges.”
Mersina calls it the veranda moment: her mentor would pull her outside, away from her desk and the noise of the day, and simply ask what actually mattered right now, what could wait, and what didn’t need her attention at all. It was a change of scenery and a few good questions, repeated patiently over many conversations that made the real shift happen. This technique has stayed with her ever since, and it’s shaped how she now creates that same kind of space for her own mentees.
Trust Has to Come Before Challenge
Mersina is candid that vulnerability didn’t come naturally to her, especially in an investment banking environment she describes as combative at times. But she traces one of her clearest turning points back to a mentor who earned enough trust that Mersina was able to be completely open with her, doubts and all. That’s the part she comes back to when she talks about mentoring today. The gentle challenge only lands once the trust is real.
“Perhaps because of the trust that she established with me, I was really authentic with her. I gave her full access to how I was thinking.”
It’s why Mersina treats trust-building as a first step in any mentoring relationship. The conversations that matter most tend to happen once a mentee feels genuinely safe being unfinished, uncertain, or wrong in front of someone.
How Mersina Mentors: Values First
Mersina’s approach to mentoring is refreshingly flexible. In structured programs like WiBF, she draws on the frameworks and tools available to guide the conversation and figure out where a session needs to go. In informal mentoring, she keeps it simpler. Her starting point with every mentee is understanding their values. From there, she moves into strengths and challenges, using that combination to build insight into who someone is and what’s driving their behaviour, then she draws on it later in the relationship.
When a mentee is stuck on something unhelpful, Mersina doesn’t point it out directly. She asks questions, gets them to describe real examples from their own work environment, and lets them arrive at the realisation themselves.
“They’ll often give things away, and I’ll write that down and say, here’s what I’m hearing, can I ask you more about this? Before you know it, it’s almost like pulling on a thread and it just unravels.”
It’s a discipline in restraint. Mersina admits it’s tempting to just tell someone what she’s noticing. But she’s learned that people rarely believe feedback the same way they believe their own realisation. The insight has to be theirs, and she’s comfortable giving them the time and space to get there, even without an immediate solution.
“There’s not always an immediate solution, which I really love actually. Because what it means is people are thinking about it, they’re reflecting. They know there’s something to be done, but they really want to take some time and go in a direction that’s going to be meaningful.”
Giving Back
Mersina is enthusiastic to credit the mentors and champions, who shaped her path, and she’s made it a point to pay that forward. Beyond structured programs like WIBF, she regularly takes on unofficial mentoring, often when a colleague simply asks if she’d speak to someone junior. She’s candid that her instinct is still sometimes self-doubt, wondering why anyone would want her time. But she says yes anyway, because of what she gets back in return.
“I can’t tell you how much you get out of that as an individual, just to see somebody else flourish and succeed in their own way.”
The Skill Only Mentoring Can Teach
Asked what unique skill mentoring teaches that nothing else quite can, Mersina’s answer was immediate, and it’s the thread running through everything she’d shared.
“Listen. Just listen.”
It’s a fitting way to close a conversation that, from start to finish, was a genuine masterclass in mentoring practice: build the trust first, understand someone’s values before their goals, ask rather than tell, and give people the room to reach their own conclusions in their own time.
Building Mentoring Cultures That Last
Mersina’s story is a strong reminder that mentoring rarely looks like a single dramatic intervention. More often, it looks like a veranda moment: stepping outside the day-to-day for a few minutes, asking a good question, and giving someone the space to think out loud.
Watch the full episode of Mentoring Unlocked with Mersina Mouhtaris and Maud Lindley.
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At MentorKey, we believe that mentoring, coaching and sponsorship programs can play a powerful role in strengthening these leadership conversations. By creating structured spaces for reflection and dialogue, organisations can help their people build the clarity, confidence and capability needed to lead well.
Listen to the full podcast episode or watch on YouTube.