The following article from Lifehacker.Com refers to any mentor, in any business, but show business being a particular intense one, it really, really, really will help if you learn to:
Ask Your Mentor These 40 Questions
by Elizabeth Yuko
Not everyone has—or wants—a mentor. But if you do have someone in your life who helps guide your professional and/or personal life, you probably want to make sure that you use your time with them wisely. A lot of energy and effort go into mentoring someone, so if you’re on the receiving end of that sort of relationship, it’s important not to take their advice for granted, and to make every minute with them count. Over on Ladders, Robert Carnevale has provided a list of 40 questions to ask your mentor to get the most out of your relationship, broken down by category. Here is what to ask your mentor to help you learn essential life lessons.
To learn about failure
When you have a mentor, you don’t just want them to tell you about when the times when everything went right for them. You may benefit even more from hearing about the mistakes they made and what they learned from them. To discover more about that aspect of their lives or careers, consider the following questions:
1. What’s a big mistake you’ve made that you’d want others to avoid repeating?
2. What’s your strategy for overcoming failure?
3. What’s an essential lesson you learned as a result of failure?
4. When should I give up on a pursuit?
5. Do you believe in the sunk-cost fallacy?
6. How do you assess what feedback is legitimate?
7. How do you integrate feedback into your work and lifestyle?
8. How big of a risk is too big of a risk?
9. How do you determine which weaknesses can be overcome?
10. Can you tell a story of how you recovered from a massive blunder…?