This article supplements an episode of the This Dot Labs Podcast on Mentorship with Rob Ocel, Jarrod Overson, Director at Shape Security, and James Spivey, Director of Engineering at Shutterstock.
In an industry where there are so many free and affordable resources available to those looking to break into coding or advance their careers, it’s growing harder and harder for anyone to claim that they are “self-taught”. In fact, most, if not all, working developers have benefited from a professional relationship that can at least be loosely defined as “mentorship”. But what makes mentorship effective, and how can businesses build structured mentorship into their operations?
Many mentor/mentee relationships start informally- whether that be through a connection made at a conference, or a message on a social media platform. These relationships can be unstructured, resembling a friendship where one periodically asks the other for advice or an answer to a question, or they can be more formal, being comprised of regular meetings, paired coding, or reviews. Whatever form your mentor relationship takes, it is important for mentees to identify their mentors as such, whether or not a formal management team or service has officially assigned that mentor to you.
That being said, one of the best strategies that companies can develop to support and uplift their teams is a formal mentorship program. This will not only increase engagement, and help reinforce concepts relevant to an employee’s work, but can also motivate employees to grow in their talents, and attract a larger pool of diverse applicants.
But how much time should companies devote to formal mentorship programs?
The consensus among the podcast’s speakers is that an hour a week is a great place to start for many teams. Of course some employees will be receptive to this program, and others won’t. It is important for mentors to be able to ask the right questions, and be able to actively listen to mentees, because some mentees may seem disinterested, but actually feel uncomfortable disclosing information about the issues they are having with their work for fear of that information not remaining confidential. This is why Senior This Dot Labs Developer Rob Ocel argues that mentors should never be in a mentee’s reporting chain in order to prevent either the perception that they are probing their mentee, or that a mentee is not free to speak candidly about their experiences.
What should mentees look for when choosing a mentor?
Shape Security Director, Jared Overson, relates this question to something he was told when he signed on to a new gym, and was asked to pick a personal trainer as part of a welcome promotion. The person who signed him up told him to look for a personal trainer with the sort of physique that he was looking to replicate, because that person will know what it takes to achieve that level of fitness. The same can be said for choosing a mentor. He suggests that prospective mentees look for someone who is in a position similar to the one that they want, or are working with the technologies that they are interested in learning more about. That being said, Ocel warns against mentees selecting a mentor, and vice versa, who is too much like them, and may lead to the creation of an echo chamber, in which neither is likely to challenge the other.
Mentorship values can also apply to the interactions between management and employees. Ocel, for example, suggests that companies hold small, informal meetings where employees are able to freely provide feedback, avoiding the pressure and exposure of doing so in a large, formal meetings with tight hierarchical structures. The important thing to remember, however, is that by offering meetings like these, there is an expectation that management is open to receiving feedback, and is ready to actively listen to their employees. This should reinforce a sense of teamwork, through which the point of mentorship is not to further emphasize the line that separates seniors and juniors, or developers and management, but to do the opposite. This will feel more natural on a team that lacks a clear hierarchical structure, but can be implemented within more formal organizations as well.
Who can be a mentor?
There is often the belief that there are people who are too junior to be mentors. This may or may not be the case. Even if you only have one or two skills or knowledge bases to offer someone, sharing those skills with them is a form of mentorship. Junior level individuals who find themselves in mentor/mentee type relationships should, however, always be honest about what they know and want they don’t. Often times, these relationships between juniors end up being more like partnerships, where two people are learning together, which is still valid and productive.
However, it’s also important to note that just knowing a lot or having a senior title will not necessarily make you a great mentor. Great mentors master the art of balancing what Ocel, referencing Radical Candor by Kim Scott, referred to as “radical honesty” and “ruinous empathy”. The former term represents the practice of being completely honest without consideration for how that honesty might be perceived. The latter term represents the practice of being so reluctant to provide negative feedback that the mentee is ultimately hurt or disadvantaged by the fact that their mentor did not correct them during teachable moments.
A great mentor can strike a balance between being honest and empathetic in a way that not only benefits their mentee, but also aligns with that mentee’s expectation for the relationship. On the other hand, a great mentee should be able to be candid with their mentor about what types of feedback that they are looking for, and which types of feedback to which they do not respond well.
Mentor/mentee relationships come in all forms and span numerous contexts, from informal online relationships and conference buddies, to management coordinated partnerships. These relationships serve as amazing opportunities for teams and individuals to build their skills and sense of collaboration, but also require the active and ongoing attention of those involved in the relationship, and those, if applicable, who are supervising it.
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This Dot Inc. is a consulting company which contains two branches : the media stream and labs stream. This Dot Media is the portion responsible for keeping developers up to date with advancements in the web platform. In order to inform authors of new releases or changes made to frameworks/libraries, events are hosted, and videos, articles, & podcasts are published. Meanwhile, This Dot Labs provides teams with web platform expertise using methods such as mentoring and training.
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