I’m a big fan of giving back. Here’s a talk I recently gave on why you should be a mentor.
My mentoring experience
I have personally been mentoring since 2008, when I became a mentor to a summer intern. I have since mentored dozens of folks across all sorts of disciplines in IBM. I’ve done mentoring on career growth, project work, and patenting, to name just a few.
Mentoring is one of my favorite things to do. I may even enjoy it more than my mentees! I love seeing my mentees grow confidence and new skills, I rejoice when they get promoted, and I feel a parent’s pride when they succeed. In many ways watching them succeed is more rewarding than achieving a level of success on my own.
Mentoring is really a win-win situation. In this overview I’ll give you the who, what, when, where, why, and how of mentoring.
Who is a mentor?
You! Your experience is worth sharing!
Mentoring is something that anyone can do. Whether you have been at your position ten years or ten minutes, you have a story and an experience that is interesting and helpful to others.
I was asked to coach my son’s little league baseball team (he was six) and I wondered if I was experienced enough to be a coach. The league reminded me “you don’t have to be the best baseball expert, you just have to know more than the kids!”
Hopefully each of you has had the opportunity to have a mentor. Your mentors, gifted as they are, were just like you when they started mentoring.
What is mentoring?
A chat between someone who’s been there and someone who hasn’t.
There are many other definitions possible but I like this one the best. This again reminds us that we have experience worth sharing.
This also reminds us that the topic of mentoring can be quite open-ended, and that’s ok.
Your mentee might want career guidance. Your mentee might want to learn how to find the work-life balance that works for them. At the very least, you can talk about what you’ve done and what you’ve seen. You have several additional years of wisdom that your mentee can learn from.
Mentoring is an opportunity to tell your favorite stories. Don’t laugh, I love re-telling my favorite stories. Storytelling is a great way to pass down wisdom.
Lastly, mentoring is usually NOT about technical issues. I find its usually about all the things peripheral to the technical challenges of work.
When is mentoring?
There are no fixed rules for how often mentoring needs to happen. I have had mentees who called me once for an hour and that was all they needed. I’ve had mentees who schedule monthly/quarterly chats, and I have some who Slack me several times a week with a question.
The sum total of time is small, even an hour a month will be very productive.
I do recommend advising your mentee to set up recurring meetings so that you build up a cadence of doing the mentoring meeting. Otherwise, people forget.
Where is mentoring?
Anywhere! A mentoring relationship does not have to be face to face.
Like all relationships, there are parts that do work better face to face. My preferred mentoring meeting is a walk-and-talk where we walk the halls, or grab coffee/lunch, but I’ve had plenty of successful sessions over the phone as well.
Why mentor?
Remember all the people who have helped you throughout your career. Remember all of the hard decisions you had help with. Remember all of the tough lessons you learned. Remember all the times you had longed to talk to someone who was in the spot you were in. This is your opportunity to thank all of those people, or to be that source of help, by paying it forward to the next generation. Lots of people have invested time in you, you owe it to them to invest time in others.
You may get ‘points’ for your career in mentoring. For certain promotions and career levels, mentoring is an explicit requirement. Even if only considered in your annual review, mentoring is a nice bonus.
Mentoring is a great opportunity to expand your influence. I remember when I was trying to get my organization to write more automated tests for their code. That was a daily struggle, but I enjoyed seeing my mentees solving some of their issues with automated tests!
But really, the best reason to mentor is for yourself. I would do all of the mentoring I’ve done even if there were no other rewards.
How to mentor?
The first meeting with your mentee should be an icebreaker, get to know each other and find out what your mentee is interested in learning about. At the end of your first meeting you should schedule the next one. In general, you should always know when you’ll meet next, it keeps the relationship going.
You will come up with your own methods on how to mentor, but I’ll share one piece of homework I give my mentors after the first meeting. Inevitably my mentee has questions on how to interact with someone in their group, be it a manager, tech lead, or peer. I tell them to go out and read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People by our next meeting.
Concluding thoughts
Someone out there needs you to mentor them! You have the tools and ability. Who are you going to be a mentor to?
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