Mentorship Training

1 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE
Mentorship Training

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Build Software to Test Software
exactpro.com
Chapter I : Key aspects of mentorship
Chapter II : Exactpro Practices to implement

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What it means to be a Mentor?

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Key components of Mentorship Mindset
Life-learners
Be
Caring
Be
Approachable
Use ‘Ask
questions’
attitude
Encourage
desired
behavior
Be
Respectful to
differences
?

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Life-learners
To develop your mentoring skill ﬁrst you
should seek feedback, then use self -
awareness to see what worked and what
didn’t in the mentorship, if you made a
mistake, where you made it, and what
you should change.
The above-mentioned process will help
you to see the overall picture of your
taken actions and made decisions.
● Seek feedback
● Be self-aware and analyze things to see what worked and what
didn’t in the mentorship, if you made a mistake, where you
made it, and what you should change
● Work on your weaknesses and know your strengths

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Caring
When you, as a mentor, decide or are
asked to invest your time and effort in
mentees learning and development first
and foremost you should care about the
outcomes of your effort, investing time
and your mentees' professional
development to get effective results.
Caring about your mentees’ results means
tracking their progress.
If the progress is tracked and evaluated,
you can easily see what exactly should be
changed to achieve the required results.
This information is not only helpful for
understanding where you are against the
target level but also for analyzing your own
results as a mentor.
● Invest time wisely
● Care about the outcomes
● Analyse the results of mentee
● Analyse your own results of mentorship
Newcomer Tracker

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Encourage desired behavior
Mentees aren’t aware of what is required from
them or what behaviour will help them to
develop faster.
So as a mentor, it’s your responsibility to
encourage the right attitude and communicate
to your mentees what we expect from them.
At Exactpro we expect from mentees a good
level of the following skills (Newcomer
Performance Evaluation Guide):
● Information getting skills
● Feedback handling skills
● Motivation
● Meeting deadlines
● Learnability
● Interaction with a team
● Communicate what you expect
● Make sure that they know what it means in practice
● Give timely feedback
● Acknowledge your mentees progress

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Approachable
As a mentor, you should be
available/approachable to your mentees, but
when you don't have enough time to support
them and there are more urgent things
related to the project then you should ﬁnd
someone who can replace you so that the
mentee doesn't feel lost or that you left
him/her alone in this process without any
support.
You, as a mentor, know the best when you
have a free time slot and when you can take
time for your mentees. So, use those slots
for catch-ups with your mentee.
● You should be available to your mentees
● In cases when you don’t have enough time to support them ﬁnd a
person who can replace you
● Schedule regular catch-ups and use them to get insights about
your mentee's progress and raise new topics/tasks
● Make them feel comfortable around you

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‘Ask questions’ attitude
In mentorship one of the important
things is not to be biased and not to
make assumptions based only on one
aspect of the information.
As a mentor, you should ask questions to
better understand your mentees and the
situation to ﬁnd the right solution.
You should ﬁnd the real reason for your
mentee's behavior, that's why it's
important to be aware of your mentee’s
environmental and situational changes,
to probe and get more insights (a small
test 1, test 2 in awareness).
● To better understand your mentees
● Not to make assumptions based only on one aspect of the
information
● Find the real reason behind your mentee’s behavior

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Respectful to differences
During the mentorship, you will meet
mentees that will be different from each
other, some of them will learn quickly, some
of them slowly.
As a mentor, you will encounter cases where
your mentees have different progress and
attitude towards the work they do.
That's why it's important to have an
individual approach to your mentees, find
out what helps them or gets in the way
during their learning process.
● Respect your mentees despite differences
● Be patient with them and listen carefully to them
● Use an individual approach in their learning and
development process

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Understand where your mentee
is when you start mentoring, not
where you think they should be
Create a Conversational Safety Space
Create a positive and resilient
relationship with your mentee
Take intentional steps during
the mentorship
Drive risk taking for new behaviours
05
01
02 03
04
The Five Guiding Principles Of Successful Mentors

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I Principal - Understand where your mentee is when you start mentoring, not
where you think they should be
● Skills: Learn about your mentees' skills to have a clear idea what is a starting point of their learning and
development process
● Expectations: Find out your mentees' expectations towards you, as a mentor, and mentorship
● Attitude: Find out what their attitude toward challenges and obstacles is

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II Principal - Create a Conversational Safety Space
● The attitude you have towards your team members and the environment that you have in
your team determine if there is a possibility for a safe space to be created
● Your mentees are watching, observing, looking for examples, and making decisions based on
that
● Safety space is fragile and it can be easily broken and damaged
● In this space you don’t judge them when they express themselves
Safety space is when your mentees share their ideas and opinions with you. They recognize their mistakes
and weaknesses without the fear that they will be judged by you, as a mentor.

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III Principal - Create a positive and resilient relationship with your mentee
The quality of the relationship is the primary tool for the mentoring process. A real test comes when there are
diﬀerences, and you do not like their approach or attitude, or they don’t like yours.
So, the question is:
“What do we need to do to build a positive and resilient relationship with our mentees?”
The answer is:
We need to:
● Drive positive results through teamwork
● Decrease fear of feedback
● Encourage and inspire ownership

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Drive positive results through teamwork
Mentorship isn't a one-way relationship, it is built by
both sides - a mentor and a mentee. You are the one
body of this relationship, so teamwork plays an
important role.
You should build mentorship upon listening attentively
to each other and accepting each other's opinions,
building trust and mutual respect, and transparency.
Though you are both participants of the relationship,
you, as a mentor, have the lead in observing how the
relationship is going and taking steps to ensure its
vitality.
So, observe what is going on in the dynamics of your
mentorship, initiate check-ins to discuss how your
process is going, welcome feedback from your mentee,
and oﬀer yours.
● Mentorship is built by a mentor and a mentee, that’s
why team working is important
● It’s important to listen attentively to each other,
accept and respect each other’s opinions and build
trust
● As a mentor, you can take the first steps to ensure
the vitality of mentorship relationship

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Decrease Fear of Feedback
NeuroLeadership institute representatives (David Rock
& Beth Jones) research found out that feedback about
performance, in particular, tends to activate the brain’s
primary threat network, which produces a feeling that
we can compare to physical pain.
Since giving or receiving feedback can be painful and
human beings naturally seek to avoid pain, we often
react defensively. Defensiveness can take the form of
denial, rejection or “counter-attack”. Defensiveness
can suppress/block self-awareness.
Self-awareness, that helps us to see what our
strengths and weaknesses are, what we did wrong,
where we made a mistake, what we need to change.
So the question is - What do we need to do to
decrease the fear of feedback?
● Scientists found out that feedback about
performance produces a feeling that we can
compare to physical pain
● As human beings naturally we seek to avoid pain
and we often react defensively
● Defensiveness can block self-awareness, which
helps us to see what our strengths and weaknesses
are

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What do we need to do to decrease the fear of
feedback?
● Acknowledge the potential discomfort of the situation
● Express your opinion, thoughts, facts and feelings appropriately
For example:
I version: “You are bad at strategic thinking”
II Version: “There are several major issues that you overlooked in your analysis, and they are …”
● To provide motivation, discuss the likely consequences of continuing or changing actions
For example: If you work on and improve your communication skills with the team members, and use
others' opinions as a tool to see new perspectives, you will be able to get more on-hand information
about the subject, or issue and solve it. Otherwise, you won't have all the details about the subject and it
will be hard to solve the issue.
● Acknowledge emotional responses and keep the communication goal-oriented

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Encourage & Inspire Ownership
When you explain everything in detail to your mentees about what and how they need to do to overcome
obstacles, you think that you did a great job, but unexpectedly the mentees aren’t able to put that into action.
So, the question is “What went wrong?”
You took the opportunity of ownership of the solution from your mentees.
So, what do we need to do?
We need to ﬁnd a balance between oﬀering support and enabling mentees to do things by themselves.
How can we do that?
By asking questions.

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Ask Questions so the mentees will be able to see the tasks, obstacles in a
new perspective and direct them toward solutions
I Question: What do you see in the
picture?
II Questions: What else can you
see?

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You, as a mentor, ask your mentees questions to
● Initiate exploration
For example: What is the current situation? What factors are impacting the situation? How do they aﬀect
the situation? What are the implications? Why should you make a change?
● Facilitate learning
For example: What do we know? Are there any facts or assumptions? What else do we need to know? What
could be different? What might be done? What are then realistic goals?
● Guide planning
For example: What are the desired outcomes? How will goals be achieved? What actions are needed? What
might be the consequences? What resources are needed? How will progress be monitored? When will action
begin?
● Support implementation
For example: How is it going? Are adjustments needed? If yes, what adjustments are needed? Which expected
outcomes are being produced? Are there unexpected outcomes? What would be done differently next time?

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IV Principal - Drive risk taking for new behaviours
In the mentorship ﬁrst you create a safe environment for your mentees only to push them to take risks and to put new
behaviors into real-time action. Yet, it is the very safety of you being in the wings that allows your mentee to boldly
take new and uncomfortable behaviors.
For example:
● The time period that we give mentees to learn and develop is "Safe environment"
● In this "Safe Environment," you, as a mentor, direct them and push them to take risks and put new behavior
into real-time action
● As a mentor, you use mishaps as a key element of the development process

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V Principal - Take intentional steps during the mentorship
Successful results are achieved through intentional actions, so during the mentorship process:
● Be clear on the results you should achieve
● Plan actions
● Be clear about what you should do to achieve them
● Keep an eye on the process

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Thank You!

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Mentorship Training

Mentorship Training

Exactpro
PRO

More Decks by Exactpro

Featured

Transcript

Mentorship Training

Mentorship Training

Exactpro PRO

More Decks by Exactpro

Featured

Transcript

Exactpro
PRO