Mentorship Training

What does it mean to be a mentor? Why is receiving feedback so important? How to direct your mentees towards effective solutions?

As part of our recent Mentorship Training, we discussed the guiding principles of successful mentoring including the importance of creating a positive and resilient atmosphere in the workplace, as well as receiving feedback from mentees and driving positive results through teamwork.

Transcript

1. 1 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE Mentorship Training
2. 2 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE Build Software to Test Software exactpro.com Chapter I : Key aspects of mentorship Chapter II : Exactpro Practices to implement
3. 3 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 3 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE What it means to be a Mentor?
4. 4 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 4 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE Key components of Mentorship Mindset Life-learners Be Caring Be Approachable Use ‘Ask questions’ attitude Encourage desired behavior Be Respectful to differences ?
5. 5 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 5 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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
6. 6 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 6 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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
7. 7 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 7 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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
8. 8 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 8 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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
9. 9 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 9 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE ‘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
10. 10 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 10 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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
11. 11 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 11 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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
12. 12 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 12 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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
13. 13 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 13 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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.
14. 14 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 14 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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
15. 15 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 15 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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
16. 16 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 16 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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
17. 17 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 17 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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
18. 18 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 18 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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.
19. 19 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 19 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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?
20. 20 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 20 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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?
21. 21 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 21 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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
22. 22 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 22 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE 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
23. 23 BUILD SOFTWARE TO TEST SOFTWARE Thank You!