Effective Mentoring (Beta Version)

Transcript

1. Effective Mentoring How not to traumatize anyone
2. Here is the deal
3. After some time working for your company, you gained enough experience to take care of someone less experienced than you
4. So you became a source of inspiration
5. But you have no idea how to be inspirational
6. Actually, you don’t even know how you got here
7. But I mean you gotta have something that you can pull of your experience to teach, right?
8. Even if it’s just advice like: “Be careful when betting on online casino games”
9. But still, it’s too little. The more junior your mentee is, the more you’re responsible for guiding their first steps
10. And maybe even you didn’t have a great mentor figure back when you started so… What to do?
11. Maybe I can help
12. Felipe or Jimmy - Software Engineer - I like birds - Once I was young - I like mentoring
13. How will this presentation work?
14. I will assume you’re mentoring a junior developer and if you’re mentoring another level, feel free not to apply some of this content since it may not make sense
15. THE PYRAMID SCHEME All mentoring is a pyramid scheme. Really. THE GOALS THE CURRENT SKILLS THE MENTAL STATE MENTEE
16. If you wanted to give a guess, what would you pick as the most important edge of the pyramid? Iʼll give you some time to think THE GOALS THE CURRENT SKILLS THE MENTAL STATE MENTEE
17. All of them! It’s an equilateral pyramid, you silly
18. And all the edges complement each other in ways that you may not be able to predict
19. Let’s start with Mental state THE GOALS THE CURRENT SKILLS THE MENTAL STATE MENTEE
20. Chances are you’re not a mental health professional and don’t have a degree in psychology
21. If that’s the case, great! But if not, let me show what you can and you cannot do
22. The mental state You can: - Help talking about how was your menteeʼs week; - Give work related advices; - Curse the world with your mentee to vent anger; - If your mentee has mental conditions like anxiety, depression, ADHD, etc you can check if theyʼre giving proper attention to it and incentivize them to pursue mental health care. You canʼt: - Diagnose your mentee. Donʼt “oh youʼre too anxious” without actually knowing if thatʼs the case; - Assume you know whatʼs best. You can listen and give advice, at maximum giving a “I had a similar experience, and I worked that way” but at the end of the day your mentee is the one to decide whatʼs best for them.
23. It’s mandatory for a good mentor to have a good trust relationship with your mentee
24. If your mentee is afraid of judgement, chances are you won’t know everything you need to know and that’s the worst-case scenario because your guiding will be compromised
25. So be a friend to your mentee without being their therapist
26. DON’T JUDGE YOUR MENTEE
27. The next step is: the goals THE GOALS THE CURRENT SKILLS THE MENTAL STATE MENTEE
28. Goals are what your mentee wants to reach, and it’s your job to help with that
29. And I do hope your mentees are exactly where they wanna be, with a job that they actually enjoy
30. But sometimes your mentee goals may not be the same as your company goals
31. When the two things are not aligned, this may be a problem for motivation. Let’s say your company wants your mentee to learn more backend, but they’re more interested in frontend
32. How would you deal with this? Your mentee needs their job to pay the bills, but if you focus into backend you may have problems motivating
33. The solution is to be honest and also flexible. Make your mentee study backend, create an API, read articles while you create a frontend for their work, and share with them the whole process. That way, you can put 80% of your efforts into making your mentee learn backend, but still, they will learn a thing or two about their true interest
34. This was just an example, but there are several ways to do this. Be creative, but most of all be flexible while things don’t align.
35. And now we’ll go to current skills THE GOALS THE CURRENT SKILLS THE MENTAL STATE MENTEE
36. A good analysis of that will be crucial to know what you’re going to do with mentoring
37. The exercises, articles, videos, talks, and everything that you’re going to throw up to your mentee needs, to be evaluated first by checking their skills
38. So my advice would be to start with something basic like an exercise and measure their performance of doing it
39. This will help you plan your next steps and make sure their skills reach their goal in a time period that you find appropriate
40. But there is something I didn’t tell you about
41. The tracking
42. And for that, I will give an example using my most recent mentee, Jessica
43. A good mentor needs to track your mentee's progress
44. Everyone may have a different way to do it, but here is mine
45. Each of these topics has content of what we did on the week, the challenges, what was fulfilled or not
46. Without a good tracking history, it’s easy to get lost in where you were last week and how things are evolving
47. So the process will not be as efficient as it should be, and that’s probably your fault
48. I recommend doing a weekly document - What the mentee was able to complete last week - How did the mentee evaluate their work? Any problems? - What was your weekly call about? What did you discuss? - What your mentee still needs to do / next steps
49. And rememider: mentoring someone is an act of responsibility that may impact deeply in their career and life. It’s okay to be afraid of not doing a good job
50. But don’t let this prevent you from trying
51. And if it’s not working for some reason, talk with your mentee. Maybe you can adjust the process or find someone else for the job
52. But if it’s not working: DO SOMETHING
53. Thank you very much! Here is my cat