Thoughts on Mentoring

For the past few years, I've mentored those around me, with less experience; mostly through an unofficial capacity. Spring of 2019 I joined AND Digital's Cloud Practice, as a Platform Engineer under Club Murray. Shortly afterwards, I became a mentor to another Platform Engineer. AND have grown rapidly over the last few years, taking on experienced staff and Associates. The way that growth of this nature works is with good mentoring.

Along the way I have learnt a few things that have helped me.

Ben Horowitz said "Until you get to know someone or something, you don't know anything". Get to know the person you are mentoring, as a person, not just what their skills are. What makes them tick? How do they respond when struggling?

Cut them some slack! We all learn at different rates and we're all good at different things. Equally, give credit. Not just when they have become a master of something, when their skill-set is better than it was 3 months ago, tell them that you see this improvement. Most that are advancing their knowledge are doing so because they want to, not just that is expected of them; the easiest way to make that happen is to give them what they want.

Give them some independence to learn in their own way. You cannot nurture creativity if you stifle that.

Here's an anecdote. In a previous role, I was unofficially mentoring a more junior member of staff. I'd given them a long task that wasn't straightforward but well documented and certainly within their abilities. They stumbled several times, asking questions that shouldn't need to be asked as part of the documentation hadn't been followed, leading to errors. This frustrated me, and I showed it. The task was eventually completed, taking weeks rather than days. I never gave any credit. When a similar level task came around a few weeks later, I put in extra hours to do it myself rather than passing it on. Who did that benefit? The person requesting it, got their task done more quickly but is that really the most important thing? Sometimes, yes, it is. Looking at the bigger picture, often it isn't. I found out not long ago that during that time, that person was going through a recurrence of a health problem and ultimately, lost focus in work tasks. There are many things in this instance that I could have done better. Looking back, what do I wish I'd done differently? Mostly, I wish I'd been more approachable and that person could have said to me they were struggling at the moment and had concerns over taking on a task in a new area. I'd like to think that I would have asked them if they wanted to give it a try or if it was too much, quite possibly I would have been frustrated and taken on more work myself.

I'll wrap this up; sometimes I forget some of these. All I can hope is that I'm getting better and helping those around me to improve too.

Thanks for reading.