How do you approach mentorship? Share your thoughts and get a badge! 💭

[Angelie Stephens]

Mentorship is an important part of management, but it’s not without its challenges. Whether you’re a mentor or a mentee, the right approach can make all the difference.

In this month’s Work Life blog, we explore how to be a good mentor to every member of your team. Here you can find a host of mentee archetypes, and how best to approach mentoring each one. These approaches can be applied across a variety of different roles and industries.

For those of you who have acted as a mentor, how do you like to approach mentoring? Do you have a more standard approach or do you try to be more specialised? What have you found to be the most challenging part of mentoring people?

If you’re a mentee, how do you prefer to be mentored? Do you fall into one of our archetypes?

We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please share in the discussion below and you’ll earn a Work Life kudos badge!✨

(PS: If you’ve received this badge before, you can get it again!)

[Stephen_Lugton]

Thanks @Angelie Stephens 

In the blog, one thing I think is missing in the highlights reel is setting expectations not just of how a mentor should act, but also what is expected from a mentee. 

The blog does mention about being crystal clear on the scope of what you can provide, but only from the mentor point of view not what is expected as a mentee. 

It also doesn't make any mention what the mentee doesn't want you to provide,

For instance a few years back I was mentoring a junior in the team and I called out something that he had done well to the whole team and he got really upset because he hated having attention drawn to him. 

When I started mentoring him we discussed how it was going to work and what I could help him with, but he had never told about not wanting to be given praise in a team environment. 

Since I was leading the team I made a point of complementing everyone when they did good work, which he had seen me do regularly, and from my point of view he could see how I was treating everyone equally. 

But he blamed me for something outside his comfort zone and the mentor / mentee relationship fell apart, so much so that when we started up another team I moved him to that team to remove the bad feeling that was affecting our whole team

[Lauren Marten Parker]

@Stephen_Lugton all good points! we often can't cover the ins and outs of every topic we tackle on Work Life, but you're giving me ideas for future blog topics that might be helpful for our readers, and that is always more than welcome :)

[Haunani Nakabara]

When I think of mentorship, I treat it as a different role than manager.  In some cases, an individual may be both a mentor and manager to someone but for me, I prefer to "put on a different hat" because I see the focus and goals as being different.  For mentoring, I'm standard in my approach in that I let the mentee drive the relationship - how frequently we meet, what it is they need in the moment.  And I ask a lot of questions.  Outside of that framework, I suppose it's more specialized since every mentee I've worked with has been in a slightly different place in their career and life and looking for different asks of me.  It's always a new adventure!  And I'm grateful to be able to participate and assist where I can.

[Lauren Marten Parker]

@Haunani Nakabara totally understand where you're coming from! Sarah, the author of this blog, and I actually had a back-and-forth about this. I felt like people generally consider mentors and managers to be different people, and she felt they were more often perceived as the same. So we decided to talk about managers adopting a mentorship mindset, because we both felt that every good manager is, to some extent, also a mentor. 

[Susan Waldrip]

This post is really timely for me, @Angelie Stephens -- I just attended the first meeting of the year to start setting up Cohort #2 of our Department's mentorship program! The suggestions in the Work Life blog are really good, and like @Haunani Nakabara discussed, I really like the idea of "wearing different hats" when mentoring someone who works for you. As a mentor, I try to listen more than I talk, and also provide opportunities (if I'm in a position to do so) for the mentee to apply what they're learning or working on. The other thing I find really helpful when mentoring someone is to understand the difference between being "nice" and being "kind" -- for example, always complimenting a mentee is nice, but if they're not also getting some direct feedback for improvement or alternative ways to look at something, you're not being kind and they (and probably you) won't grow in career or life. It also takes practice to be a mentor, so if you enjoy it, practice a lot and don't be afraid to ask your mentee for feedback, too.

[Amanda Barber]

I definitely like to be flexible as a mentor, but would love to be more consistent! I love the archetypes and could see that info being helpful moving forward with someone I don't know as well.

As a mentee, it feels weird saying it, but I think I'm a star performer. I tend to bite off more than I can chew and can't ask for help, too, so it's definitely a tricky situation. Ha!

[John Elder]

I tend to view mentorship as something that occurs in two places:

1. Manager-level mentoring individual contributor-level, with the goal of growing the individual contributor into a leader
2. Senior roles mentoring junior roles, with the goal of growing experientially and taking on or learning new skills and abilities

I don't have much experience with the manager/individual contributor mentoring situation, mainly because in IT the path into management is a very specific one that only a select few take on as a goal in their careers... for the most part, in my experience, mentoring occurs between senior and junior level associates/engineers, within the same team or department, and it takes place in order to ensure that the next generation of experts and technical leaders are ready to "take the reigns".  This can be technical focused (i.e. developers) or process focused (i.e. Scrum Masters).  

In terms of the senior/junior level mentoring, I have seen the most success with storytelling and experience sharing, leading to trying new behaviors or techniques.  Rarely do I see successful mentors 'instructing' their mentees, but rather I see them coaching, offering their own experiences and stories, and allowing for mentees to forge their own path the context of the mentor's feedback in mind.  I also see a lot of junior mentees seeking feedback and "assessment" from senior mentors, and I think this is a key part of the role being one of mutual-respect... when there is respect at the foundation of the relationship, feedback (critical or otherwise) can be shared in a way that is not criticism-focused but instead growth-focused.  Mentor relationships also allow for these types of feedback sessions to be continuations of the storytelling and experience sharing, where the mentors are able to pass along their own trials and tribulations dealing with similar circumstances in their careers.