Experiences of being mentored or mentoring
July 25, 2012 11:30 PM Subscribe
What are your experiences of being mentored or mentoring at work?
I am considering helping someone I manage look for a mentor within our public services organisation (depending on whether they decide they want this, of course). I have read the questions tagged with mentor(s) on Ask and looked at other resources online, but I'd like to understand a bit more how it works for individuals, particularly less-confident people who may find it harder to ensure the relationship is useful for them. Can you tell me what you found useful about having a mentor, or, if you were a mentor, how you think your mentees benefited? If you didn't find it helpful, that is also useful information. Thanks.
I am considering helping someone I manage look for a mentor within our public services organisation (depending on whether they decide they want this, of course). I have read the questions tagged with mentor(s) on Ask and looked at other resources online, but I'd like to understand a bit more how it works for individuals, particularly less-confident people who may find it harder to ensure the relationship is useful for them. Can you tell me what you found useful about having a mentor, or, if you were a mentor, how you think your mentees benefited? If you didn't find it helpful, that is also useful information. Thanks.
One quick comment. Do set up regular meetings. "Get in touch when you need me" leads to stubborn, independent people (like me) carrying on until they desperately need help. (It's also good to have the ability to make quick phone calls or send a brief email between these meetings of course)
posted by sianifach at 12:06 AM on July 26, 2012 [4 favorites]
posted by sianifach at 12:06 AM on July 26, 2012 [4 favorites]
Encourage your mentee to search for a solution, try out possible fixes, and then approach you. Among the folks I mentored, I genuinely enjoyed helping out the ones who helped themselves first.
Assuming they're doing that, encourage 'stupid' questions. I prefer to spend time going over the fundamentals in the inital stages, using a lot of analogies and historical information. It avoids a lot of retreading later on when someone is trying to grok the inconsistencies/weirdness of our particular tech stream.
For the less confident ones, I've found it greatly helps when a task is broken down into numerous smaller bits that can be attacked one at a time. Completing the first couple gets them comfortable with the environment, tools and work culture, after which a certain amount of confidence and self-reliance sets in (It doesn't always work that smoothly though, but this worked well for me in the past year while mentoring a couple of interns).
posted by arungoodboy at 12:38 AM on July 26, 2012
Assuming they're doing that, encourage 'stupid' questions. I prefer to spend time going over the fundamentals in the inital stages, using a lot of analogies and historical information. It avoids a lot of retreading later on when someone is trying to grok the inconsistencies/weirdness of our particular tech stream.
For the less confident ones, I've found it greatly helps when a task is broken down into numerous smaller bits that can be attacked one at a time. Completing the first couple gets them comfortable with the environment, tools and work culture, after which a certain amount of confidence and self-reliance sets in (It doesn't always work that smoothly though, but this worked well for me in the past year while mentoring a couple of interns).
posted by arungoodboy at 12:38 AM on July 26, 2012
I've been mentored a couple of times but quite unofficially (only once at work and twice through studies) and I found it worked really well for me when there was a good personality fit between me and the mentor. Someone who was similar enough to get along well with but different enough that I could learn from them. In each case the mentorship occurred (apparently naturally from my end) out of a common interest. In one case the mentor was actually the same age, but a lot more worldly, the second was about 20 years older and the third was about 10 years older.
It can be quite subjective, a bit like finding a match between therapist and client - the mentee would ideally find qualities about the mentor that they admire, and the mentor needs to be someone who the mentee can look up to and will ideally feel semi-in-awe-of - in any case a good role model. As a less-confident person myself I found it easy to trust each of my mentors, I thought they were inspiring and wanted their approval so that gave me confidence to position myself more to get what I needed out of the relationship and gave her the power she needed to help me.
I found mentoring helped me learn to make better decisions about my career, because they helped me think through the process and understand what was important and the "how" of making good decisions. They helped my self confidence by helping me to see how they handled situations I found difficult, teaching me new things, and by giving me someone I could rely on and have faith in.
posted by EatMyHat at 1:46 AM on July 26, 2012 [1 favorite]
It can be quite subjective, a bit like finding a match between therapist and client - the mentee would ideally find qualities about the mentor that they admire, and the mentor needs to be someone who the mentee can look up to and will ideally feel semi-in-awe-of - in any case a good role model. As a less-confident person myself I found it easy to trust each of my mentors, I thought they were inspiring and wanted their approval so that gave me confidence to position myself more to get what I needed out of the relationship and gave her the power she needed to help me.
I found mentoring helped me learn to make better decisions about my career, because they helped me think through the process and understand what was important and the "how" of making good decisions. They helped my self confidence by helping me to see how they handled situations I found difficult, teaching me new things, and by giving me someone I could rely on and have faith in.
posted by EatMyHat at 1:46 AM on July 26, 2012 [1 favorite]
I've only had one real mentor, at my last job. What I liked most about this person is that they cultivated a relationship of openness. A problem I had with other people in the company was that they sometimes gave off a feeling of condescension, of being bothered with questions and problems.
This mentor was the opposite, they were always open and helpful and eager to listen. They encouraged me to make my own suggestions and solutions, and if those ideas weren't viable, they were good with providing constructive criticism and advice. Therefore, I never felt like my ideas or questions were stupid or a waste of time.
Another thing I really liked is that they made the effort to come out and "check-in" on me once or twice a day. These checks became less frequent the more confident I become in the position. This isn't to say they were holding my hand, I was very much on my own and expected to handle my work. But the thing I liked is that if I encountered a problem during the day, I knew I could mull it over and come up with my own solution to present during the check-in. Having that time to bounce ideas off them was a real positive for me (to answer one of your questions) because I am not a confident person, especially with things that are new to me, and the support really helped my development in that role.
This relationship sort of developed naturally, it was a small company and they were my direct supervisor. It also helped that our personalities clicked well and we could talk about non-work things in a comfortable way as well.
posted by Shesthefastest at 11:25 AM on July 26, 2012
This mentor was the opposite, they were always open and helpful and eager to listen. They encouraged me to make my own suggestions and solutions, and if those ideas weren't viable, they were good with providing constructive criticism and advice. Therefore, I never felt like my ideas or questions were stupid or a waste of time.
Another thing I really liked is that they made the effort to come out and "check-in" on me once or twice a day. These checks became less frequent the more confident I become in the position. This isn't to say they were holding my hand, I was very much on my own and expected to handle my work. But the thing I liked is that if I encountered a problem during the day, I knew I could mull it over and come up with my own solution to present during the check-in. Having that time to bounce ideas off them was a real positive for me (to answer one of your questions) because I am not a confident person, especially with things that are new to me, and the support really helped my development in that role.
This relationship sort of developed naturally, it was a small company and they were my direct supervisor. It also helped that our personalities clicked well and we could talk about non-work things in a comfortable way as well.
posted by Shesthefastest at 11:25 AM on July 26, 2012
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When a temporary (with possibility of permanent) individual was being mentored by another faculty member, she reported him making "suggestions" on things she do during mentoring sessions then docking her in his assessments of her when she didn't do those things.
I guess what I'm saying is make sure the mentor is absolutely parallel, or in a completely different area.
In my previous job my mentor was nice, but it was very much chit-chatty stuff, not real mentoring. The job itself was messed up, though.
I think the apparent benefit would be knowing exactly what the role is. Does the less-confident person have trouble knowing who to contact and when? Tell them this mentor is a living directory. Is this person bad at networking (and wants to be better)? Hook them up with the mentor that knows how to draw a crowd.
posted by Lt. Bunny Wigglesworth at 11:45 PM on July 25, 2012