Having conducted several graduate and junior developer mentoring experiences now, I thought I'd take a moment to review them, share my approach, and share the advice I've picked up along the way for anyone else who may be starting their journey as a mentor or mentee.

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What is mentoring

If you search for the definition of mentoring, you'll likely see a watered-down dictionary entry along the lines of the below. The problem is, such a definition discards the nuance of what is a process of social education and self-growth, for both the mentor and the mentee.

"to advise or train someone - particularly younger colleagues".

So what is mentoring? A mentorship can be either a formal or informal process when a more experienced individual supports, guides, and influences a more junior colleague to improve a variety of aspects of their professional skills, knowledge, and behaviours.

In my experience, mentoring focuses more on professional career support and advancement. However, the lines can often be blurred with coaching when the participant on the receiving end might need a more hands-on approach rather than simply discussion and advice based on past experiences. For the sake of brevity, however, I'll use the term 'mentor' and 'mentee' interchangeably.

In general, though, I've found both work better when conducted in a regular, defined, but informal manner as this allows both parties to feel more relaxed and therefore more likely, to be honest, vulnerable, and motivated which ultimately better enables that journey of self-growth.

Which one?

How do you know which level of support you need to provide - mentoring or coaching? In my experience, it depends upon a few factors

• How - How has the agreement come to be? Was it requested or offered to the mentee, and if so, by whom?

• Why - Why does the mentee wish to undertake it? What's their motivation?

• What - What does the mentee expect from the experience, and what's their understanding of the agreement?

Answers to these questions are what help decipher the level and involvement of support the mentee requires or desires and the motivations and reasoning why.

Why bother?

Having been coached and mentored a few times in my career by some highly-experienced individuals with a variety of backgrounds and professional achievements, I'm always eager to take up opportunities to mentor and/or coach promising early-career engineers and (hopefully) provide some of the same insight and guidance I gained from these experiences.

Why do I call it an experience and not a process or a programme? I've often found that whilst mentorships need milestones and goals, they often aren't necessarily something that can have a strictly-defined end. For example, a mentee's goal may be to improve their code quality skills and crafting skills or their soft skills such as problem-solving or communication - whilst these are measurable, I don't believe they can be thought of as completable - such things are endless endeavours for an engineer of any experience level.

What's more, the language connotations form a large part of our expectation and perception of the experience - in our world of technology, 'program[mme]' carries connotations of strictly-defined instructions, automation, and operational control. I've found mentoring (and being mentored) to be a more fluid experience where we may need to review, adapt, and react as we progress rather than having a strictly defined (and adhered to) roadmap to some end.

Enabling others to grow around me as I do is something I care deeply about. Having been mentored by a range of individuals in the past, it's an opportunity I want to ensure every early-career individual I come across has access to as an opportunity, should they desire. And I like to take the time to write about those experiences every once in a while to reflect upon and learn from those periods on both sides of the table.

What helps?

When I look back over my experiences to date, one stand-out element I carry forward as something to discuss is one another motivations. Why do I, or they, want this experience? What are one another's motivations - is an individual participating out of their desire to grow, to help others, or are they being ushered into it by someone or something else outside of their control?

Though simple, I've found it can have a profound effect on the what, the how, and the roadmap of it all and yet is easily overlooked. So it's worth explicitly discussing. It's not to say that these experiences aren't beneficial unless self-motivated - though it helps - so long as both parties understand the value the opportunity can provide to one another and those motivations are communicated and accounted for in objective discussions, then it's still a worthwhile investment.

So now you know one another's 'why', it's time to consider what you know about one another. A mentorship requires an element of vulnerability, primarily on the part of the mentee, as it's about identifying, acknowledging, and rectifying one another's weaknesses. So there needs to be trust between both parties - trust that there will be psychological safety and avoidance of judgement in favour of support. A few ways I've found help with this are self-evaluations and reverse mentorships. I know, the former is starting to sound like an annual review, but stay with me here...

A self-evaluation helps the mentee reflect upon their life and career thus far and cement an understanding of their current abilities - strengths and weaknesses. It sounds cliche, but it is beneficial to the mentor to have such a self-evaluation to know their mentee's history but also to know their current self-beliefs - are they over-confident? Lacking confidence? Suffering from imposter syndrome? What's the extent of their experience and their feelings toward them? These benefits are compounded further when the mentor completes a similar exercise to share with their mentee. I've found this shared vulnerability enhances psychological safety as the mentor is communicating that no matter your level, everyone can improve on something. As for the latter, reverse mentoring, one or two sessions early on in the process will further enhance the trust element as it enables the mentee to see that their mentor is willing to be vulnerable with them, not just directing it. The mentee can refine their questioning and advising skills and the mentor has an opportunity to learn more about themselves and their assumptions.

Finally, effective communication of expectations. The mentoring and coaching processes are of course rooted in effective communication, but I've found perhaps even more important is an understanding of one another's expectations. Not just of the process, milestones, and what success looks like, but expectations of one another. For example, as a mentor, I'd expect my mentee to demonstrate their motivation by preparing for and engaging in sessions, bringing topical ideas for sessions, and actioning tasks when requested. As a mentor, a mentee might expect I'm also engaged by actively listening and perhaps being on-hand outside of scheduled sessions for sounding board support.

What hurts?

Besides the obvious, such as not doing (or doing the opposite of) what I've listed as having been beneficial, I've noticed a few things which can spoil or even negatively impact the experience which I keep an eye out for. Two key concerns to watch for are a lack of motivation or willingness for either party to allow themselves to be vulnerable and embrace growth, or either participant not upholding the expectations upon them.

The former can be a slow-growing insidious rot at times that spreads to the other party, meaning both can lose interest or motivation in the experience at which point its costs outweigh its benefits, so it's important to spot the symptoms of this early on. As for the latter, I found this a difficult issue to handle. On the one hand, you want to encourage the participant who isn't upholding their responsibilities (or upholding them on time) as you want them to succeed, and yet, if you're not receiving the same effort from the other participant as what you're putting into it, again, the benefits to yourself are lost and the cost of the experience (time, energy, effort) become minified or lost altogether.

One way to handle this is to address it directly, openly, and honestly. Without an accusative tone to preserve that psychological safety, and having given a few sessions to evaluate whether it is a pattern or a one-off, acknowledging the issue directly with the other participant allows you to discuss the whats and whys, and hopefully understand the cause and ideally identify how the process might be adapted to help support the participant best.

And of course, finally, if that's not possible and it's just not working out, that's as important to acknowledge and discuss as understanding one another's aims at the start of the process. Sometimes, the pairing simply may not be suitable and either party may benefit and succeed better with another person - there is no shame in this on either side of the table. Just as people learn from different formats in different ways, an experience like this may not be for them or the person they're doing it with just may not suit their preferences. This isn't to be considered a failure, but a further adaption of the process - if it's not for them, or it's not a good pairing, that's a lesson learnt which can be addressed by either finding them someone more suitable or stopping the process altogether.