Personal Investments
During the week, I talked with people who wanted to start as mentors but needed help finding mentees.
I’ve also found that it takes work for people to find mentors. So “discoverability” on both ends is problematic. I started asking what other teams or organizations were doing with this mentorship. The options ranged from ad-hoc to more formal programs.
That round of asking people and learning from them got me thinking that this probably needs to be solved by a dedicated “Learn & Development” organization for the whole company.
This issue got me through different tangents. In some cases, when talking about this, I realized that some people expected help from their managers, either to help them find a mentor or be a mentor.
Ad-hoc Solutions
Teams that handled this more informally had varying experiences. Either people were on their own about mentoring, or a highly visible person (e.g., the principal engineer) was getting overwhelmed with requests for mentorship.
In other cases, there were people very engaged with the mentoring and decided to invest their time and effort into running formal programs. But those efforts can only go on for so long.
More structure, sponsorship
The teams that tried to adopt a formal program within their scope also need help to sustain it, as running such programs, even when your organization is small-ish (~200 people), takes a reasonable amount of time.
Things like gathering mentors, finding mentees, setting expectations, and doing the right “pairings.” Collecting feedback regularly, also at the beginning and end, make that into an actionable plan to improve for the next iteration, etc.
Choosing your battles
This sort of situation we come across in our organizations, and we need to gauge how much to invest and if we can get more people on board for it to be sustainable.
I don’t have an answer right now, but it depends on how passionate I feel about it. Is it even my problem to solve? Can I share more information with another team or person more aligned with that topic or goal?
It will depend on the context and how much I can work with the organization.
Your Turn!
Have you ever encountered a topic you’re passionate about and, when trying to solve it, found it was bigger than a single person could do? Did you feel it was your problem to solve? Did you let it go? Let me know your thoughts.
Happy coding!
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