On mentorship as a vector for growth
Mentorship is a common concept in our circles, universally accepted as a good idea. A necessity, even. Nobody thinks you shouldn’t have a mentor. And a few years on the job market, many of us start to vaguely think that we should be mentors, too. Share our experience! Ask us anything!
Over the past decade, my friend Alexandre Simon and I have dutifully accepted invitations to be mentors for all kinds of startup accelerators and community-run mentorship programs, and looked after junior designers that passed through our respective studios.
Earlier this year, a large corporation asked us to build a mentorship program to accelerate the growth of its young design team and its leadership. As we got into the details of how we might facilitate exchange between them and different personalities in our networks, we realized that the definition of mentorship is surprisingly elusive. People have different interpretations of what it means, and for different contexts, too.
That particular initiative was one of many that were side-lined in the pandemic. Still, we continued to chew on the topic of mentorship as a method of relaying knowledge and experience. As we swapped stories, we found our experiences as mentors to have largely been fleeting or unfulfilling. There were occurrences that were quite transactional, being put on the spot for someone to “pick your brain” without a way to understand the value of that effort to them. In my work with building communities of practice, I’ve also encountered stories of low engagement leading to community programs being shuttered. Disappointing but also, a curious phenomenon. Why wasn’t more value and satisfaction being generated for both sides?
We’ve had positive experiences, too, mostly on the mentee side and in times long past. This made us more conscious of our own latent needs to be mentored. If we take the number of years as a shorthand for experience, 10–15 years is long enough to be considered “senior” in the industry. But for the longevity and health of our winding professional journeys, we will always be pursuing new directions in which we are inherently “junior”. Holding both postures in one body is a balancing act, especially when our primary professional role as consultants demands that we embody high-levels of expertise.
After this topic kept popping up in our Zoom apéros, we set out to explore these questions:
- How might one become a better mentor or mentee?
- What makes a good mentorship relationship anyway? What are the criteria by which the relationship starts, flourishes, and closes?
- How might one find mentors for a new topic that we don’t understand the edges of?
- How can a third party facilitate this exchange and which elements can be operationalized for scale?
In this article, we start to chip away at the first two questions by examining the nature of mentee-mentor relationships. Most Part of the next article has also been drafted but this is a big topic and writing is hard…! We hope to hear lots of stories and questions from people interested in this exploration to continue on together.
Mentorship can start in different ways, and without that label, too.
A mentorship may start because we are matched through a speed dating-like process in a mentorship program. We may be assigned a mentor by a boss. We may find and ask someone to mentor us.
Mentorship can happen without the word mentor ever being used, too. A mentor may assign themself to us — many of us will have had the beautiful experience of being taken under someone’s wing, and realize it only in hindsight.For the seed of a fruitful mentorship to be planted, there needs to be a mutual intention and recognition ushers the two individuals into a space of opportunity for both of them to benefit from mutual learning.
That doesn’t happen by simply showing up. Reflecting on her experiences with mentorship in design and yoga, our friend Gayatri Kohalkar shared the questions that she often uses for both sides to commit to action:
- How may I help you grow?
- How may I make this worth your time?
- Where do I sit within the galaxy of your network and resources?
- What rituals will serve us and open up a space between us?
- How do we know when it’s time to move on?
Mentorship is shaped by the mentee’s intentions for growth.
Many of us take initiative to learn outside the context of our businesses. Partly because we are curious humans and this is fun, and partly because conventional learning strategies cannot keep pace with the speed at which our roles must evolve, to respond to change and do the work that we seek to do. The first-hand experience of someone who’s been down a similar path can help us make sense of our learning priorities.
We also seek input to think about potential pathways on a longer time horizon or in a field that’s new to us. A mentor can help us better understand the terrain, and then provide a feedback and accountability loop as we navigate it.
What generates the heat of the mentorship is the mentee’s intentions for their own growth. These intentions may be fuzzy, especially in the beginning, and will evolve over time. That messiness is part of the growth process but the intentions need to crystalize at some point, as it will dictate the intensity of commitment from both sides.
On top of practical advice, the mentee will also be invited to take a step back from their understanding of the work, to re-interpret and re-define themselves. A question or an offhand anecdote can illuminate new paths.
There have been times when a mentor would point to options that I hadn’t even considered within the realm of possibilities. That they could see it, for me, was enough for me to start imagining it, too. (In fact, this is how I became a designer. A story for another day, perhaps.) I don’t think those observations would have happened without me expressing my interests and desires to explore.
A growth mindset is also required of the mentor.
There are tangible reasons to become a mentor, aside from the satisfaction in being able to pay it forward or the joy that can be found in the experience itself. Being a mentor brings legitimacy to one’s standing in the profession. Taking on a mentee is a mark of a certain level of maturity, one that comes with honor and responsibility.
In addition, the act of transferring knowledge is an opportunity to update and deepen what we (think we) know. Particularly for us in tech-centric fields where new trends fly left and right, updating our references and increasing the range in which we can re-frame the essence of that knowledge is critical.
As a mentor, I have to admit that there have been moments when I’ve had to check my pangs of disappointment, when sensing that my contribution to the conversation wasn’t landing. The urge to convince the mentee of how “right” we are is a warning flag, reminding us to stay open-minded and curious.
Mentorship is a reciprocal relationship at heart.
This is a journey that the mentor and the mentee set out on, with a shared desire to see the mentee grow and succeed. The mentee can ask without shame, and have a witness to the struggles and accomplishments along the way. This, in turn, enables the growth of the mentor. Demands it, even.
With shortening employment tenures, a constant alignment between job descriptions and reality, and more and more people striking out on their own, it seems like the unique role that mentorship can play will only grow in importance.
And so, an invitation.
What I find fascinating about this topic is that everyone seems to have a story to tell, a point of view to share, a question to ask. Alex and I asked ourselves some meaty questions in the beginning. Together in the open feels like the right way to move forward, and we invite you to join the conversation.
Here are a couple of starting points, if you’re up for sharing a few thoughts, either here or in private:
- Have you had a mentoring relationship that didn’t really take off? What happened and why do you think that is?
- Think about a fruitful one. What was the set-up and what contributed to its success?
- For people seeking mentorship, why is that and how will you go about it?
Please link to any resources that you’ve found helpful, too. An excellent one that I encountered recently is this deck by communications grad Savannah Sims, where she walks through the phases of her twelve-month mentorship with strategist Julian Cole.
Our next piece will be about how mentorship differs from other forms of “helper” relationships, such as coaching and consulting.
This article was co-developed with my good friend Alexandre Simon, over several late-night Hangout conversations. We found our arc, noted the main discussions points, and fleshed out English and French language articles respectively. Illustrations by Alex.
Many thanks to Louis-Jean, Marine Antunes Dias, Jeffrey Coleman, Gayatri Korhalkar, Chloé Cohen-Adad, Alessandro Catania and Davide Petrillo for your sharp critiques, insightful stories and unwavering encouragement for getting this piece out the door.
Originally posted on my website, where I write about convening, facilitating and learning.
