Mentoring

Overview

Following my time at Cloud Imperium Games I have had the fortune of being responsible for the junior new starters. This will be an overview of my experiences, tips and tricks I’ve learnt over the last few months.

What is a mentor?

I was a trustee and seasoned advisor who supports and guides an employee at the start of their professional journey within the company. I’ve gotten to know the mentee on a personal and professional level and this has allowed me to focus on their strengths.

I would then provide the mentee with resources and guidance to help them progress through their tasks and ultimately become more confident, comfortable and autonomous.

Introduction

The first meeting of the mentee, it's an anxious time for the mentee and an opportunity for you as a mentor to make a good first impression of the company and team culture that puts them at ease. As this is the games industry, it’s a low-stress environment that values mental health and steady work.

A crucial first step is to get the mentee into their new starter documentation with a small amount of guidance. It's important to get them set up and then leave them to it. At this point, they should have had their tour of the building and would now require the time to soak in their environment with a slow introduction to other team members where appropriate.

One important reason why you want to leave the mentee is to allow them to develop their confidence to ask for help. An easy trap to fall into as a new professional is trying to do everything yourself. As I experienced, College and University condition you to try and find the solution yourself and develop your problem-solving abilities.

The next week is the perfect opportunity to bond with the mentee, learn about them on a personal level and help open them up with their interests. One of the things I found useful was to recommend hobby chats and information about the local area. Moving to a new job, and even to a new area, can be a lot to take in and mentees can find it easier to just settle for what they can see first. I’ve seen people settle for wasting money on buying expensive foods when they could easily have made use of the free facilities within the company.

Crucial next steps

The mentee has settled in; they know who they are working with and are starting to put the feelers out towards other teams and understand whom to contact in the future.

The next essential step is encouraging the mentee to start tracking their work from the first opportunity. Adding tasks into JIRA and making sure they are tracked within the sprint allows the mentee to discuss what they are working on within stand-ups.

One of the things I observed as a new starter myself, my principal, would encourage me to communicate by myself and allow me to practise how to craft a message myself. I applied this same mantra to a lot of the things I teach now. If I am going to teach you how to do something I’ll make sure you are the person holding the mouse and going through the process.

“Monkey sees, monkey do.”

I think this is an interesting quote when it comes to a new starter. In my experience, I learn a lot slower if I’m constantly shadowing another employee rather than attempting to do their work myself.

“Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.”

A popular idiom from the 1800s that matches a mantra you should employ in your work. Allow the mentee to do the work for you instead and it’ll help with knowledge retention. Get them to reach out to other developers, make their own JIRA tasks, manage the Kanban and epic, and try to encourage speaking up about their opinions.

While in discussions, while it might seem cruel to pick on the new starter, I find asking what they think helps get them involved and bring fresh ideas to the table. When you’re new to the company, it's very easy to keep quiet and try to monitor more to soak up the information rather than attempt to contribute yourself.

Managing their workload

I don’t think it's too early to try and get a new starter to learn how to multitask. Initially, I was concerned it could be overwhelming. But you’ll quickly find that while the mentee awaits replies from other developers, they can be twiddling their thumbs at times. Keeping multiple tasks running alongside helps maintain a good work ethic.

Conclusion

In conclusion, to be a good mentor is to be approachable, confident, and always be able to provide a solution to a problem. The solution doesn’t have to be an answer, but a way to unblock them and allow them to move forward with their work. This can be in the form of making a task or reaching out to specific people.

One of the problems I have observed with my mentorship is how easy it is to sit with a mentee for extended periods guiding them through the complex systems. This causes me to fall behind on my work.

One of the failings here is the lack of documentation on all of the work that technical designers can be expected to do. The technical design profession has a wide arcing influence that touches many different systems making it difficult to collate all of the information into a sustainable area.