Mentor Guidelines

Published on February 16, 2024

What To Know

Being a great mentor doesn’t have to be hard, but it can be a bit confusing to get started. Below are some of the ways you can go from a good mentor to a great mentor.

Be Patient

Mentees may not always be able to articulate what kind of help they need and it will require patience as they try to describe what they’re struggling with. You can help coax them along, but be patient; they’ll get there.

Be A Good Communicator

Your mentee is likely to come from another nation so there may be cultural, language, and industry barriers to overcome. It will require you to be able to communicate well despite these barriers, and to really listen to what your mentee is trying to say.

Be A Guide

It can be tricky when mentees lack direction in their learning goals, and the temptation may be to design a learning path for them. However, goals that are not set and owned by the individual themselves are less likely to be followed through on. So, try to get that balance between making suggestions for your mentee and drawing out of them what they feel they need to focus on.

Be Willing To Share

Your time, your knowledge, your experiences, and your resources will be invaluable to your mentee. Mentees appreciate hearing your story, knowing what worked for you, what didn’t work for you; it adds to the richness of a mentorship to gain insight about how the day-to-day aspects of the job and industry. This can demystify the unknown for the mentee and help them to build up their confidence.

Be Trustworthy

Some mentees may be completely new to mentorship and thus it’s extremely important to build up a level of trust.. Making suggestions about which learning path to follow, or communicating via Google chat, or screen-sharing might be daunting and may make the mentee feel exposed or vulnerable.

It’s always worth asking the question, “are you comfortable with…or if we…” These kinds of questions help put mentees at ease and re-assure them that you are sensitive to the possibility that they may feel a little skeptical about receiving guidance.

Be Discreet

Respect your mentees’ privacy. Don’t share their name, email or any of their details with anyone unless you received their explicit permission. Before you send groups messages make sure that no one can see each other details unless they agreed to.

How To Respond To Mentees

So your first mentee has reached out! You’re extremely excited, but… now what? Below are the steps you should take once you’ve received your first mentee request.

Determine If This Mentorship Is Right

The first step is to determine whether to accept or reject this mentorship. Perhaps you already have five mentees and just cannot take on another right now. Or perhaps the mentee wants to improve a skill that you’re not very comfortable providing mentorship in. If you aren’t able to accept a mentee for whatever reason, you must be respectful with your decline.

For many mentees, reaching out to a potential mentor is a nerve-wracking experience. Here is one example of a message that would be appropriate to decline a mentee:

“Hi . Thank you so much for contacting me. I would love to mentor you but am unable to at this time. If my situation changes I will let you know. Regards .”

If you are able to accept the mentorship, congratulations! You can move on to the next steps.

Determine Your Availability

Determine how much time you have available and clarify that up front. How much time can you devote to this mentee? Based upon your availability and their needs, determine how often you should meet.

Set Goals

Ask clarifying questions so that you understand exactly what the mentee is seeking advice about. What goals do they want to achieve from this mentorship?

When making suggestions about what they could/should be learning, keep in mind that a mentee can become overwhelmed when you are too many steps ahead of them, or when they haven’t yet covered the basics of the tasks you are suggesting they try.

As far as possible try to clarify with them where they’re at in their coding journey, to reduce the chances of misunderstanding and frustration before making suggestions of how they should proceed in their learning.