Insights from Mentor Workshop

Some time ago we gathered a cozy zoom call with a group of mentors to share experiences, learnings, and challenges. Prior to this workshop, we identified 2 topics that resonated with the majority of our mentor community the most: teaching hard skills and keeping the mentor-mentee relationship fresh. In this article, we will share some tips and insights we’ve got during that workshop.

Teaching Hard Skills

Hard skills can be defined as the necessary skills for one to succeed in her role. They are quantifiable, specific and usually, one can train them with the right amount of practice.
Sometimes as mature design professionals we treat our hard skills as something that we’ve always been possessing. So when it comes to teaching them we often wonder what the best way is to transfer that knowledge.

Ask questions and let your mentee figure it out

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.

Sometimes when a mentee asks us for advice or to critique their works we’re tempted to tell them exactly the right solution. Yet by doing so, we might not really be helping our mentees. One of our mentors argued that by asking the right questions you can motivate your mentees to think independently and search for information.

For instance, if you’re reviewing designs of your mentee you can ask these questions:

• Where are you going with this design?
• What is your plan?
• What is the reason behind using this pattern/component/colour/etc.?

Or if your mentee wants to do a usability study, you might ask them:

• What do you want to learn with this study?
• Which method would work best for your goal and why?
• How would you measure success?

At first, such questions might and probably will confuse your mentee, but later on, both of you will get used to this way of working.

Design together

When it comes to learning how to use design tools such as Sketch, Figma or Framer it might be inconvenient to reveal all the tips and tricks you know over a casual chat. There is a chance you won’t mention all the things that matter or your mentee won’t remember them all. And this is the moment where the Co-Designing technique could be very beneficial for you both.

Think about it as a pair programming for developers. It is a technique where two programmers work on the same machine. One is writing code while another one is observing it and reviewing every line to spot mistakes. During such sessions, programmers change frequently and it’s considered a great way not only to deliver top-notch code but also to share knowledge.

So maybe next time you can design things together in Sketch if you have a meeting in person, or Figma or Framer if you keep your meetings remote.
Alternatively, you can have a session, where you’re designing and your mentee is observing you and asking questions.

Let them fail

We all know that making mistakes is an essential part of the learning process. We tell this commonplace phrase to ourselves, our friends, and colleagues. But when it comes to the success of our mentees we tend to forget about it. Almost like parents, we want to shield them from the failures and cruelty of this world.

You have to accept the fact that you cannot hold your mentee’s hand all the time. When your mentee makes mistakes it doesn’t necessarily mean that you failed as a mentor too. Your job is to help your mentee to reflect on their actions that led to such an outcome and understand where things went sideways.

Keeping your relationship fresh

The Mentorship Program lasts 4 months. We’ve noticed that both mentors and mentees are very excited to start but after a couple of sessions, the relationship dynamics go down. There are multiple reasons for that:

• Very big goals with slow progress or no clear goals at all
• Mentee doesn’t have anything specific to discuss and doesn’t want to waste the time of his/her mentor
• Both Mentor and Mentee are not very proactive and waiting for the other to take initiative
• It simply gets boring
• The format is the same every time

Align on goals

Sometimes your mentee comes to you with a huge objective in mind and seeks guidance. Due to the size of the challenge, the progress is slow and a couple of meetings later, you both awkwardly stare at each other looking for the topic to discuss. This is why it is important to break big ambitious goals into smaller chunks, which can be done within 2 weeks between your sessions. Btw we have a nifty article on goal setting here.

An action plan at hand (this is the list of short term goals of your mentee) benefits not only your mentee but also you as a mentor. You have time to prepare as you know what to expect from your next session.

Make sure that you check with your mentee on the goals frequently and readjust them when you see what works and what doesn’t. It’s important to have the goals visible. Some of our mentees are using tools like Excel, Trello, or Notion.

Here is another tool for your toolbox that you can use to set the goals and define where your mentee wants to go.

Homework with a deadline

Try giving your mentee homework after every session. Depending on the goals of your mentee it could be a research project, usability study, app critique, or a piece of UI designed from scratch.
Make sure there is a deadline. The deadline should depend on the frequency of your sessions and the busyness of your mentee. The time in between your sessions could do the job.

Keep it fun

The structure is very good but after a couple of similarly structured sessions, it might get boring for both of you. Think about introducing new activities to your meetings. For instance, if your mentee’s end goal is to find a job try this:

• Role Play exercises where you are interviewing your mentee for a job and then switch places and let your mentee do the same.
• Review job postings together and see which requirements they meet.
• Review portfolios of other design professionals

Being a mentor isn’t always easy, but it gets easier. There is a community of fellow mentors that share similar challenges and can support you. We hope that the insights we received during this workshop will help you navigate through this experience 🙌

And if you have any more questions or tips, let us know in the comments! :)