Technical Mentorship (1/3): Building a Strong Culture as a Foundation

A lot of people talk about the importance of mentorship in an organization, but many still see it as a stand-alone activity, instead of as a part of a whole organizational culture.

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It is the organization’s culture that makes mentorship effective. The leaders need to declare what kind of culture they want to build in the organization. This way, all team members will have a common vocabulary and a set of values — a common ground.

It’s also important to allow the culture to be openly questioned any time so that all team members know why we need to develop and nurture that culture in the team. Besides, allowing people to question existing culture can create a sense of collaboration and improve a sense of ownership.

A culture is a set of values. Basically you can put anything you think is necessary on the list. However, there are three core values that need to be upheld to make mentorship effective. The terms/words used can vary, but the important thing is the definition. Those are (1) psychological safety, (2) being direct and open in communication, (3) caring personally for others.

Psychological Safety

Ensuring psychological safety in the workplace is important especially if the nature of the business is full of uncertainty and interdependency. The organization needs its people to be brave enough to take risks and speak up to help the best ideas win.

As a reality check, consider this question: have you been in an environment where you don’t want to take risks or speak up because you are afraid of being humiliated?

Examples:

• reluctant to ask a question because you are afraid of being seen as stupid for asking such a silly question.
• reluctant to offer new ideas because it is too risky.
• reluctant to criticize something because you are afraid of being offensive to others.
• reluctant to admit mistakes because you are afraid of being seen as an unreliable person, or you will be blamed personally for committing such a mistake.

If one of the conditions above regularly happens, it’s a sign to make some fixes to your workplace culture. Few tips the leaders can do to promote psychological safety in their organization:

1. Admit your mistakes or vulnerability openly. It means you create a safe space for others to do the same.
2. Ask questions like, “what can go wrong in our decision?”, “do you see any room of improvement?”, “did I miss something?”
3. No blaming attitude

Direct and Open Communication

Another aspect needed to make mentorship effective is the ability to communicate in a direct and open manner. This ability can make organizations make decisions and learn quickly.

In the mentorship context, this means you give feedback directly, whether it is praise or criticism, without having to sugarcoat which makes your point unclear.

It also means that anyone can give and take negative feedback immediately without having to wait for 6–12 months in a performance appraisal when there is no time left to make any improvement.

Being open and direct is a sign of respect because you care enough to put attention on other people and point out what works and what doesn’t work.

This is also a sign of humility because you are willing to admit when you are wrong.

Here are a few tips to be direct and open in communication:

1. Ask for criticism before giving it.
2. Give feedback immediately.
3. When it comes to giving negative feedback, don’t personalize. It means you need to do that in a way that doesn’t question your confidence in their competencies. It’s better to say “your code is not good enough” rather than “you can’t code well”.

Care Personally for Others

The main difference between mentorship and the other methods of learning is this: a personal relationship between the mentor and the mentee.

To make mentorship effective, you need to care for others personally. It means you treat each other as human beings. You acknowledge that everyone has aspirations beyond work, you learn what is important to them, and build genuine relationships and trust with them. This is the antidote to being a brilliant jerk or robotic professionalism.

When you give feedback (especially negative one), you focus on your relationship — meaning that you want them to be better and improve.

Here are a few tips to show that you care personally:

1. Be humble, helpful, and offer guidance in person.
2. Praise in public, criticize in private.
3. Learn what is important to other people.

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This is the first part of a 3-part article series about technical mentorship. Stay tuned at our LinkedIn or Medium to read the next part.

References:

1) Amy Edmondson, Building a psychologically safe workplace, TEDxHGSE.
2) Kim Scott, Radical Candor.