Effective talk: How to become a great mentor
Year of Talk: 2023
Mentorship experience
Help introduce new industry connections or new people who can become friends and help propel the person's career in the industry.
Gives personal experience and personal challenges from working in the industry.
Can help explain how different areas of the industry work and how to deal with it.
Listen to problems that the person is having and give feedback on how they are progressing.
Some mentorship opportunities:
Ubisoft mentorship programs:
More general mentorship:
Many companies or local game dev groups may have internal mentorship programs available
What does it mean to be a mentor
Help devs hone skills in the right direction and at a good growth level.
Push the industry towards a better direction through new generations having better opportunities.
It is important to listen to the problems and questions the mentees are asking. Try to help them solve the problem or ways to mitigate it.
Give resources and best practices. So they don't get lost and spend time learning the best practices the hard way.
Help develop core skills that might be needed in jobs. Like communication or teamwork.
Be willing to discuss different career options. People can reach their dream jobs in different ways.
Help finding and developing the appropriate support network. This allows people to more easily find jobs or get help when the mentees are struggling.
Sharing previous experiences and how they solved certain conflicts can help with frameworks to solve similar future problems.
If the mentee is part of a marginalized group it is important to be clear with them about what can occur while in the industry.
What mentorship isn't
Not all help works the same way for everyone. As people come from different backgrounds it's important to give appropriate help.
Important to understand the difference between teaching vs telling. By helping the mentee learn it can stick with them for longer and can be used more often.
Mentorship is not for profit. Its meant to be ways for people to get valuable information from previous generations on best practices and how to improve. It also helps to lower the barrier of entry.
How mentorship builds strong leaders
Great leaders can communicate well and listen to people under them.
This can be done by understanding individual needs and supporting growth.
Also by giving actionable feedback that lets them become better people/workers.
Tailor feedback depends on the person's background and experience.
Help empower people to develop new skills and their careers.
When teaching skills it helps reinforce what you know as well as makes sure you have properly internalized it.
It also helps determine what you and the mentee/team need to improve on. Can work together to become better developers.
Give credit/ownership.
People will feel more attached to the product if they feel like they own in some way the features being used.
Broaden people's horizons and perspectives.
People can understand things differently. By including more types of people it can allow the team to better understand what to prepare for.
Allows you and the team to learn from new experiences.
Be willing to ask questions and show that you're willing to become a better person who understands more perspectives.
Creating a safe space.
Make sure to lightly punish people if they fail or make mistakes. You want to teach them through encouragement.
Learning and showing respect and empathy.
Understand how language changes over time and understand that you might need to change quickly.
Who can be a mentor
There is no specific minimum or maximum in experience. But people with more experience tend to have more information to give to people.
Doing peer-to-peer mentorship helps both parties to learn from each other and improve.
People outside of your normal job can give new perspectives as they are used to the systems implemented at their workplaces and can help contextualize your work in the company with how other people are doing it.
Comments