My manager recently asked me to mentor a junior data scientist, which makes me start to seriously think about how to be a good mentor.

I have mentioned approximately half a dozen junior team members so far, and each experience is very different. Such experience roughly falls into the following three categories:

  • 1) I became a mentor when I am neither professionally or personally mature enough.
  • 2) I am a devoted mentor, but the mentee is not as devoted as me.
  • 3) Both I and the mentee are devoted, but we are not sure about the boundaries and expectations from our mentor-mentee relationship.

The first scenario happened when I was a second-year graduate student and my advisor asked me to mentor a high school student who was doing an internship in our lab at that time. At that time, I was a junior member in the lab still trying to adapt myself to the culture shock in a new environment. I was also a quiet person who was not very good at expressing myself. On the contrary, she was born in the States and has a very dynamic personality. Within a couple of days into the lab, she became friends with everyone in the lab and could easily carry on conversation on any topics with them. I started to feel things are out of my control. How could I mentor such an individual when she can seek help or advise from any other people who are more senior than me? It turned out that my suspicion was correct. She did ask more help and followed instructions from a senior graduate student who was mentoring me at that time, and only turned to me when that senior graduate student was not available. By the end of her three-month intership with us, I didn’t feel I was mentoring her and I bet she felt the same way. Additionally, instead of my advisor’s (I guess) initial intent to boost my self-esteem, I gained the opposite from this experience. Now as I looked that experience many years later, I was simply not ready to be a mentor at that time. Being a mentor at work means you need to be more experienced than your mentee professionally, and is the person the mentee looks up to when he or she needs help. I was more experienced than her technically, but I was still learning the lab culture and how to communicate well with others using a foreign language.

The second scenario happened when my last manager asked me to mentor a data analyst. I viewed it as a good opportunity to help my manager and make impact within the organization, so I took it quite seriously. I discussed with my manager and realized the goal of the three-month rotation is to help him ramp up on Python programming. Therefore, I set up 30 min weekly one-on-one meetings with him, introduced him to a Python code repository I wrote, and asked him to digest it and bring any questions/concerns to our future one-on-one meetings. The code repository has a simple architecture, a couple of thousand lines of code, tested well and had detailed instructions. I believed anyone who has devoted three months to it would have a decent grasp of it. Surprisingly, he still wasn’t able to run the code end-to-end and had to ask me for help with very simple Python grammar questions. I was very disappointed and said No when my manager asked me whether to extend the rotation or not. If I were to do it again, I would set expectations at the very begining and reported to my manager if things were not working out as expected.

My mentoring experience with a couple of graduate students and visiting professors falls into the third category. At that time, I have already grown up into a senior role in my department and was both professionally and personally mature enough to mentor junior scientists or visting professors. Therefore, my advisor gave me quite a handful. We didn’t set up regular one-on-one meetings, were not clear on expectations from our relationship. We shared the same office space and they just came to me with any work-related questions they had. At certain times, I felt exhausted. I spent too much time helping others so that I didn’t have enough time to finish my own project. I tried to make mentees happy by giving them easy projects, which also meaned they would take my share of the pie after I conquered the most challenging part. In a word, I was serving more as a baby sitter rather than a mentor. It’s hard to find any training materials on how to be a good mentor at an university lab, given that most experience people share online happen in industry.

Realizing all the pain points in my past mentoring experience, I decide to do some research on how to be a good mentor and practice my findings in this new mentor-mentee relationship. Here is what I found and plans to follow:

  • Why to be a mentor?

    Like any other relationships, mentor-mentee relationship is mutually beneficial. For a mentee, having a mentor can help him or her navigate the corporate culture and get started on real job easier. For a mentor, mentoring a junior team member is a good way to make impact at work by helping the organization strengthen its workforce. It’s worth noting such contribution during your performance review. Besides, mentors gain valuable interpersonal communication skills through the mentoring process, which is critical for career advancement.

  • How to be a good mentor?

    • Establish expectations in your first 1:1 meeting

      My manager and I discussed the responsibilities and expectations of the mentor-mentee relationship and concluded that the goal is to help the junior data scientist get familiar with the organizational culture, the data flow and the code base of core projects so that she is ready to take on new projects in two to three months. What I won’t be doing is deciding on what project she will work on or help her with career development. I am also not the person to evaluate the progress of her projects and give her feedback. These are all on my manager’s plate as of now.

      In terms of time devotion, I am expected to have a 30 min one-on-one meeting with her weekly to discuss any problems or concerns she has. We will also touch base on Slack daily to see how things are going. I will be always available on Slack for her to bring in any questions or concerns.

    • Build the relationship by taking a genuine interest in your mentee as a person

      Building trust in professional relationship is critical. The worst thing that can happen in the workplace is that we don’t trust each other. A first step to build trust is to know each other as a person, not just a working machine. One little trick I have learnt from meeting with my skip-level managers is to chat about anything except work for a couple of minutes before each meeting. We all have families and hobbies. We probably all like tasty food and stay fit. We all do something unrelated to work on weekends. We probably all read news and have some shared things we care about. The list can goes on and on.

    • Listen carefully, then ask and advise

      Listen carefully, know the mentee, and offer targeted advice.

      Everyone has different working style, and may be well-suited to a certain type of feedback loop. This requires the mentor to be an active listener during conversations to really know the mentee professionally. It means making a conscious effort to really, truly pay attention to what your mentee is saying, instead of thinking about what you’re going to say next. Based on understanding what the mentee really needs, offer targeted feedback or advice in a suitable style, but let them make their own decisions.

    • Feedback

      Feedback is critical for personal growth. Therefore, the mentor should seek monthly or quarterly feedback from the mentee. Besides, the mentor can also report the mentee’s progress and get feedback from the manager on a regular basis. That way, the manager not only gets a better understanding of what’s going on in his team, but also help the mentor grow.