Mentor relationships are an opportunity for individuals to learn from someone's personal experience, background, and perspective. These relationships build trust on a team, provide safe space to make mistakes, and encourage both personal and professional development.
Mentorship is an opportunity for both the mentor and mentee to develop their leadership and communication skills. Mentorship should be led by the mentee, similar to how 1:1's at GitLab are driven by direct reports.
As of 2021-10-25, 125 team members have participated in formal mentorship programs organized at GitLab. This includes 43 people in the Minorities in Tech mentorship program and 82 in the Women at GitLab mentorship program (first and second iteration combined).
The Power of Mentoring
Share questions in the #mentoring slack channel.
Benefits for the mentee
Benefits for the mentor
Consider these metrics when measuring success of individual, group, or formal mentorship programs.
The following team members are available as mentors. Schedule a coffee chat to get the conversation started!
The Expertise column comes from the team member .yaml entry and might not include all subjects they can help you with.
mentor status to true. This will appear on the team page with a line that reads Available as a mentor. Example MRLearn more about organized mentorship programs for team members:
Consider using the Minorities in Tech TMRG mentorship program structure to organize a mentor program for your team or TMRG.
Adapted from the NCWIT Mentoring-in-a-Box Mentoring Basics - A Mentor's Guide to Success, section What Are the "Dos" of Mentoring and People Grove resources:
| Expectation | Description |
|---|---|
| Maintain Boundaries | Maintain clear and appropriate boundaries. Be clear on where the line is drawn between your responsibilities and those of their manager. |
| Set Goals | Mentorship is a process with a goal. Mentees should create goals for themselves from the outset and put them in writing. Frequently revisit goals to measure progress. |
| Build Trust | Act as a colleague first, an expert second. Spend time getting to know one another.. Use an open and warm tone to create a safe place to ask difficult questions and take risks. Be open, honest, and fully authentic. |
| Set Expectations | Be realistic and uphold your commitment. Share access to resources and people, but make it clear you do not wield your influence over others – coach as you can but the mentee needs to do their own work. |
| Listen | Establish trust and openness in communication from the start. Give your full, undivided attention. Listen as much as you speak so that their questions and aspirations are always the central focus. Hear concerns before offering advice and guidance. |
| Acknowledge Independence | Recognise that the mentee goals are their own and that they may have career goals that differ from the path you chose. Your role as a mentor is to guide; it’s up to the mentee to decide what to implement in their own career. |
| Respect Diverse Experiences | Recognise that minorities within the organisation sometimes face additional barriers to advancement. Educate yourself about the issues and ask for advice and support via the appropriate Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging channels. |
| Practice Self-Awareness | Identify your strengths, weaknesses, and biases.. Keep an open mind. Be aware of and respect other's experiences, ideas, and goals. Mentorship requires open dialogue about the ways gender and culture influence your mentee's work in the organisation and the mentoring relationship itself. |
| Advocate | Educate others within the organisation about the advancement of women and other under-represented groups. Approach managers and other team members and mentor them on being effective managers or colleagues to those who might have different experiences to them. Teach your mentee how to become a mentor themselves – by example and by encouragement. |
| Express Gratitude | Share openly about your experience. Express gratitude for the skills or experiences developed over time. |
| Maintain a Growth Mindset | Value a growth mindset of both the mentor and mentee. Both parties can learn and grow from mentorship |
| Iterate | Mentorship changes with time. Iteration of goals throughout the mentorship is encouraged. Focus on quick wins that the mentee can reach, then keep growing |
Use these resources when participating in an organized mentor program or building your own mentor/mentee relationship in both synchronous and asynchronous formats. Adopt what fits and leave what doesn't.
Take the LinkedIn Learning training called How to be a Good Mentor and Mentee. It covers strategies for finding a mentor, setting clear expectations, and achieving goals through mentorship. If you don't have a LinkedIn Learning license, please submit an access request and assign to the L&D team. The team will help either allocate a license to your account or direct you to the Growth and Development budget for reimbursement.
Content from this training has been adapted in the following Google Slides presentation for learners who prefer to read the material at their own pace.
In their book Burnout: the secret to unlocking the stress cycle, authors Emily and Amelia Nagoski explain the difference between goals and purpose:
| Idea | Definition |
|---|---|
| Goal | the what - outcome driven |
| Purpose | the why - value driven |
Mentees should have a foundational goal and purpose set for their mentorship. Mentee goals should drive the relationship.. Mentors can set goals based on that of their mentee. Both mentors and mentees bring their own original purpose to mentorship.
| Critera | Description |
|---|---|
| Time-bound | When will the goal be complete? |
| Certain | Is achievement of the goal within your control? |
| Specific | What is the desired outcome? |
| Positive | What positive impact will the outcome create? |
| Measurable | How will success be measured? |
| Personal | Why does achieving the goal matter? Tie goal to purpose. |
Using the matrix below, fill in each empy space based on the descriptions above to draft your goal:
| Time-bound | Certain | Specific | Positive | Measurable | Personal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
This structure is adapted from Burnout: the secret to unlocking the stress cycle and the SMART goal framework. Learn more about goal setting by taking the Setting Team and Employee Goals using SMART Methodology LinkedIn Learning course
Setting goals that are specific to learning a specific tool, like increasing confidence with GitLab, might be challenging to fit in the SMART model. Consider asking yourself these two questions to help clarify your goal.
Then, try breaking down your goal into clear actions as shown in the examples below:
Example 1: Improve my understanding of GitLab product by X date 1. Move all personal projects to GitLab 1. Configure CI/CD tools to automate 1 manual task 1. Track career development in a personal project
Example 2: Learn about Ruby by X date 1. Take X course 1. Resolve 3 ruby bugs in the product 1. Create 1 blog post with learnings
Purpose is value-driven and based on GitLab values and personal values. Determine what values drive you to be part of a mentorship and complete the following statement:
I'm a mentor/mentee because I care about value. Value drives me to be a mentor/mentee because your why.
Connecting mentorship and GitLab values
| Value | Connection to mentorship |
|---|---|
| Collaboration | Fosters connection and conversation between team members |
| Results | Driven by specific goals |
| Efficiency | Focused transfer of experience and skill |
| Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging | All perspecives, experiences, and backgrounds are valued and included |
| Iteration | Incremental changes to goals are made as relationships develop |
| Transparency | Trust is built between mentor/menee |
A discussion about goals and purpose should be part of the very first mentorship meeting. Progress and iterations on goals should be revisited during each mentorship meeting.
It's important to set clear expectations with your mentor/mentee about when, how often, and for how long you will formally meet. Below is a suggested format for this meeting cadence:
Setting an agenda for your mentorship sessions is important for resource documentation and future planning. The mentee should be the DRI for each session and use the agenda to set meeting goals and ask questions. Open a new document and share the document with both the mentor/mentee. Use the following meeting agenda templates as a baseline for each session. The template can be customized to meet the needs of the relationship, and might adapt over time.
Sample agendas below are inspired by resources from Arizona State University and People Grove. Please make a copy of these templates and save to your own Google Drive.
Watch this short video of how you can use GitLab issues to collaborate async in a mentorship:
You can explore the issue shown in this video in our GitLab L&D project. There is also a issue template you can copy and use in your own mentorship project. The text of the issue template is also included directly below.
GitLab Issue Template
## Date: XXXX-XX-XX
`Add mentorship goal as the first entry on the agenda. Keep this entry here the entirety of the mentorship`
## Questions and Feedback by 20xx-xx-xx
_Mentees should add questions and links to projects for feedback. Include links to issues and MRs that you need guidance on_
1. [ ] a
1. [ ] a
1. [ ] a
## Action Items
_Use this section to queue up action items for the mentee and mentor. Check each box when complete._
**1. Mentee Action Items**
1. [ ] a
1. [ ] a
1. [ ] a
**1. Mentor Action Items**
1. [ ] a
1. [ ] a
1. [ ] a
## Maintenance
1. [ ] Assign this issue to both the mentor and mentee
1. [ ] Use the comment section on this issue to collaborate with your mentor async. Include links to Loom video recordings in your comments if you need to verbalize or explain something in more detail.
1. [ ] Set a due date on this issue when the feedback and actions items should be complete
1. [ ] Close this issue when all feedback is addressed and action items are checked off
Career development is a major driver of mentee goals during mentorship. Review GitLab resources for career development in our handbook:
These resources are meant to provide both mentors and mentees with additional personal and professional development. Consider reviewing these resources asynchronously and discuss/debrief them during a session with your mentor/mentee.
Why the Power of Mentoring can Change the World