How to Grow a Healthy Engineering Org Through Mentorship

When I was a junior engineer, consistent mentoring helped me sharpen my technical skills and collaborate more effectively across teams. As a result of these learnings, I was able to move up within the organization and make a smooth transition into management.

Seeing the impact of mentorship on my career led me to prioritize similar opportunities for my engineers. However, I quickly learned that managers don’t have the bandwidth to personally mentor every team member.

Connecting engineers with dedicated mentors in senior roles is a more sustainable way to grow your people. In addition, this mentor-mentee network can vastly improve the overall health of your organization. Today, we’ll discuss:

1. Key organizational benefits of mentorship
2. Actionable tips for facilitating effective mentorship sessions

Organizational benefits of mentorship

Reduce ramp-up time

New engineers can face a significant learning curve as they adapt to your team’s tech stack. High-quality learning resources are a crucial component of any onboarding plan. However, engineers need added layers of support to help them work through questions and reach full productivity.

When you pair new engineers with a dedicated onboarding mentor, they are more comfortable asking for help. As a result, they can spend less time searching for answers and complete trainings faster. Mentors can also accelerate mentee learning through hands-on activities like pair programming and code reviews.

While new engineers need strong technical foundations to be successful, they also need the soft skills to navigate team and company culture. Unfortunately, workplace norms are not always clear—making it difficult to understand and meet expectations. Mentors can help clarify these unspoken norms and provide tips for success, such as effective communication techniques and problem-solving approaches.

Retain engineers

Engineers are more likely to stick with organizations that create opportunities for them to grow. Engineering leaders can facilitate this growth through formal and informal mentorship.

As a manager, you naturally provide formal mentorship to direct reports. For example, you deliver feedback on engineers’ day-to-day performance and help them build the skills to succeed on your team.

However, you can’t provide all the support and opportunities that engineers need to advance their careers. Connecting direct reports with informal mentors from other teams and orgs can facilitate growth in the following ways:

• Mentees are more likely to speak candidly about the challenges they face with mentors outside their reporting line. As a result, informal mentors can provide more targeted support in navigating roadblocks.
• Depending on engineers’ career goals, they may need to build experience beyond the scope of your team’s regular work. Creating opportunities for engineers to network with leaders who can help them achieve these goals will keep your team engaged and motivated.
• At many companies, staff promotions and above require confirmation from other leaders in your org. Engineers are more likely to advance if you help them build relationships with relevant leaders who can vouch for their role change.

When engineers see that you are invested in helping them achieve career milestones, they will be more committed to succeeding at your company long-term.

###Improve cross-functional relationships

A robust mentorship network helps mentees advance their careers. It also facilitates better cross-functional collaboration through:

1. Relationship building

Mentors can help engineers develop relationships with colleagues outside their immediate teams. This helps to break down silos and create opportunities for future collaboration.

2. Knowledge sharing

Mentors can provide insights into different functional areas within the organization. When engineers understand the perspectives, challenges, and priorities of other teams, they can approach collaborative partnerships more thoughtfully.

3 tips to facilitate effective mentorship sessions

In an ideal engineering org, every leader contributes to informal mentorship as engineers develop and work toward career goals. Given your limited bandwidth, these informal mentorship sessions will be around 30 minutes (and less frequent than 1:1s with direct reports).

These 3 tips will help you to maximize the effectiveness of mentorship sessions:

1. Set goals in advance of meetings.

Without a set agenda, mentorship sessions can quickly become unfocused and unproductive. At the start of your mentor-mentee relationship, work with engineers to set high-level learning goals and break them down into achievable milestones. Take time at the end of each session to define your agenda for the next meeting.

To avoid losing context between sessions, have mentees document takeaways and action items after each session. This helps to reinforce learning and provides you with a written record of what was discussed.

2. Teach mentees how to ask the right questions.

In my experience, junior engineers tend to ask vague questions. This can make it difficult for you to provide actionable guidance tailored to mentees’ goals and struggles.

Be direct with mentees: let them know when their questions are vague, and provide examples of specific, concrete alternatives that will elicit more useful information. As mentees build this skill, hold them accountable for bringing effective questions to each session.

3. Provide actionable guidance.

The best mentors help engineers work towards future career goals while helping them navigate the current realities of your organization. You can do this by giving practical advice based on specific stakeholders and workplace norms. For example:

• “The best time to propose this project is at the start of the fiscal year when the team is allocating resources.”
• “Stakeholder A is very data-oriented, while Stakeholder B is concerned about sustainability and impact on team workload. Here’s how you can tailor your proposal to get them onboard.”

While there are many different ways to approach mentorship, the tips we’ve discussed today helped me find success as an engineering leader (and made me an effective mentor to others).

The key is that every leader needs to treat mentorship as a core responsibility. When you share the work, you’ll be able to nurture talent at scale and unlock the full organizational benefits of mentorship.