Notes on mentorship: I have found this article How to mentor software engineers on mentoring engineers to be actionable yet devoid of any platitudes. Some of my favourite highlights below -

• Mentors operate at three levels
  • Goals - figuring out what they really want
  • Situations - handling the unfamiliar or difficult
  • Skills - getting promoted
• You have to have someone’s best interest in mind and you have to be willing to help them see uncomfortable truths
• Goals Best goals comes from within and should be well understood. Ask probing questions “where do you see yourself in five years?” , “what is and isnt goign well?”,”if there is one thing you could change,what would it be?”. A mentor can help ground aspirations with current reality so that the mentee can find the path that they can believe in and realistically follow.
• Situations To mentor situations, tell stories. Faced with the question “what should I do?”, a mentor should resist the urge to recommend and should look for an opportunity to tell a personal story instead. How are stories useful:
  • reassures a mentee that they’re not alone
  • stories engage the listener’s brain, helping them focus more completely on what they’re being told rather than their own problems
  • stories let a mentee consider a situation through an abstraction – when they aren’t the protagonist of their own, immediate problem
  • it preserves their agency and sense of control
• Be honest if you haven’t experienced a situation personally. What worked for you might not work for someone else. You should still share your experiences, but share with awareness and candor about the difference
• Skills To mentor on skills , watch them in action. For coding skills sit through code reviews , for communication skills sit through a presentation and so on
• The most important thing you can do is provide actionable feedback. If your mentee doesn’t know what to do next, your feedback wasn’t actionable.
• Summary There’s one take away I’d like you to have: mentoring is about listening. Resist the temptation to offer unsolicited advice. Listen to what they’re asking about. Goals? Situations? Or skills? Then listen (or observe) before sharing your questions, stories, or feedback.