Mentoring and Mentees: Getting the Most Out of a Mentor Relationship

This is Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. We will accomplish our goals through sharing experience, improving tech skills, increasing business knowledge, and embracing life. Let's dive into the next episode. Hello and welcome back. We are continuing and actually this episode more or less wrapping up our series of broken up bits of a discussion with Timothy Stratton. This is, we'll talk about in this episode, we're going to talk about, really focus on mentoring and mentees and how to get the most out of, whether it's an official mentor relationship or those that you have as, I don't know, guideposts or just a simpler word of just the people you look up to that are in your life, particularly, and we're focusing on the professional side. But I think there's a lot here on the personal side as well. And based on how this is going to fall, I'm actually probably going to do one more episode after this. The next episode will actually be sort of a summary because there's some, there's a lot to unpack in this last little piece of the conversation that I want to swing back around to and follow up some more in the next episode. So we'll be wrapping it up this time, but with a sort of retrospective in the next episode. Without any further preamble, let's get back to our discussion with Timothy. Now, you actually touched on stuff when you're talking about your work with your professors that obviously there was a mentor relationship there that I don't think everybody gets out of the academic world. You have to, it's one of those relationships you have to lean into. I was one of those that I would always just go off and do my own thing. I rarely talked to my professors and looking back, it's one of the things that I wish I had done more. And actually when I went back for my masters, I did spend more time in those kinds of conversations and building those relationships, which I think is why I got much more, why I got a lot more out of the master's program than I did the undergraduate work. In general, I constantly, partially it may be self-serving, but I do constantly talk about mentors and the value of them, both that I've gotten what I've gotten from my mentor and mentors and then what I feel like has been passed on. And so I wanted to touch on that is just sort of with the, especially now, because we've had this relationship for years and you specifically have poured a good deal of time and given a lot into the mentor sessions of the last however many years it's been, three, four, five years that we've done, even the more formal ones than even earlier on when we had sort of less formal regular lunch gatherings and stuff like that. And I wanted to maybe sit back a little bit and think of maybe some key lessons that you've gotten out of that or in a little bit, maybe selling that to people that don't have a mentor is maybe how to build that or ways to get the most out of that kind of a relationship. Oh, I could go on and on about this one. The thing that I would identify in me, and I'll speak for myself here, not every mentor, mentor, mentee, if you will, relationship is keyed off of this particular notion. I'm a little selfish. A lot of times when I choose a mentor, when I've chosen a mentor in the past, I thought to myself that person is walking the path that I want to walk. That person knows things that I want to learn. That person may have a level of prestige or accomplishments that I want to get to. And so I focus my energies on getting to know this person, on understanding this person, be it a group or an individual. Specifically with you, Rob, I cannot tell you how often throughout the day, one, you get brought up. But then two, I find myself quoting you or mentioning something I've learned from you, maybe with attribution or not. But long story short, I would say identify someone you want to learn from, someone who is going the path that you're trying to get on and link up with them. Try to understand how they think. Try to understand the tools that they're using. Try to understand who it is that they look to for answers and things like that. Because that's the relationships that they have. The tools that they use are the tools that you'll want to incorporate into your workflows, your background experience, into the skill set. You'll want to incorporate those so that you can get on that path. And it's not always to say that it's just any one person. You can have multiple mentors. You can get to the point where you might have too many chefs in the kitchen. But in the same sense, having multiple people pouring into you, it can't hurt, but it can get confusing. What I'll say in that is this. I've identified, I can count four people that I've identified with and sought to emulate throughout my life. One in high school, one in college, two, the other two were throughout my career. Rob being one of them. And I said, I want to learn from this person. I want to do the similar things as this person. So it's not just sitting and talking. You have to go implement. If the mentor sees that you're probably going to go do the things that they're suggesting, they're going to give you more and pour into you more. That's at least my experience with Rob and my other mentor. When they told me to do something or they told me they did something, I come back a week, two weeks, a month later and say, hey, I went and did this. This is my outcome. What do you think? And got their feedback. Don't be afraid of feedback either, because that's what the mentor relationship is about, that you're going to get that feedback from someone who's wanting to pour into you and help you grow as an individual, be a developer, teacher, businessperson, whomever, that they're going to pour into you. So I would say first identify, just to summarize, identify a person or persons who are on the path that you want to walk and then start that relationship. Reach out. Hey, what are you doing? How are you doing this? I see your success. Help me understand how to get on that path. And then, you know, don't be afraid to receive that feedback. Hear from them, glean from them, get them to pour into you and then implement that feedback. OK, I cannot understate it or overstate it. I cannot overstate it that I don't believe I'd be where I am without the mentors in my life. And for those who are trying to go at it, Lone Ranger, I'm never going to say that you can't do it. I just know that it was easier for me to have someone who's gone the path that I'm trying to say, OK, I see this roadblock coming your way. Or that's a nice approach. Have you ever thought about it from a different perspective? All these things have helped make me who I am. I'm yet to arrive by no means am I the top dog, but I'm still striving to be a lot better. And these mentor relationships are certainly a vital part of it. Wow. That's why I have you here. That's why I'm talking to you. That's another besides being an awesome sales speech for mentoring in general. I think that is very key. I think that's why it's actually we've discussed this in the past. We being I don't remember who all was involved. I remember having these discussions in the past, particularly with things like mentor programs where you sort of where you are mentoring and you're trying to reach out to people that maybe are where they haven't reached out to you first. Your situation, the situation with us is that you sort of a we were in the same place at the same time and it worked out well to connect and build that relationship. But there's when you especially the commercial type mentor programs is that people have complained sometimes about cost and things like that for the people that charge. And that's I think that's part of the thing is that some of the people that have come back with feedback as a mentor, they say, well, if there's no skin in the game, then if I do it for free, then it usually it doesn't get used. Throwing away and which goes to your point there is that you have to you have to it has to be an active relationship. You have to as a mentee, you have to to work on it to actually do things based on what the mentor has said. There should be either personally or or within that relationship, some sort of an accountability to say if this is the direction you want to go as the as the mentee, then here are some steps that you need to take. And then at some point, it'll swing back around and say, well, how are those steps going? You said you wanted to do that. We discussed what made sense. You said you were going to do it. Did you do it? And that's I think that's been a frustration for some people as we as we've had this that the mastermind mentor type group we have is that it does include some of that accountability. And it's sometimes it's great for a little bit and long term, maybe you don't want to have people, you know, maybe you feel like you're hounded. It's not quite to that level. But, you know, people looking over your shoulders say, hey, how are you doing? And I guess some people do see it as maybe as a criticism or correction or whatever that's that's uncomfortable. But it's done in a way or at least it's intended in a way, I think, if a good mentor relationship is intended a way to make you better. It's just like if the old karate kid movie, you know, he had some weird stuff that he had the kid do that he had Daniel go, you know, wax a car and stuff like that. And it may have seemed pointless, but the goal was to, you know, to stretch some muscles, to build some some habits up that prepared you for the future. And the mentors, you know, some are more open about that than others as far as what the end goal or the result of doing this thing will be. But there's nothing that we do in life that that you get good at that you just it just happens, at least definitely not anything that's worthwhile. Yes, you were born the greatest acts, the greatest basketball player ever. Then you probably get bored with it pretty quick because you never had to work to get it. I think that's that's part of what our you know, our reward is, is that we work and that makes it more valuable. The harder you work for it, the longer you have to strive, the more patient you have to be, the more value valuable it becomes. And so that's that's probably where the good and maybe that's part of what the good mentor relationship is that you see that person, as you said, it's that person that's sort of where you want to be in some point in the future. And so, you know, that you're going to have to put the work in to get to that point. And maybe you get there faster than they did. But still, you know, that you're going to somewhat have to follow those paths. That means you're going to have to work. You're going to have to put the effort in and you're you give them the mentor the reward of seeing that their their recommendations or that their their mentoring is is valuable, that it's not just them flapping their gums, but then it's actually improving. And I think that's the that's the benefit of being a mentor is that you get to see people that are probably you see them as some sort of a diamond in the rough and you get to see them, you know, get polished out to a nice shining diamond somewhere along the way. Excellent, excellent. Yeah, I couldn't certainly just appreciate everything. I speak to you, Rob. Speak. Thank you for everything you've done. I mean it for so much. And I always feel like I'm freeloading on everything Rob is pouring into me. So I just want to say thank you for that. It's got to be poured somewhere. So it's like I said, you want to you want to be able to pour it out where somebody makes use of it. It's it's like software. You don't want to put a lot of blood and sweat and tears into software and then have it sit on a shelf. You want it to be useful. So it's nice to be able to take our experiences and realize that they they have a greater purpose or a greater value than simply advancing our own career, that there's things that we can share with others and multiply, multiply our blessings in that way by by sharing them with others. Certainly. And so that's actually a nice little I'll say it's a nice segue into sort of wrapping this up. And for anybody that's been interested with interested in some of the things that you've shared, which is, like I said, some as they call them value bombs definitely have been dropped here. What are some ways that somebody would get the best ways for people to get a hold of you and any whether they have questions or just want to know? Maybe they say, man, this is a guy that someday I want to work for or something like that. What's some of the best ways to get a hold of you or to follow you? Yeah, I have to say I'm not on the social media right now. I think LinkedIn is my only social profile. So you can look me up on LinkedIn. If it's something certainly pressing that you'd want to reach out to me for, I can certainly provide my personal email. I think I would probably go through, Rob, if you want to reach out to developer and go through that route to get my personal email, that will certainly work. And I can provide that to you. We can link up. Yeah, and I think not having a big social footprint is not a bad thing at all. LinkedIn is about perfect for a technical. It seems like everybody wants to see that. So it's sort of a it's not quite but in a sense, sort of an online resume and a way for people to reach out from a professional sense. And so that's I think that's very admirable in itself is to keep that that footprint as small as possible. And there you have it. That reps that up. I said, I'm going to come back around and spend a little bit more time talking about really this last episode. I want to get a little deeper into draw out some points on the mentor side of things. Didn't have time to do it in the conversation with Timothy. So I figured I'd go ahead and just leave that to the end and do that. Just sort of wrap up this series of interviews before we move on to changing and changing gears next time around. Do want to mention that Timothy said that, hey, you can you can catch him on LinkedIn. You actually cannot at this point. He had decided to get out of he's out of the social network medium completely at this point. But you can always shoot an info at develop a new or email out and we can connect you with them as needed. Or again, since we've had a few of those along the way here, it's sort of a shameless plug from our mentor group. He is a regular attendee and you can always again info develop a new or dot com or you can go connect us with we've got some sign ups on the website so you can sign up. It's free. Come in. Join us. Have some conversations with us and see if that doesn't help you out a little bit. Maybe you get your own mentor too that comes out of that come out of that experience and those conversations. And with that, we'll wrap this episode up. I do have a challenge of the week this time and it is it's sort of a preamble into the next episode. And that is think about your experiences and sort of a two part conversation part question. Who would be your mentor or mentors? And are there mentee or mentees that are in your life? Are there people you are mentoring? And are there people that are the people that have mentored you? Assuming that it's more than zero in both those cases, because I think it'll help you as we continue to discuss this a little bit to have those specific relationships in mind and how they may be the same or different from the conversation that we have around that. That being said, we'll let you get to it. So go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Developer Noor podcast. For more episodes like this one, you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon and other podcast venues, or visit our site at developernoor.com. Just a step forward a day is still progress. So let's keep moving forward together. One more thing before you go, the Developer Noor podcast and site are a labor of love. We enjoy whatever we do trying to help developers become better. But if you've gotten some value out of this and you'd like to help us be great, if you go out to developernoor.com slash donate and donate whatever feels good for you. If you get a lot of value, a lot. If you don't get a lot of value, even a little would be awesome. In any case, we will thank you and maybe I'll make you feel just a little bit warmer as well. Now you can go back and have yourself a great day.