What constitutes Mentoring another team?

[connor.worley]

Originally Posted by JVN

When I said "same" I meant -- the same questions previously mentioned as being answered on CD.
I edited my original post to clarify.

-John

I think asking a series of questions over email is valid as well. If a team is helpful and I repeatedly come back to them for help, I would consider them a mentor.

I think a simple way to test mentorship is to ask "What would it take for me to call a team a mentor?"

edit: A question for anyone in the thead: who does your team consider a mentor and why?

[Alan Anderson]

My thoughts: Mentoring is a personal relationship. To mentor someone requires immediacy and continuity. Teachers are not automatically mentors. Taking responsibility for a bureaucratic task does not automatically make one a mentor. Giving a lecture, showing a process, explaining rules...none of those are what being a mentor is about.

Helping someone to grow and learn, providing a consistent model for behavior, giving someone the opportunity to develop and practice new skills...that's what a mentor does.

I think mentoring another team requires becoming a partner with that team and getting them to the point where the partnership is no longer necessary.

[Siri]

My litmus test for individual-to-individual mentorship might be relevant here:

I am mentoring iff my prospective mentee believes I have helped them grow in ways they wouldn't have achieved as well alone.

Concentrating on the mentee's perspective helps me remember that the value proposition is in what the mentee believes. Of course this isn't perfect, both false negatives and false positives are still possible. I do try to help mentees realistically appreciate their areas of growth (and non-growth), however. I the concentration on growth also helps me distinguish long-term, individualized relationships from (still very valuable) cooperition and general helpfulness.

[JVN]

Originally Posted by Siri

My litmus test for individual-to-individual mentorship might be relevant here:

I am mentoring iff my prospective mentee believes I have helped them grow in ways they wouldn't have achieved as well alone.

Concentrating on the mentee's perspective helps me remember that the value proposition is in what the mentee believes. Of course this isn't perfect, both false negatives and false positives are still possible. I do try to help mentees realistically appreciate their areas of growth (and non-growth), however. I the concentration on growth also helps me distinguish long-term, individualized relationships from (still very valuable) cooperition and general helpfulness.

This definition of mentorship requires definition of the word "growth."

What changes need to take place in the mentee to fulfill your definition? What constitutes "growth" and how much of it is required to constitute successful mentorship?

[Chris Fultz]

is the definiton any different for "mentoring another team" than for who you defines as "mentoring your team"?

If someone shows up one night in the build season, explains something, then goes away, would you list them as a mentor? What if they came twice? Five times?

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Siri

I am mentoring iff my prospective mentee believes I have helped them grow in ways they wouldn't have achieved as well alone.

Originally Posted by JVN

What changes need to take place in the mentee to fulfill your definition? What constitutes "growth" and how much of it is required to constitute successful mentorship?

As the old Buddhist proverb (and legendary golf instructor Harvey Penick) puts it:

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

See example here. I believe mentoring is always an eye-level one-to-one relationship. To say that one team is mentoring another implies (at least) one such relationship. A single good relationship of this kind beats any number of mediocre ones.

Suppose your land has a large oil reserve under it, 400 meters down. Are you better off drilling five holes, each 80 meters deep, or concentrating on one hole until it strikes oil?

[Siri]

Originally Posted by JVN

This definition of mentorship requires definition of the word "growth."

What changes need to take place in the mentee to fulfill your definition? What constitutes "growth" and how much of it is required to constitute successful mentorship?

Fair point. I leave this deliberately ambiguous within my litmus test, because I tend to place a (perhaps inordinately) large value on the mentee's interpretation. If they feel they've grown, whatever their goals* are--if they feel mentored--I consider myself to have succeeded positively.

Beyond the litmus though, I guess my next check is that the growth exceeds anything that could reasonably achieved through a collection of lesser interactions. For the purposes of this statement, "lesser" refers to shorter, less personal or less unique (etc?), as opposed to being a qualitative judgement. I'm not sure I'm comfortable defining growth beyond how the individual growing it precieves it (with the possible exception that it doesn't injure the individual or society). While there are certainly trends and common examples in FIRST as with other organizations, I'm not entirely certain growth has a definition beyond the individuals'. All solely my opinion and subject to evolution with further experience.

*I suppose I should add my usually inherent caveats that they have goals I can view as positive and that I don't feel I've misled them/they've been misled.
*And I like the Buddhist reference (@Richard)