Advice about team environment and finding mentors

[007norcalmember]

Thanks for the support everyone.

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

Yes, recruiting more full time mentors will help, but it's not a complete solution. To find those mentors, look to near by engineering companies. Talk with your local RD or Senior Mentor, they may be able to help. Ask nearby, successful teams to help you find new mentors - their mentors may know people that can step in, but haven't asked them yet because there was no need within their own team.

But recruiting mentors that will stick around for many years won't be a magical solution that fixes all the problems this year. What it sounds like your team needs is a "5-year plan". Sketch out where you want your team to be 5 years from now and what you want it to look like. Then work backwards to figure out how to get there. Don't make the goal too ambitious, make it achievable. Then focus on identifying what you need to do now to make it happen. Focus less on projects you want to do and more on the process you want set up for the team. This is something I try to challenge all of my captains to think about - getting the team on track to be someplace better long after they're gone.

The long term plan is a great idea in addition to looking to improve our mentor situation. If team leadership is able to produce something of decent quality and we have reviewers to help us refine it, that might get some traction. I've looked around and noticed other teams have a handbook that describes how the team is set up and how things are supposed to work. Does anyone have any positive experience with something of the like?

As far as finding mentors go, I think another issue is our team just has no experience with being able to take advice and learn from an adult who knows more than them. This student driven mentality has almost created a situation where students don't know how to accept mentorship and help (this is trend seen when people insist on doing something their way, even if there is a better way suggested by someone else), and this might turn away mentors trying to help out down the road.