Description
Provides support to colleagues, spreads knowledge, and develops the team outside formal reporting structures.
Milestone 1
I have observed this person showing a consistent, comfortable, continuous, and clear positive impact to a squad when wielding this ability, and therefore I would put them in situations where they can employ this ability with only a small amount of guidance
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You informally mentor individuals in an ad-hoc way, support new hires, and help nurture/spread institutional knowledge.
- You make yourself available for informal support and advice.
- You act as a sounding board for peers and more junior members.
Examples may include:
- Acted as an onboarding buddy.
- Paired with a Product Owner to help them with an unfamiliar area.
- Helped a colleague understand their feelings.
Milestone 2
I have observed this person showing a consistent, comfortable, continuous, and clear positive impact to a squad when wielding this ability, and therefore I would put them in situations where they can employ this ability, with no assistance as well as being a trusted active or passive mentor to others
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Mentors people proactively and guides people to realizations rather than providing the answer.
- Takes time to explain concepts and best practices.
- Asks questions to illuminate concepts rather than stating them.
- Allows others to lead efforts when it will help their development.
Examples may include:
- Shared an interesting article with a team member to help with their growth.
- Offered unprompted feedback to help growth with empathy.
- Lead from behind to support someone new to a leadership role.
Milestone 3
I have observed this person showing a consistent, comfortable, continuous, and clear positive impact to multiple squads when wielding this ability, and therefore I would put them in situations where they can employ this ability as well as being considered an expert within this discipline
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Teaches small groups of engineers and contributes to Lessonly's shared knowledge base.
- Avoids siloing information when it can be usefully shared with others.
- Finds tools that work best for a team member's personality.
Examples may include:
- Gave a lunch and learn presentation.
- Wrote a blog post that new hires and vets alike reference.
- Wrote a lesson to document and share processes.
Milestone 4
I have observed this person showing a consistent, comfortable, continuous, and clear positive impact to a squad when wielding this ability, and therefore I would put them in situations where they can not only employ this ability but where they set the tone for this at the company level
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Encourages people to mentor each other and creates ways for them to do so.
- Defines an entire curriculum for a discipline.
- Draws positive attention to well-modeled mentor and teaching behaviors.
- Creates brown bag series and lines up speakers.
Examples may include:
- Created and lead Lessonly's Women in Tech group.
- Organized an all-team meeting with an outside speaker.
- Designed and taught Epic Shaper guild curriculum.
Milestone 5
I have observed this person showing a consistent, comfortable, continuous, and clear positive impact to not just internal teams but the community/industry in general when wielding this ability, and they are recognized by the community/industry as an expert
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Instills and promotes a culture of learning and development within the team.
- Sets incentive structures to recognize and reward mentorship.
- Empowers team members to develop themselves.
- Models productive and healthy mentor relationships.
Examples may include:
- Instituted the professional education budget for P&E members.
- Mentored mentors.
- Started the engineer/PO/PM/QA/designer/researcher advisor program and lined up external mentors.
Configuration Health
- ✅ Associated with 4 roles
- ✅ Has been referenced in 8 pieces of public recognition
- ℹ️ No one has achieved a milestone on this ability
- ⛔️ Last updated: almost 6 years ago
- ℹ️ Last conversed about: almost 6 years ago
Role & Position Requirements
- Dev X Enablement Leadsmust be milestone 2+
- Hiring Managersmust be milestone 3+
- Managersmust be milestone 3+
- Product Quality Assurance Enablement Leadsmust be milestone 3+
Examples / Observations
Observation created about 5 years agoThis is long overdue. Ethan is always very patient with me and no matter how trivial of a question I have, he always gives me his full attention and time. I have been trying to enhance my frontend skills and he is always very willing to help out and I really appreciate it.
Observation created over 5 years agoI volunteered to review a PR of Ross' on SCORM, but since I knew nothing about SCORM (literally nothing), I asked if he could pair review it with me so that I could get a grasp of what the code was doing.
Ross took his time to thoughtfully explain SCORM to me - what it is, how it works, how its integrated into our application, and how all this fit into his PR. Never once did I feel like I was wasting his time, and he never seemed rushed, but took his time to answer all my questions and make sure I felt comfortable with SCORM before moving forward.
Not only did I feel like I was able to review the PR well, but I finally feel educated 👩🎓about SCORM and will feel a lot more confident dealing with it in the future. Thanks for taking the time, Ross, to go above and beyond with increasing my knowledge and understanding!
Observation created almost 6 years agoI want to give a well-deserved shout out to our awesome engineering managers.
First off, to Brea, who is making a point spending time getting to know each and every engineer on the team personally. It's really helped me to feel valued by her, and I'm sure will help her relationships with her reporting engineers start off a lot more smoothly. There are a million things she could be doing to be learning about Lessonly, our codebase, how managers here work, etc, but the fact that she has spent time getting to know us (and at more than a group level) shows me that her people are her biggest priority and that's huge. Thanks Brea!
And then of course to Casey, who has been working tirelessly as the solo manager for months now and, even though I wasn't here for most of those months, I feel confident saying she probably never complained. In the time I've been back since being on leave, I've been impressed at how she manages to meet with all of us, answer questions, write up stories, do code reviews, lead hiring, and still manage to be her positive, happy self that we have all come to appreciate. Thanks, Casey, for being a great manager while also leading and lifting up the team in so many ways. We are glad you decided to spend your superpowers on us here at Lessonly. :)
Observation created almost 6 years agoFeaturing:Thomas C.We put learners firstWe have difficult conversationsWe share before we're readyWe ask clarifying questionsWe own our requestsWe are truthfulWe are coachableWe inspire others to do better workWe don't wait to be told what to do, we take initiativeWe put the team before ourselvesWe challenge ourselvesWe critique, we don't complainRubyCommunityInitiativeMentorshipDesign CollaborationBack-end engineerIn last week's Learn Squad weekly huddle, the topic of a bug (dubbed "a hole in the spacetime continuum") came up. This bug came to life as a result of a story I had recently done in the Accessibility epic, but Tom had taken the initiative to fix it shortly after it was noted as an issue in Slack. I greatly appreciated him taking this on, but found myself feeling even more appreciative in Monday's meeting during the conversation around what happened/why the bug occurred. He explained that he guided me down the wrong path when I consulted him on some Ruby syntax while working on the ticket, and explained the fix. Prior to this, I had never seen someone take so much ownership over an issue that occurred from assisting another engineer. In my past work, the responsibility would've fallen all on me, so this experience left me in awe. I am very thankful to work alongside someone like Tom, who a) understands we're all human, and b) takes ownership of his work (whether that's in the codebase, or offering help to others)!
Observation created almost 6 years agoFeaturing:Conlin D.We put learners firstWe share before we're readyWe ask clarifying questionsWe highlight what's workingWe own our requestsWe recognize the opportunity in challengesWe inspire others to do better workWe don't wait to be told what to do, we take initiativeWe put the team before ourselvesWe challenge ourselvesWe critique, we don't complainCommunityInitiativeMentorshipProduct DiscoveryDiscovery engineerFront-end architectFront-end engineerLast week, I did a code review for Conlin. In the PR description, he did a phenomenal job at leaving detailed testing steps and notes around why the story was necessary. Beyond that, however, he also went out of his way to thoroughly talk through the issue on a deeper level. He explained the research he did on the problem, potential solutions (and why they wouldn't work), his decided solution (and why it does work), as well as the history and potential future of the problem. As both a reviewer and fellow engineer, I was really impressed by how much thought and effort went into this.
While I already find myself aiming to be as clear and informative as possible in my PR descriptions, seeing this inspired me to raise my standard going forward, and left me feeling grateful to work with Conlin.PR of Reference - https://github.com/lessonly/lessonly/pull/7482
Conversations about Mentorship
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