Mentoring helps you grow, helps you grow others, and helps you level up.

It’s a win-win-win.

But, many people don’t know where or how to get started.

This article will cover everything you need to know about finding someone to mentor and setting them up for success from start to finish.
Your growth trajectory goes exponential after starting to mentor others
Mentoring helps you maximize your growth trajectory
⭐️ Main takeaways

Why you should be mentoring

How to find someone to mentor

What good mentorship looks like

🧐 How to find a mentee

There are 2 common ways to find a mentee.

Ask your manager

“I’d love to get more into mentoring. Is there anyone you’d recommend?”

Ask the person directly

“I love whenever I have the chance to work with you. If you’d be interested in a career-type mentorship I’d love to support you in any way I can. Whether it’s just chats regularly or something more formal. Whatever works best for you.”

It’s that simple!

I’ve used that exact wording for both cases in the past, but feel free to tune it to your tone and voice.
🤝 Starting the relationship
Getting to know them

In the first few 1:1s, focus on getting to know each other.

These are my go-to “Get to know you” questions:

“Where are you from?”

“What do you like to do for fun?”

“What are you most passionate about?”

“Do you like to read books? What kind?”

“Do you have any pets?”

“How was your weekend? Do you have any weekend plans?”

“What’s top of mind for you?”

I recommend remembering at least a few of your own that you can use at any point.
Understanding their long-term goals

Next, you’ll want understand their long-term goals.

How can you be most helpful as a mentor?

I like to ask:

“What are you hoping to get out of this? What would a successful mentorship relationship look like?”

“Describe to me what would your ideal future look like in 1-3 years?”

I’ve been surprised by the result of this question so many times.

Sometimes, people share they would like to switch out of tech entirely, into product management, or become a manager.

Other times, their goal is to become a tech lead or get promoted.

And finally, sometimes they just want to feel more comfortable coding at work.

It’s important to know your mentee’s goal. That’s what you are there for.

Knowing their goal helps you tune your advice to that goal.

For example: After knowing that my mentee’s long-term goal was to switch to product management, we knew to set shorter-term goals that focus on building a product mindset while coding.
Setting up a Growth Plan

After knowing your mentee’s long-term goals and meeting a few times, you can set up a Growth Plan with your mentee.

I did a full example of this in a past article so I’ll give just an overview here.

The goal of the Growth Plan is to allow you and your mentee to be on the same page about which short-term action items will drive toward their long-term goals.

Check in on progress on the Growth Plan every 6 weeks and reevaluate as needed.

Template:

Step 0: Gather inputs such as existing feedback & guidelines on promotion.

Step 1: Assess your current and desired states.

Step 2: Prioritize 3-5 skills/competencies to focus on.

Step 3: Set a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goal for each focus area.

Step 4: Identify dependencies and support. What or who might be key to achieving your goals? Write down any resources, tools, or individuals you might need:

Credit to Omar Halabieh for the template.

An example from my experience: Many of my mentees have been mid-level engineers looking to get promoted to Senior. 2 things we frequently generate as action items are to lead a multi-month project and to start knowledge-sharing, like giving a tech talk.
💡 Recurring 1:1s

After setting up the Growth Plan, you’ll want to meet regularly 1:1.

The 3 things I have top of mind are:

Challenges: What is difficult right now or recently?

Reflections: Anything they wish went better recently?

Relationships: How are things going with their manager or the people they are working with?

I let my mentee bring up anything they have top of mind, but if they aren’t sure what to talk about, I use these questions.

These questions always allow us to fill the time with solid discussion.

They’re great for priming your mentee to share what’s going on and how you can help.
✅ Giving advice—Do’s and Don’ts.
Ask follow-ups

❌ Don’t: Jump straight to solutions without fully understanding the situation.

✅ Do: Ask 2-3 follow-ups to fully understand the situation

I’m sure you’ve been there. You come to someone with a problem, and they immediately start trying to fix it.

You answer: “Yeah, but what about this other thing I didn’t initially mention.”

Or: “Yeah, I tried that already. Thanks though.”

The other person didn’t listen enough. They didn’t dig deeper.

Even if the advice you receive is good, you still don’t feel like the other person fully understands. There’s something they are missing. You can’t fully trust their advice.

If there’s 1 thing to remember from this article, it’s this:

You must listen to be heard.

As a mentor, it’s your job to go past the surface level of a question like, “How can I onboard effectively?” to understand more.

If I’m asked that question, some follow-ups that come to mind for me are:

“Tell me more about your onboarding experience so far.”

“Is there anything in particular you’re looking for specific help with or more of a general framework?”

I keep the following diagram in mind to find a balance between asking too many questions and asking too few.
A good mentor finds a balance between asking too few questions and asking too many questions
A good mentor is somewhere in the middle
Empathize first, provide solutions after

❌ Don’t: Forget to empathize and be relatable with your mentee

✅ Do: Share similar stories from your personal experience. Call out the challenges of the situation. Make your mentee feel understood and heard.

Below are my 4 steps for almost all conversations with my mentees.
1. Gather context through questions. 2. Empathize. 3. Suggest approaches. 4. Empower
My step-by-step process for chatting with my mentees.

The key thing here is to not skip step 2—Empathize.

It’s important to make your mentee feel like you understand and aren’t judging them.

Skipping this part means that over time you lose relatability with your mentee. They trust the advice less because they don’t know if you’ve gone through similar things.

Personal example: I’ve experimented a lot with this. I’ve noticed that when I first share a story that closely resembles what the other person is going through, the advice that I give after is received well 95%+ of the time.

When I don’t share a similar story, it is still received well, but less often. Instead, additional concerns get brought up or the advice gets questioned more.
Tailor advice

❌ Don’t: Assume advice in 1 situation works in all situations.

✅ Do: Be understanding that there could be more nuance to the situation than situations you had in the past. Use first principles to break the problem down into its most basic parts.

Following up on the previous advice of empathizing, just because you have a similar story, does not mean it is exactly the same.

Personal example: When I transition from sharing a personal story into giving advice, I usually say, “I get the sense that this part of the situation may be slightly different, but here is what I tried in my situation. This is the result I saw. Given your situation, that may differ a little bit, and it could be worth trying { something slightly different }.”

I soften the advice because I don’t want them to feel like I’m forcing an approach. Ultimately, it’s their decision, and I want them to feel comfortable challenging me on the specific parts of their situation that are different.

This leads to mutual trust and decisions that make them feel empowered.
📖 TL;DR

Why mentorship is valuable to you: It helps you grow, helps others grow, and helps you level up in your career.

How to find a mentor: Ask your manager or ask the person directly.

Starting the relationship: Get to know your mentee on a personal level and their long term goals.

After a few 1:1s: Form a Growth Plan and convert the long term goal into concrete, short-term action items. Every 6 weeks, check in on the Growth Plan.

In each 1:1: Discuss challenges, reflections, and relationships.

Do: Ask follow-ups to fully understand the situation.

Do: Empathize first, provide solutions after

Do: Tailor advice to your mentee. A solution that worked in 1 place isn’t guaranteed to work in another.

📣 Shout-outs of the week

Recommended newsletter: Hungry Minds Newsletter - Curation newsletter for software engineers that does deep dives on the best articles in tech each week.

Top 5 mistakes that sabotage your ability to influence others by Irina Stanescu
on The Caring Techie Newsletter
- People often forget about the “pre-work” part of influence. This article calls out those areas to focus on which help you level up your influence.

Fearing opinionated voices in Design Meetings? Try these tips by Raviraj Achar
on Techlead Mentor
- Tips for approaching meetings with reviewers from an experienced tech lead at Meta. I love Raviraj’s tips in this article.

How to onboard by Ryan Peterman
on The Developing Dev
- If you’re starting on a new team or at a new job, this is the article for you. Simple, actionable advice that will set you up for success.