What makes a good mentor in your opinion?

(this article was originally posted on my blog)

tl;dr

Many people in my life deserve my deep gratitude and since this post is kind of "end of the year" post it's the best place where to say: THANK YOU.

This year I had the honor to be a mentor for some people and I'd like to share with you 3 lessons I learned:

• Resist the urge to produce a clone
• Mentoring is based on mutual learning
• Mentees must have a choice in deciding on activities and freedom to make mistakes without fear of consequences

--verbose

What a difference a year can make if you let yourself getting inspired by the wonderful people around you!

I would like to start this post with a big thank you to all my friends, colleagues, podcasts and YouTube creators, books and blogs authors and musicians who have influenced and fascinated me this year feeding my mind with amazing inputs, questions, challenges and doubts.

There is another learning community I would like to thank: CodeJourneys, a place full of nice and friendly people interested in JavaScript and Web Development where I had the pleasure to be a mentor.

I have hardly achieved any of the intended goals and I'm sure I've made a lot of mistakes, but the amazing community members have always turned them into growth opportunities.
I couldn't be more grateful!

Here are a few lessons learned while I was trying to be e mentor for many of them:

• Resist the urge to produce a clone and facilitate the mentees' learning and development. Yes, you are great, and you have a lot to share - but stay humble and open for other ways of doing things and various career paths.

• Mentoring is based on mutual learning, trust, openness, transparency and respect. If you are feeling that the learning is not reciprocal, you might be doing something wrong.

• Mentees must have a voice and choice in deciding on activities, control over every step of the process, responsibility and freedom to make mistakes without fear of serious consequences. People benefit a lot more from a learning experience if they drive it.

I promised myself to work on those points over the next year since I think are the foundation of an healthy and successful mentor/mentee relationship.

What makes a good mentor in your opinion?

Thank you for reading this post and for all the feedback you will probably give me.

And for all the developers who are struggling with the journeys of learning how to code: give yourself some time, keep at it, don't be hard on yourself. You’ll be surprised with what will happen just in few months.

Images:

• Cover: Pixbay