Rob Hope

Mentorship has been a key part my ability to influence beyond my team, in particular during my time at Amazon. I spent a lot of my time at Amazon giving back, either through coaching peers in document writing, helping to train inbound engineering managers, or helping new Amazonians navigate getting things done. I’ve developed a perspective about mentorship, both from being a mentor, as well as finding a mentor. When I was an engineer, I always found time to help others, including spending lunch breaks helping a QA engineer learn how to automate testing. I think there’s always value in learning as well as teaching.

Finding a Mentor

I have a distinct perspective on the timing of finding a mentor, and what I seek to gain from the relationship. For a person to gain value from having a mentor, that person needs to have some level of clarity around what they are looking to learn. Finding a mentor without having some purpose for the relationship, in my opinion, is non-productive and will ultimately not succeed if a purpose is not defined. In addition to that clarity, the mentee needs to own the topics, the conversations, and the choice to continue or not. It’s important to choose the right mentor for the topics at hand, and without that clarity, choosing a mentor can be difficult, and runs the risk of finding a less than suitable collaborator.

I’ve sought mentors a few times in my career. At each point, I had very specific things I wanted to work on. To my point above, it didn’t make much sense for me to sit in a conversation with a mentor without some idea of what I wanted to accomplish. Early in my time at Amazon, I felt that I needed to improve some of my leadership skills as my teams grew larger in size. When I decided I needed someone to talk to about this, I could have sought out another engineering manager, but that wasn’t what I was really after. I didn’t necessarily want to talk to someone in the same role I was.

Instead, I sought a leader one level up from me who had experience managing associates in Amazon fulfillment centers. I was very specific about the types of issues I wanted to talk through, and felt that the team scale this person had experienced would have a better perspective than someone in a similar role as myself. I spent close to 5 months working with this mentor until I felt like I had absorbed and internalized what they could teach me. At the end of that time period I moved on.

And that’s another important point. Mentors are not forever. They can be, but they don’t have to be, and mentors won’t take it personally if a mentee decides it’s time to move on. I’ve encountered people who don’t want to commit to a mentor because they feel it’s a one-way door. That’s not typically how it works; either of those involved can choose to stop, and it won’t be taken personally.

And if I don’t have anything specific I am working on, I am fine not having a mentor for a while.

Being A Mentor

I played golf in on my high school golf team and quite often in my early 20s. I wasn’t bad; I could shoot low 90s consistently if I played often and putted well. I was able to play well enough that playing was more fun than frustrating. One summer, though, a friend of mine wanted to learn how to play but was having trouble making consistent contact. Over a couple of weeks, I took his swing apart and helped him put it back together, getting his weight back in his stance, making sure his head was still, and keeping his right elbow tucked in.

I shot in the high 80s the rest of that summer and into the next year. By teaching him how to get his swing together, I inadvertently fixed a few flaws in mine and my game improved dramatically.

And that’s one of the hidden powers of mentorship. You learn so much yourself by teaching someone else.

I once managed an engineer trying to get promoted to the next level. They were on a team surrounded by more senior engineers, and had reached a point where they were starting to level off, despite being a very effective front end engineer while steadily improving on back end work. At around this time, I inherited a team that was entirely back end engineers, facing a project with a lot of front end work. I moved my aspiring engineer to the back end team, and instructed them that they were now the subject matter expert, and their job was to teach this back end team how to become effective, if not excellent, front end engineers. That engineer thrived being put in a position to advise more senior engineers on unfamiliar technology, helped to deliver a complex project, and secured their promotion later that year.

Often people are concerned that they are not skilled enough to be a mentor, or don’t know enough to give advice. But in deciding not to be a mentor, they actually miss opportunities to learn so much themselves, and miss opportunities to improve a lot of non technical skills like communication and listening.

Anyone can be a mentor. All you need is a perspective, a willingness to listen, and a willingness to share.

Final Thoughts

Don’t discount the benefits of being a mentor in whatever capacity you can be. It’s a great way to learn, to teach, and to have an impact beyond just what you yourself produce. It’s a great first step to becoming a force multiplier, someone who makes the team around them better.

From there, you can take steps like I did, where I took on several different Bar Raiser roles at Amazon, and look for ways to generate impact well beyond your normal day to day.

And whenever you feel like you want to improve something, take the step and find the right mentor to help you with that particular challenge. It’s worth the effort.