Contribute/Pathways/mentoring

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Introductions and warm and fuzzies

Notetaker: Christie Temperature reader: William Timekeeper: Lizz Facilitator: Jennie (@little_wow) hashtag for meeting: #mozillamentors

Attendees

  • Jennie (@little_wow)
  • Christie (@christi3k)
  • Ben (@bensternthal)
  • Lizz (@lizznoonan)
  • William R (@dailycavalier)
  • Larissa
  • Dino (@mozdino)
  • Amie @ami_ty

Introduction Mad Libs I am __________________, I want to learn to _________________, I am from the _____________ part of Mozilla and my favorite season is ________________.

  • I am Jennie Rose Halperin (@little_wow), I want to learn to accept mentoring into my life without fear. I am from the community building part of Mozilla and my favorite season is autumn.
  • I am Larissa Shapiro, I want to learn how different kinds of mentoring can help Mozilla support all kinds of contributors, I am from the community building team and my favorite season is winter.
  • I am William Reynolds, I want to learn best practices for mentoring Mozillians. I am from the community engagement team and my favorite season is fall.
  • I am Ben Sternthal, I want to learn to everything, I am from the webdev part of Mozilla and my favorite season is fall & summer & spring.
  • I am Lizz Noonan, I want to learn how to become a mentor who can teach others to work with new Mozillians to make them feel they are a true asset to the project. I am from the Brand Engagement (Marketing) part of Mozilla and my favorite season is summer.
  • I am Christie, I want to learn to how I can help Mozillians be great mentors to one another, I am from the Community Building part of Mozilla and my favorite season is Fall.
  • I am Dino, I want to learn about Mozilla's mentoring culture and how to grow and evolve the best of those practices. I am from the People part of Mozilla and my favorite season is Panama.

Tell us your best mentoring story at Mozilla...

  • I think my best mentoring stories are both about 1:1 mentoring I've done through TechWomen and the OPW program and its reflexive because it includes working with Jennie (hee) but what I have learned is that mentoring is two ways. I learn as much from my "mentees" as they do from me, or more.
  • I've had 4 mentors here: Reps (Regnard), People (Deb), Finance (Jim), Biz and Innovation (Diane):

What is your mentoring philosophy?

  • Be curious. Find out both what your mentee wants to learn and do.
  • Help your mentee utilize their strengths to accomplish their goals and learn.
  • Know that a good mentoring relationship means that the mentor learns as much or more from the relationship as the mentee. Stay curious. Also mentoring is exponential.
  • What is mentoring? How do I know when I see it, experience it? What are the varied forms of mentoring and behaviours/values that are central to them? And is this philosophy represent a global understanding?

Best practices in place?

Best practice mentoring models at Mozilla (from Whatmakesapathway) Buddy system (IE SuMo)

Questions about mentoring

What are the best practices that your team uses?

  • regular, scheduled time for conversations
  • structure, clear expectations
  • as a mentor, be curious and open to whatever happens
  • different mentors for different skill sets, can have different levels of intensity
  • mentoring relationships evolve as person evolves and needs different things
  • identifying purpose of mentoring relationship - personal/career development or function/program-specific?

Where did you find your mentor, or how do Mozillians find mentors in your functional area?

  • Through a program like TRIBE
  • Techwomen, OPW, Mozilla Reps
  • LEADs program

What can your team gain from mentoring?

  • mentorship as a way of orienting contributor to team and know how to access needed resources
  • scalable mentoring could help teams bring on contributors, particularly those who are getting stuck on a particular technical step (??) +1
  • help more people develop skills and expertise on your team
  • may gain from non-technical skills more than technical
  • make the learning curve for your team easier for people
  • fills in gaps in technical documentation

What is not working for your team?

  • having trouble finding a mentor
  • not enough mentors. We have 3 engineers who mentor all new coding contributors. We would like to train more people to be mentors.
  • small team with low bandwidth makes it difficult to convince team members that mentoring community members in a good use of their timedifficult to navigate mentee through process of becoming contributor
  • mentoring is daunting - several members of my team has said they just don't know where to start (which I'm currently working to solve)

What would you like to see in your area (or for Mozilla) in terms of mentoring?

  • When someone joins the Project (staff or volunteers), have a "buddy" mentor to answer questions, be a resource for tools, navigating the teams and who to talk to, etc. for a pre-determined amount of time (2 weeks, a month?)
  • A way to find people interested in being mentors and their areas of expertise.
  • Providing newcomers particularly in more tangible areas with longer term assistance
  • Should be clear if it's tactical or one-off
  • Checklist for mentors to be trained on being a mentor
  • training about mentorship, how to be a mentor
  • Use mentoring as means of recognition. You can thank amazing contributors by offering them to mentor others.

What would you like to see from the Community Building Team in order to make mentoring easier and more scalable for you?

  • Guidelines for "technical" and "nontechnical" mentoring paths
  • Easily navigable documentation & resources (ie. tips and tricks, how to find a mentor/mentee, etc) around mentoring

How can we scale mentoring across the org?

Brainstorm

  • providing people incentives to become mentors
  • Nominating them for Friends of the Tree, send Gear, invitation to meetups and work weeks
  • have contributors become mentors
  • recognize mentorship, especially when someone becomes a mentor and when they actually mentor others

Scalable models that you use

  • TRIBE, LEAD , upcoming Mgr Dev (that links with those two programs)+1
  • Reps Mentors
  • Coaching (1:1 model)
  • is there a way to pull out lessons from TRIBE and make them more open?

Action points and deadlines

Should be accomplished in 3 weeks. Jennie will check in

  • Jennie and William will create a Mozillians group about mentoring or wanting to be a mentor
    • Interested mentors: https://mozillians.org/group/mentor/
    • Do we want a group for people who are looking for a mentor? yes
    • Interested mentees group name? mentor me? mentoring wanted?
      • Ask if people looking for a mentor can add a sentence to their Mozillians profile or file a bug
  • For the above, can we also link that to our TRIBE page - as we have each participant reach out to someone as a mentor - great leverage play here.
  • Dino will work with lexicon to have a better explanation of mentoring
  • Making "Mentoring" a recurring discussion topic at the Pathways meeting to check on its status

What else do you want to share while we are here?

Learning resources, links, thoughts (please add!)

Add yourself to the /mentors spreadsheet!

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