For some reason or the other, I got thinking about mentoring the other day. And I realized that I’ve never had a real mentor in this business. When I was starting out, I exchanged ideas and knowledge with a few technical communicators with more experience than myself. But this was usually more a meeting of minds rather than being provided with advice and guidance.

That said, I have mentored a couple of writers in the past. Sadly, I have to admit it was with mixed results. From my relative failure as a mentor all those years ago, I have a pretty good idea of what it takes to be an effective mentor.

What is a mentor anyway?

To me, a mentor is someone who provides another person in their profession with advice and guidance — about the job, and about where the person receiving the advice and guidance can head in his or her career. An effective mentor should:

• Be good at what they’re doing. Are you more willing to take advice from someone who’s just in the job for a pay cheque or someone, say, like Gordon McLean or Anne Gentle?
• Have more than just a little experience in the field.
• Be able to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the person that they’re advising, and help them find ways to address those strengths and weaknesses.

There are a number of qualities that a good mentor should have, which I’ll discuss next.

Ability to recognize who will benefit from mentoring

Not everyone will benefit from mentoring. And I’m referring to the people who are in this profession for the pay packet rather than because they enjoy what they do and are excited by the challenges that technical communication offers.

How do you recognize who will benefit from mentoring? Watch the person. If they’re consistently asking probing questions, if they’re trying to learn new things, and if they’re stretching themselves (even if they’re making mistakes) then you definitely have a good candidate for mentoring.

In some cases, as I’ve learned, you might not have much of a choice. In one case, I was asked by my manager to mentor a writer. I didn’t see that spark in them but I took the job on because I thought I could ignite that spark. In doing that, I learned about the next quality an effective mentor should have.

Patience

In my younger days, I could be a bit cranky and didn’t suffer fools gladly. (There are people who would say that not much has changed in the intervening years.) But I also got a tad impatient with people — especially those with training and/or experience — who either didn’t pick up something as quickly as I thought they should, or who continued to make the same mistakes.

One of the people I mentored was like this. Although armed with a degree in English and a certificate in technical writing, this writer didn’t know the difference between passive and active, really couldn’t develop effective explanations and procedures, and really had no facility with technical concepts. The latter were essential, considering that we were working at a telecom software company.

Try as I might, I couldn’t drive home any of the essential lessons of our craft. I often lost patience with this person, and on a couple of occasions blurted out “Why are you a technical writer anyway?”

Looking back, I should have taken things slower and used a few more examples rather than saying “That’s not how you do it. This is how it’s done!”

Recognize the strengths of others

Not everyone works or thinks in the same way. And not everyone will share your strengths. Some writers are great at creating user documentation. Others are more adept at writing developer and technical docs. Others still have innate abilities in areas like usability or information design.

If you’re mentoring someone, don’t try to shoehorn them into your box. Help them find their own.

Don’t be afraid to get tough

I don’t mean calling the person who you’re mentoring worthless and weak, making them drop down and give you 30 pushups if they make a mistake, or threatening to report them to management. You should, though, be able to point out a person’s weaknesses and aggressively attempt to minimize those weaknesses.

How? Give them homework or examples to study. Peer edit their work. Point out their mistakes. Don’t be mean, but be firm. With the person I mentioned above, I was never mean but I was a bit more than firm. In the end, that didn’t do a lot of good — for them, or for me.

When it comes to a person’s strengths, lobby your manager to give them more challenging assignments. Encourage them to learn new technologies, skills, and tools.

Be open to questions

One of the most important components of a learner’s tool kit is the question. And you’ll get a lot of them. Be willing to listen; the person that you’re mentoring will be relying on you for answers. If you can’t answer a question immediately, tell the person you’ll get back to them.

Questions are also a good way for you to learn. If you can’t answer a question, you might find something new when trying to ferret out the answer.

Know when to fade into the background

When you’re helping someone, there’s always that urge to constantly hold their hand and continue to guide them along. You’re not dealing with a child; you’re dealing with an intelligent adult. You’ve got to let them try things out for themselves, and to approach a problem or task from their own perspective. What you can do is take a look at the finished product and point out any mistakes or weak areas.

And you’ll know when you’ve taught the person that you’re mentoring all the kung fu that you can. You’ll suddenly realize Hey, I can’t teach you anything more. It’s a good feeling, on both sides.

Would I make a good mentor now?

Maybe. It would have to be with the right person, though. If that person wasn’t motivated and wasn’t in technical communication for the longer haul, then I doubt if I could effectively mentor them. I’d probably fall into old habits, and that definitely wouldn’t be good.

Enough about me. Have you mentored a fellow technical writer? What were your experiences? Feel free to leave a comment.

Related posts:

1. Hiring the right technical writer
2. Advice for the novice tech writer: writing isn’t enough
3. Advice for the novice tech writer: think long term