When did you last care, help or even accompany someone on his life journey? Haven't we forgotten the human-factor in our daily avalanche of information? We all learn, but so few of us do it through mentoring. Yet mentoring is like a superpower that anyone can use. In this talk we will talk about learning, teaching, leading, accompanying & even letting be. You will learn what makes this mentoring relationship so unique & so fruitful. You will discover how mentoring can be your new silver bullet and how to make your first steps in this direction.
Target Audience: Any, from juniors who should know this tool exists & seniors who should trust themselves as mentors
Prerequisites: Willingness to learn
Level: Introductory
Extended Abstract
Mentoring has been a very important learning and growing tool throughout history. Still today, almost every successful individual agrees that a mentor helped him/her shape his/her life. Nevertheless, whenever I ask in a room "who would consider him/herself a mentor", only very few hands go up (usually about 5%).
Everyone I talk to, agree that communication and discussion are utterly important and the best way to grow. This is why we encourage pair-programming, frequent and open communication etc. Yet, a small minority of us is really making extensive use of the focused human interaction that mentoring is for it. The others still communicate. But similar to the way some developers avoid pair-programming whenever possible, they don't use the power of communication to regularly and deeply reflect on themselves.
Mentoring is a silver bullet that changed my life and that of my mentees, I cannot stay still, I have to evangelize it further. This is the purpose of this talk.