Mentoring and pay-it-forward culture.

I'm now in the position of being one of the senior administrators for my employer's software in their managed software as a service division, and on a team that has seen a great deal of growth in the past year. This has meant I had to undertake mentoring of the junior admins.

 

I've learned that there are three distinct phases with transitional periods.

  1. Teaching – The mentor has far more knowledge and is heavily involved in instructing the mentee to transfer this knowledge.
  2. Guidance – The mentee has gained the knowledge and is able to do many tasks, but needs assistance with many.
  3. Confidence – The mentee has the technical capability but does not yet trust themselves.

Currently, I have admins in each of these catagories. The last is possibly the most interesting to me, as it often means listening and sitting in while they do the work then, afterwards, pointing out to them that I hadn't given them any actual input – they had sucessfully handed the task on their own.

 

Recently, one of the junior admins (who has come to be a critical team member) wanted to thank another senior admin for support when the junior admin was on-call for a maintenance window so gave him a token of appreciation (a candy bar that he knew that admin liked.) Later that week, when talking to me, he said that he owed me something for all of the late-hours support I gave him during his first on-call rotations.

 

I responded, "here's what I want: when you're a senior admin and have junior admins coming to you for support, remember what I did and pay it forward."