Mentorship feedback/review

[Stefania Ioana Chiorean]

Hi all,
During FOSDEM I got a chance to discus with many of the reps present about
the program, how they feel and how they see themselves growing and helping
back the program/mozilla.
I was surprise to see that in many cases the relationship between mentor
mentee is missing ( more than 50% almost no entorship relations, 30% -
basic minimal contact, 20% lucky people) . I really think this is a major
issue in the program and we loose (good) people dues to missing mentorship
context.

It reminded me that we did discuss and proposed a task at reMo Camp
regarding this. At the moment I am curious if there was any track on it on
council side on this. I want to take it on me and work more on it. We can
wait till next meetup in person ( in a month) to talk but I would love to
start a bit before that.

Trello task:
https://trello.com/c/XfeXxiPf/47-mentors-review-add-feedback-section-on-the-portal

Thanks!


--

*Stefania Ioana Chiorean Mozilla Reps Mentor @ioana_cis*

[Soumya Deb]

Somehow, the mentor-mentee pairing in Reps program is quite like the
"Arranged Marriage" concept of Indian sub-continent. That you pair-up with
someone, whom you mostly didn't know, and may not share the similar
interests - but now are officially bound to have a relationship. :P

Joke aside, it's possible to do a better mentor-pairing, and I can think of
several ways for it.
It's a wonder, we hadn't already moved to a better way than manual
round-robin. :D

If there's any development on this, I'd be glad to help.

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*Soumya Deb*
*http://debs.io <http://debs.io>*
Twitter: *@Debloper <http://twitter.com/Debloper>*
Open Source Evangelist

[Emma Irwin]

Hi Ioana,

that makes me sad :( , but also based on the feedback from Remocamp - not
surprised. One thing we found , as an issue in general was the definition
of mentor which was purely administrative (reviewing bugs, screening). We
updated the description <https://wiki.mozilla.org/ReMo/SOPs/Mentoring>, and
then added a whole new definition of tasks called 'mentoring'. So there are
'administrative AND mentoring' tasks

Since Remo Camp we did a couple of to address the lack of communication.

1) Removed the 'no brainer' interview option, because the interview is
an important step in creating that communication pathway
2) Added an 'Orientation Call
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mentor_Orientation_Call>' to the orientation
process, which also - has communication as core.
3) Added a whole new 'communication' section to the training:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/ReMo/SOPs/Mentoring-Training
<https://wiki.mozilla.org/ReMo/SOPs/Mentoring-Training> which focuses on
defining, and creating communication & feedback loops.
4) Ported Wiki training to our education offering for 2015 for mentors
<http://emmairwin.github.io/reps-edu/modules/mentors/communication/>, with
'communication as it's own module.

We've run this new training with the first batch of mentors, so I feel we
are on our way to better partnerships - but the real challenge is getting
old/existing mentors to re-take training. Often there was no training at
all. So! I am working on getting 'physical/embroidered' badges for
Mentors - to award for taking training. But curious Ioana (and others)
how can we get mentors to go through training ? Something that came up at
RemoCamp at well was that mentors *just didn't realize* that people wanted
this type of mentoring - so half the battle is just education IMO. From
there we can talk about better mentor matches? Feedback welcome and needed
as training old mentors is top of my list .

Thanks for raising the question!

On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 5:32 AM, Stefania Ioana Chiorean <

Emma Irwin
@sunnydeveloper
Mozilla Reps Council Member

[Majken Connor]

In terms of getting old mentors to take training, I think it's just a
matter of asking them to do it. I think it would be useful to have people
to sign up to do it in batches, just like the new mentors do. There are
psychological differences when doing something with a group even if it can
be done on your own. It helps with accountability "I have to do it now,
because my group is doing it now" as well as gives you permission to ask
questions "my group is going through training so it won't be noise, I'm
expected to ask questions about this here, using this channel"

Scheduling it in batches I think would also make it easier for you and
whoever is helping you track whether or not mentors have completed the
training, you'll be able to carve this out of your schedule as well. It'll
also make it easier to try and track the impact of the training and get
feedback.

[Emma Irwin]

Thanks Majken,

definitely +1 to doing training in groups - and I agree that 'asking' will
work , plus a recognition piece - which currently is physical badges but
also interested in alternatives.

I would also be curious how others envision the evolution of the 'training'
call for experienced mentors. Is it an opportunity once a month to stop in
and ask questions/learn about updates to SOP? How can we carve out time
for mentor professional development + ensuring we are connected to project
updates and goals?

Interested in opinions :)

[Majken Connor]

On previous councils (this was a recommendation from the first Berlin camp)
we talked about trying to mimic other teams' regular meetings for this sort
of thing, just we'd have to do it remotely rather than getting everyone in
one place. I believe teams used to meet quarterly, so that was the proposed
frequency to start, but of course we could consider doing it semi-annually,
or whatever suits us.

The idea was to have this time set aside for things like mentor reviews,
for mentors to have 1:1 meetings with their mentees to make sure they're
happy with and informed on the program, training makes sense here as well.
The content should of course be flexible and suit our needs at the time,
but basically a team week for Reps.

Some of the feedback against it was that people resisted being told to have
1:1 meetings with their mentees - "I'm doing this anyway so why force it on
a schedule?" - I'd say this is worth revisiting since we know now that many
mentees don't feel this is true. Also, people were worried that quarterly
would be too much. I'd suggest trying it once as a pilot then figuring out
how often we could pull it off and also what content works best for the
format.