Mentoring Performance

Mentoring performance:

Creating a relationship of equality:

By sitting on the floor during a review mentors ensured that they were approachable and not condescending.

This non-conventional way of instruction raises the comfort level among students.

Mentors are peers that offer low intimidation levels for one on one interaction.

Structuring the activities/ Taking the Lead:

Mentors should ensure that all students participate equally by giving instructions that facilitate the equal involvement of all students in the task at hand.

Mentors should take charge of the activities when needed, in other words they should mold themselves in leadership position.

Use the tools of Engineering: Is the process an effective representation of the PDM?

Guiding the students through the learning process:

When problems are identified with the student's performance, mentors ask questions to guide the students through the discovery process.

Mentor can direct student’s thoughts by asking questions relating to the real problems (which they may be missing). I remember my Chinese friend saying a famous Chinese proverb: “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life.”

Teach using questions: Drive self reflection with questions. If your problem is when to meet, what goal can you create to solve this problem

Example: When working with a team today, I noticed that they had identified

Important problems and documented their work well, but the goals they had written were only one or two words long. When I asked for them to explain what they meant by that word, they could not explain very well. To avoid simply telling them what was wrong with their goals, I asked them to rate their performance on a level of 1-5 as to how they met each of the aspects of SMART goals. They discovered on their own through this process that they had not been specific enough in the goal's descriptions and agreed to improve in that area.

Mentor's assess performance of peers using questions:

By keeping the questions simple and focused, we quickly determined the readiness of the teams to progress to the next level in the project—build iteration 1 of the moving blimp. These questions also helped build the

Student's awareness of the iteration process and review.

We asked the following questions to help them keep on track

Has the team identified the real problems?

Does the team have their goals crafted?

Are they SMART?

Mentors help communicate objectives and clarify expectations: Students show there work to mentors and ask if this is on track for the professors expectations.

Mentors improve their process/ Continuous improvement/ Kaizen:

Although the dynamics of working with people is different due to personalities, by quickly reviewing mentoring performance after each interaction, mentors can continually improve their mentoring process.

Like every other process, mentoring requires continuous improvement with time, Kaizen has two elements improvement/change for the better and ongoing/continuity. Expression like ‘Mentoring as usual’ contains element of continuity without improvement.

Mentors help can monitor several teams that are working independently: More people in more places at once

Example: The first group I mentored today had the same problem as the second one—vague goals. Still a little unsure of my abilities as a mentor not remembering all the best practices of mentoring (I'm still quite new at this), I simply told the first team what to do better next time. Based on the way this suggestion was received and the body language of the team, I realized I had not selected the best method for the task. It was because of this reflection I was able to use questions to guide the next team through the review process themselves and have see them draw their own conclusions of how to improve. Overall, the body language from the second team indicated that the method was much more effective.

Mentors learn through observation as well as experience:

Mentoring is not something most people have done and consequently, puts them out of their comfort zone. By observing the technique of peers as they mentor, I was able to pull out the underlying best practices of

mentoring as well as see how Dr. Elger, Rich, and Fahad apply those principles with their own "style". This gave me greater confidence that I could effectively mentor in my own style. Additionally, seeing the

strengths of their performances, I was able to incorporate some of their techniques into how I mentored.

I think everyone wants Success, but few are willing to pay the price. Mentoring is not for everyone, but for those who are willing to change, work hard and learn a duplicatable system of success, the rewards are unlimited. Dr Elger always offer something new that I can learn on the other hand observing my peer mentors Jon and Richard and their own unique ways of mentoring, helps me gain confidence and I can apply me new learning in different situations in the future.

Mentors gain experience in interaction; talking to teams and explaining their thoughts and insights

Summary:

Mentoring is a great experience and as much can be learned from doing it as watching it be done. The same principles apply across the board as far as what mentoring is, and because of the principle-based methodolgy, mentors can maintain their personalities and style while providing the needed consultation. Paramount to successful mentoring is maintaining an equal relationship and being yourself. Mentors help can monitor several teams that are working independently: More people in more places at once.Mentors add to the staff that sets up the projects: Quicker more elaborate iterations can be achieved because several people are doing the front end. (i.e. preparing for projects moves faster)

Note: Jon Miller = Black

Fahad Khalid= Blue

Richard Statler= Green

Summary: Combined