How to Be Good Mentor for a Fellow Designer

What Is Design Mentoring? (In a Nutshell)

It’s a given that after years of working as a designer, you accumulate immense knowledge on the subject. What’s also a given is that, sooner or later, you will likely want to (or have to) share this knowledge with some newbie. Whether it’s your tips on how to use designer tools or on how to build proper communication inside your team, or your ideas on how to make one’s first steps in the industry - trust me, any wisdom will be appreciated.

If you are not actively seeking an apprentice, you still might end up with one in the form of onboard mentoring. Say, you are working in a rapidly growing design team. Newcomers will likely need help in learning the trade’s tricks, design tool hacks, and other things in order to assimilate and become productive.

But newbies won’t be the only ones who would benefit from having you as a mentor. Mentoring is a wonderful opportunity to structure your own skills and knowledge and even make them a lot more profound.

Types of Design Menoting (Personal Experience)

After I’ve had a few mentees of my own, I have distinguished three types of mentoring:

• Designer newcomer mentoring
• Mentoring fellow designers during a design course or program
• Personal mentoring upon a mentee’s request

All these types have their peculiarities, but despite these differences, becoming a proper mentor takes you through a string of phases. And as I found out firsthand, these phases are pretty much universal.

Before I walk you through them, I have to mention that these phases do not necessarily go in that order. Besides, depending on your own personality, you might easily skip one or two. In the end, your journey to mentorship will greatly depend on the time you can devote to mentoring, your mentee’s level of training, and their willingness to openly communicate.

By the way, a spoiler: more often than not, proper communication is the thing that kick-starts a mentee’s development. Now, ready? Off we go then!

Mentorship Phases (Problems and Solutions)

1. Genuine anticipation

During this phase, you eagerly (or not so much) await your interaction with your mentee. You might have way too high expectations when it comes to your mentee’s communication skills, work ethic, and efficiency. This is all especially true if you are new to this whole mentoring thing. You might even start to question your own ability to be a mentor for a fellow designer.

Tips: The most important thing to do is to get to know your mentee better before mentoring actually begins. Learn about their education, background, and their go-to tools. Then, also beforehand, you need to know the exact goal of your mentoring, both for yourself and the mentee. This knowledge will help you shape your mentoring style for this specific case. And it certainly won’t hurt to frequently check on these goals in order to evaluate your mutual progress.

2. Frustration

You might enter this stage during your first encounter with your mentee. These are the tale-tell signs that they are not willing to engage with you:

• They keep silent
• They don’t ask questions
• They are not willing to turn on their camera if you are meeting online one-on-one, especially when they are among other mentees on the call (I’ve had a few of those).

Tips: Make sure to use your first encounters to set basic communication rules that will be used throughout your whole mentoring. Don’t be shy to remind your mentee of these rules should your apprentice neglect them. If breaking of the rules persists, ask why. This might be for a good reason.

3. Plateau

This is the phase when you receive the results of your mentee’s work, whether these are complete tasks, or design fixes after your reviews. This stage encourages you to go on, even though problems from the previous phase might still manifest themselves.

Tips: Try your hand at role-playing. Put on a mask of a person ignorant of design, or become a customer. This will prompt your mentee to assume the position of power and explain their views of design.

4. Breakthrough

Every proper mentor anticipates the phase. This is the moment when your mentee exceeds your expectations or when they make a leap in development as a designer. I’m not talking about perfect designs or flawless mockups (these are fine, too, don’t get me wrong). But proper communication, the ability to effectively defend one’s point of view, or mastery in holding a presentation showing a design’s journey from a concept to application are just as important in my opinion.

Tips: Don’t pressure your apprentice too hard. Instead, support them, and engage them to ask questions. And don’t be nitpicky. This especially applies to mockups and components done in Figma or Sketch.

5. Total mess

There might be instances when your mentees skip your meetings without any warning. Or they fail to deliver their assignments on time. Or worse, they ignore the rules that you have set prior. This will inevitably cause you frustration.

Tips: Here’s my simple rule to deal with it - you need to have a talk (no aggression, no accusations) after the first instance of such nature. Do not wait till this behavior becomes a habit. During the talk, you need to find out the reason for breaking your rules (the situation could be understandable). Apart from that, you need to decide on the solutions to the miscommunication problem and receive your mentee’s confirmation that they will further restrain from such behavior.

This could happen that apart from you two, a manager and a supervisor might be involved in a talk like that. After all, such cases are slightly beyond your primary job (and above your pay grade as well).

6. Enjoyment and progress

This is obviously the best stage in mentoring. You have proper communication established, you know that the mentee is motivated, and you see their progress. One of the best things about this phase is your ability as a mentor to articulate your point of view, explain the subject, and be open to the mentee’s questions

Tips: At a certain point, your mentee might be asked to give feedback on you as a mentor. Many companies overlook this opportunity, believing that mentors’ opinion matters more because of their advanced knowledge. However, feedback is valuable even for seasoned pros, as they provide reviews of their strengths and weaknesses.

Why Even Bother? (My Opinion)

Being a mentor is almost as hard as being a mentee. Each of these roles comes with its own strengths, weaknesses, and flaws. Still, there is a reason for a designer to try their hand at mentoring. It will give you a chance to look at your own expertise in a new light. What if you are still lacking some experience and knowledge? Then there’s a solid reason to become a mentee yourself, thus closing the designer mentor-designer mentee cycle.