Next steps for the reps mentorship program - Survey

Reps
#1

Hello Amazing Reps,

As we talked about in the reps call, we have delineated some steps that will help us tackle the challenges of the reps mentorship program. These steps do not intend to be a detailed plan of actions, but a collaborative effort, so I am here to ask for your input. To do so, please complete this survey but, before doing so, read a little further to understand why we are asking these questions.

Past step:

The first thing we did was to try to understand what were the main challenges of the Mentorship program.

We started to collect feedback through informal chats and Mentors’ meetings. At the Virtual All Hands, we asked Reps to vote over which challenges they think are most important, and this was the result:

  • Clearly define (and possibly re-define) what is the role and the function of a mentor

  • Clear guidelines for Mentorship activities

  • What to do when a mentor becomes inactive

Current Step

Now we are taking the next step. We are trying to collect more information on what are currently the main functions of a mentor and on what do you think a mentor’s role should be. Furthermore, we are trying to understand what happens when a mentor becomes inactive, and why that might happen.

To understand this, we need your feedback:

  1. Please complete this survey. The survey is aimed at both mentors and mentees.
  2. Comment on this post! Please give your opinion around a mentor’s role and/or issues with mentors’ inactivity.

Future steps:

After we have collected enough feedback we will proceed to the next steps:

  • Defining what should be the role of a mentor
  • Drew up a proposal on how we can arrive there
  • Collecting feedback on that proposal

Thank you very much for your help!

Francesca

2 Likes
Reps Council activity report 2020 - March 2021
#2

What should be the main functions of a mentor (you can choose more than one answer) *

This question doesn’t allow more than one answer.

Same probably goes for

Currently, my mentor helps me in the following areas: *

#3

Thank you very much for letting me know. I fixed it.

#4

I didn’t join the Virtual All-Hands, so I want to leave my feedback as Mentor and ex-Reps Council member that worked on Mentorship.

I remember that when I was in the Council I worked on:

About the first point I think that this needs to be analyzed with the deprecation of the portal itself. about the accountability and for the function with the coaching and what is written is quite clear, atleast for me what is that role. It is not clear to me what are the issues with the actual definition.

The sop infact includes what to do if the Mentor is inactive https://wiki.mozilla.org/Reps/SOPs/Mentoring that asks, to the mentor itself to report it.
The issue it was always the Council that is not reviewing what mentors does, I remember that I reached everyone for their status by email/telegram etc (not everyone checks daily IM tools like Matrix/Telegram or use the app also if they have an account).
So for this point I think that is always the Council the bottleneck.

As Mentor, I want to remember that exists a category in Discourse https://discourse.mozilla.org/c/reps/mentors/268 just for us that was unused and it is still unused.
So I think that the biggest problem with the mentorship program it is the communication that with deprecation of mailing list (I worked on that) and moving on Discourse wasn’t happened in the best way (enforcing subscription on category by groups etc so you get an email).

I am just curious to know during these meetings at All-Hands how many of this reps was mentors, because I honestly think that not everyone knows the SOPs or the process to become a mentor.

PS: I will do the survey.

PS: As now without the reps portal I cannot answer the first question of the survey because I don’t remember when I joined it

#5

Hi Daniele,

Thank you very much for this, there are a lot of very interesting points here, and I hope others will pick this up and add to the debate.

Have you checked the archive of the portal? If you cannot find that data there an approximation is fine.

Yes, the meeting was not just for mentors. That was good, because it helped us understand that there are part of the mentorship program (such as how to become a mentor, and what to do if your mentor is inactive) that are not common knowledge for everyone. :slight_smile:

Thank you very much for your answer!

Francesca

#6

So the issues was that reps or reps mentors don’t know the SOPs?

#7

The meeting did underline a problem in communication and a lack of information, however I do not think that those are the only issues. In the meeting the need to define more clearly what are the expectations of the mentor/mentees role was underlined by various participants. There was also a question on the possibility of the mentor’s role to change depending on how long their mentees have been in the program (e.g. do they need to meet less often?). Given these results I think that the SOPs are a useful starting point, but I think they might need be updated and/or made more specifics. And after that is done, improved communication will be crucial, I agree with that. Better use of the discourse category is certainly something that we will need to implement.

#8

I Can Applly For Reps Mentors

#9

As a Rep mentor is important to define a specific quantity of mentee (for example just 5 mentee for each mentor).

I’ve found that the distribution of mentee is very unbiased for mentors. Some are assigned 10, some are assigned 3, and some are not.

Communicate constantly to your mentee about the constant updates of the program and how to unlock the mentee to advance in the program and not get demotivated.

There are several new reps who were left in the dark with this new change to the community portal and do not know how to continue creating their reports. Link swags or budgets as reps to the event created.

Also, there is no way to generate the metrics in the created events.

#10

Hi Lourdes,

thank you for your feedback. When creating an event there is a space for “Event goal(s)” as well as expected attendees. More in general, regarding reporting in the community portal, please look here.

1 Like
#11

Regarding the reps reports in the new Community Portal, I completely agree with you!
I made several comments in Discourse and in the chat, but except Danielle, regretfully no one seemed to care very much.

1 Like
#12

Have seen this, and, sadly, I must confirm it to be the case.