1MM + GDS end of mentorship cohort 2023 by Betty Mwema

Hello

bettymwema — 2024-02-08 18:19:16 UTC

Most of the mentorship connections have come to an end by now.

We want to capture any feedback about your experience over the year and use this time to talk through any topics that you want to cover.

For this retro think about:

your experience with the 1MM platform
the relationship you have had with your mentee

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 07:31:12 UTC

What has worked really well and is there anything we can celebrate?

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 07:32:18 UTC

What has not worked or was very challenging in your mentoring experience?

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 07:34:51 UTC

What do we keep doing? What mentoring 'tips' or 'hacks' or things worked for you?

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 07:35:38 UTC

Interested to keep mentoring

Your experience with the 1MM platform – add cards below

jeremyyun — 2024-02-09 11:57:38 UTC

The relationship you had with your mentee - add cards below

jeremyyun — 2024-02-09 12:01:12 UTC

The relationship you had with your mentee - add cards below

jeremyyun — 2024-02-09 13:02:11 UTC

Your experience with the 1MM platform – add cards below

jeremyyun — 2024-02-09 13:02:32 UTC

The relationship you had with your mentee - add cards below

jeremyyun — 2024-02-09 13:02:57 UTC

Your experience with the 1MM platform – add cards below

jeremyyun — 2024-02-09 13:03:05 UTC

Calendar reminders and scheduling was easy

2024-02-09 13:06:46 UTC

When the sync up of calendar and platform did work – it made seeing each others calendar between mentee and mentor easier – could be because Jo cleared her calendar the week of meeting up with the mentee.

Betty – it was useful when things got busy – the platform was sending reminders to meet up.

Chris - My google calendar is normally fairly empty - and we made sure to choose a week that was empty before they booked something in... I think we used the 1MM repeat for calendar invites and only changed where needed - so might’ve avoided the calendar issues

Really good match with my mentee, clear thought process put into matching us

2024-02-09 13:07:23 UTC

The platform was really hard and unintuitive to use

2024-02-09 13:07:23 UTC

Platform felt over engineered and not useful for the most part

2024-02-09 13:07:50 UTC

I got on really well with my mentee - we were a good match

2024-02-09 13:07:54 UTC

I felt like I had useful support to offer and it was a good match

2024-02-09 13:07:58 UTC

Did not enjoy the 1MM platform at all, moved off of it very quickly

2024-02-09 13:08:05 UTC

Calendar reminders and journal worked, for the most part

2024-02-09 13:08:19 UTC

The platform was often in the way or ignored

2024-02-09 13:08:24 UTC

Enjoyed chats with my mentee - found it interesting to hear and see what they were up to

2024-02-09 13:09:38 UTC

They were already working in UR in gov so often it was closer to peer support as they didn't have that in their organisation

2024-02-09 13:10:02 UTC

At first, found the lines between mentor / coach / counsellor quite blurry

2024-02-09 13:10:08 UTC

(Chris) Yeah, I found it a little blurry but went in with an open mind and let the mentee decide what they needed me to be. I tried to avoid straight up coaching/criting but sometimes it was what they wanted/needed

My mentee got a place on a design academy scheme!

2024-02-09 13:10:48 UTC

Felt like a built a really strong bond with my mentee, and they were very vocal about finding the mentorship helpful

2024-02-09 13:11:02 UTC

Working in gov is a specific thing so sharing knowledge and resources on that can be helpful

2024-02-09 13:11:27 UTC

Jo – The jargon that we used for example, alpha, discovery, beta, etc the job roles within gov is different to what is out there for private sector

Tom – same for UCD terminologies – there is a barrier to people who are coming new into the industry

the email reminders to have monthly meetings were useful

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 13:11:52 UTC

Sounds strange, but almost giving 'homework'. Came up with some tasks for them to do ahead of our next session, and that always helped guide our conversations and make the most of our time together

2024-02-09 13:12:03 UTC

Marina – used different activites to help the mentee break down and understand which paths to take – mentee needed guidance on which role to take up – dependant on situation

training wasn't too relevant to ucd folk

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 13:12:20 UTC

1MM training was too generic. The age group that it was targeting was too young for us. For example, safeguarding for children.

The training almost held back how we communicated with mentees – training recommended not to swap numbers for example.

Didn't find the training particularly helpful, felt like it was targeting a different audience than ours

2024-02-09 13:13:08 UTC

Sometimes difficult to know what was appropriate as the 1MM guidance is so specific on mentoring younger people

2024-02-09 13:13:10 UTC

For example, my mentee was concerned she would not be able to get hold of me when we arranged an in person meeting because we had been given instructions not to share phone numbers.

1MM did not encourage sharing or exchange of numbers

my mentee got a better job as a mid-weight UR from junior! we did interviews prep together

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 13:13:45 UTC

Mentee had already taken up a post as IxD by the time our sessions had started, making a bit more critique at points

2024-02-09 13:14:10 UTC

Having regular checkins/retros where you get to reasses what's most helpful to them, and how to best offer support

2024-02-09 13:15:01 UTC

Marina – having these things between mentor and mentee – mini convos and reflections to pivot if needed

Jane – these should not be therapy sessions – otherwise the lines get blurry

good match with my mentee

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 13:15:08 UTC

Marina – match in criteria was pretty much the same (see other post about this)

If more randomly matched – it would have been to share any lived experiences.

Tom and Jo – same experience of matching criteria and shared experiences between mentee and mentor

Despite our best efforts, we still use a lot of difficult-to-understand language in UCD

2024-02-09 13:15:53 UTC

was too hard to track progress or set goals on the platfrom

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 13:16:10 UTC

we used google sheets and notes to document stuff

Overall the platform was difficult to use – unintuitive. Good for calendars – but so is google calendar. However the sync up between calendars did not work well.

Going off the platform – Created some anxiety.

(Chris) did use the platform for sending messages – and the notes tracker was useful – especially to refer back to

we'd chat with my mentee on the platform quite often

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 13:16:33 UTC

More tailored training to what we were doing rather than the generic training about platform - especially for someone new to mentoring

2024-02-09 13:17:55 UTC

gov.uk design standards and systems is quite useful to folk not in goverment

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 13:18:38 UTC

Junior folk just don't know it exists, but it forms a good place to start. How do we do this at scale

The platform was strangely restrictive when it came to organising catch ups with my mentee

2024-02-09 13:19:02 UTC

It wouldn't let me choose certain time slots - I think because of what it perceived to be clashes in my calendar?

make training relevant for ucd folk to help them mentor

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 13:31:31 UTC

Was hard to know the line between mentoring and coaching. Was looking through their portfolio, reviewing their work etc, does this fall under mentoring. Guidance may help
how to demystify ucd or gov design jargon with mentees to

How do we set expectations with mentees from the start - Guidance or questions for this would be useful.

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 13:36:18 UTC

Chris - found it a little blurry but went in with an open mind and let the mentee decide what they needed me to be. I tried to avoid straight up coaching/criting but sometimes it was what they wanted/needed

Review how we did matching before – it went well last time

jeremyyun — 2024-02-09 13:48:19 UTC

worked pretty well

Jane - matching was really hard. The info 1mm asks is not enough to make the matching. A lot of matching came from our knowledge of individuals, and it took a long time. It was biased and based on what we know about of people. wasnt scalable

Marina - how do we ensure that the participant pool of mentees is diverse enough?

Glossary of UCD and agile terms

jeremyyun — 2024-02-09 13:52:34 UTC

catchups to share resources we are using with our mentees amongst the mentors - to learn from each other

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 13:53:33 UTC

guidance or info to help mentors set boundaries with mentees and how not to blur the lines

bettymwema — 2024-02-09 13:55:23 UTC

Resources

janemartin10 — 2024-02-09 13:56:23 UTC

I have a whole folder orf resources on coaching and mentoring - how to, the difference, worksheets etc.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-GeYK5zT1HPDoHGKt7Iz1IMiFOkpLB_6?usp=sharing

If people didn't use the 1MM platform to take notes – what did they use instead?

jeremyyun — 2024-02-09 14:00:27 UTC

Betty – google docs

Should we continue with 1mm in the future?

jeremyyun — 2024-02-09 14:02:14 UTC

Marina – did we use 1MM for finding the mentees – if not we probably need them