The mindset that who must instill in finding a mentor
Mentors as motivators
A career is a complex and dynamic world, especially for those just starting and starting their careers. Not infrequently, even when we start our careers, we spend more energy than those who have more stable careers. When we have found learning resources and personal roadmaps, sometimes there are still obstacles to implementing them. It is run less consistently and causes learning progress to be disorganized.
We need a support system, not only from family, friends, or other closest people in this process. However, a support system is no less critical, namely mentors. Mentors are support systems with related knowledge and more experience than us. Getting a mentor also has many benefits in career development. However, this paper does not discuss how to get a mentor. Because this has been discussed a lot in the medium. One of them was written by my mentor Mas Ravi Mahfunda regarding the importance of mentors and how to get a mentor. The author highly recommends reading the article.
This paper focuses more on sharing the author’s mindset when he initially looked for a mentor. Not because of the lack of access to mentors. However, it is more because of the mentee’s mindset that the mentee is reluctant or not to contact the mentor to do mentorship.
Causes of reluctance or not contacting mentors
Starting from the author’s experience, he felt stuck and confused with the learning roadmap that he had made at the beginning of learning. When studying the mindset of experienced designers, there are still many things not explained in courses, books, or other sources. Because when working on a specific case study, sometimes a specific explanation is needed according to the context.
The author is looking for a free mentor because, at that time, there was no extra cost to follow paid mentoring. It turns out that many communities provide quality mentoring, but voluntarily. Although voluntary, the mentor remains committed to helping the mentee to the fullest. There are designer product communities such as Design Jam Indonesia in various places, such as on Telegram. In addition, there are also international communities such as ADPList, Mentoring Club, and the Google UXmate community (a collection of students from the Google UX course on Coursera).
Having access to a mentor is already owned, but there are still stuck thoughts. For example, what if I interrupt the mentor’s time? I can’t speak English; how do I communicate? What if I can’t commit? This is a question in yourself and raises doubts and delays contacting a mentor. In the end, we are the ones who are confused because we can’t find answers to the case study questions we are working on.
In essence, here, the author has a problem with overthinking. Who must resist the courage to try because we are too overthinking before trying? Whereas in reality may not be by what we think. The author also tries to fight overthinking by booking a schedule on ADPList and following the mentoring of Design Jam Indonesia. However, how can the process fight this overthinking?
A must-have mindset
From the author’s various experiences when mentoring at least three mentors, there are patterns such as:
Mentors also love to learn and help
Mentors are those who always give us answers to our every question. This means that, in general, every mentor is a person who has a strong sharing personality. We can find this from various activities carried out by mentors, such as often sharing written content, articles, videos, podcasts, and others. Mentors also always take the time to answer any of our questions, including providing reviews of our work and input.
The author is very excited when doing mentorship by doing every task given by the mentor. As it turns out, mentors also learn from other people’s perspectives. Because everyone has a unique analysis and perspective in doing a task, not only that but the mentor is also pleased when the mentee gets a job. That enthusiasm can also be transmitted to the mentor. This is the same as when we feel the joy of giving charity to others, and we see for ourselves the impact of the charity we give.
Language barrier
Mentorship doesn’t have to wait for us to be perfect. The author once revealed the author’s shortcomings to a friend from France. Because the author’s English is more inclined to listen, while speaking is still far from ideal. The author’s friend gave suggestions like this:
So, with the above suggestions. The author ventured to try to speak English to friends at Google UXmate to practice. Together we review our work to complete the Google UX certification on Coursera. Lixia is also one of my mentors in encouraging me to be brave enough to speak up in English despite many shortcomings. However, they understand this.
Not only that, but the author also tries to book mentors on ADPList, the majority of which contain people from various countries. At that time, there were very few mentors from Indonesia. So I booked a mentor from outside and trained my English skills to address learning problems. Mentors also provide valuable advice even though our English is far from perfect.
Try mentorship
Mentorship itself is a place for learning between mentor and mentee. As a place to build networking, mentorship will pave the way for us to gain new and unique knowledge from the perspective of experienced people. Are you ready to try mentorship?
