May 9, 2024 • 44 mins
Welcome to the sixth episode of Testing Experts with Opinions with the spotlight on the profound significance of mentorship in software testing. Packed with captivating insights and anecdotes, our expert panel underscores the distinction between mentoring and having a 'buddy', along with exploring the interactive nature of mentoring relationships.
With the panel's credible experiences as mentors and mentees, the episode underscores the benefits of mentorship at scale and utilizing collaborative platforms like SharePoint and Confluence. It also emphasizes the value of personal feedback and support from a mentor for long-term motivation and growth.
As the discourse evolves, it delves into the dynamics of mentorship amidst evolving workplace norms. From finding mentors in smaller businesses or remote working scenarios, to the implications of automated tools like ChatGPT on mentorship, this episode decodes it all. It wraps up with the inspiring reminder that everyone around us holds potential lessons to learn from.
The episode offers invaluable insights whether you're initiating your journey in software testing or scaling up the leadership ladder. Listen in to explore how mentorship could possibly be your key to unlocking professional success.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to Testing Experts with Opinions, an inspired testing podcast aimed
at creating conversations about trends, tools, and technology in the software testing space.
Welcome everyone to I think what is our sixth podcast.
Today we're exploring a crucial aspect of professional growth and development
(00:23):
in the form of mentoring.
Mentoring, whether starting out in your testing career or whether you're experienced,
having a mentor can make a significant difference in your life and in your career.
And mentors aren't only there to provide guidance and knowledge.
They often inspire and challenge us to maybe go beyond what we think is possible.
(00:48):
So we've got our usual audience here. Is everyone doing well?
Very good. Thanks, Liam. yeah good thank you Leon yeah I'm
also doing good amazing okay so
just just in terms of of opening the conversation or getting the conversation
started so maybe let's start at the beginning could each of you share maybe
(01:12):
how you first got into mentorship within software testing what motivated you
to seek out a mentor or maybe become one yourself,
oh well i will start when
i started my career so i didn't
seek out a mentor actually the company
that i worked for they assign a career counselor for you just to guide you in
(01:37):
the in the in the process so that's how i started with the mentor and mentee program and for me it was,
I was like improving on my own kinetic when I went there.
So there was a senior engineer who I kind of looked up to and aspired to kind
of, well, I wish I could get to the kind of level that that person was at.
(01:59):
So kind of not a formal mentee, but I just took a lot of guidance from him and
a lot of his recommendations and we worked together.
So that was my kind of first accidental mentee, mentor, I guess.
Still i think in my yeah in my case i don't think it was a very formal process i think,
as a junior person stepping into the software testing you look up to the senior
(02:19):
people senior analysts and the team leads and they in a way just naturally become your mentors,
and yeah as as you progress your career anyways people
start doing the same and looking up to you and i think it's
sort of a soft landing until you eventually become like
a test lead or a test manage yourself and i think that
that responsibility grows to me it was
(02:42):
sort of a gradual move from a mentee into
a mentorship role yeah interesting question i'm
trying to think back when when i started tasting tasting at
least in south africa wasn't a very big thing so now i'm giving my my age
so when i started there
weren't many senior people or seasoned professionals in
the tasting world in south africa especially so my
(03:04):
my mentorship engagement was more peer type mentorship
thing so i said i went to seek out people my
peers who i felt were a step ahead and tried to latch on to them and then through
that process organically they became mentors but it wasn't official thing as
stefan said as well it's and and throughout my career i kind of tried to do
that to find peers and like-minded people that i can latch on to and have conversations with.
(03:30):
What would you say are the most important skills in someone within the software
testing landscape that maybe lends itself more towards mentorship then than others?
So what are those important aspects where a mentor can really make a difference
in a person's life or person's career? Yeah.
(03:53):
Yeah, so I think a couple there. So I think one would probably be like quite
early on in your career journey because testing is so broad, right?
It's like you start off as a junior analyst or something equivalent to that
and then where do you go to do, oh, I'm going to become a performance tester
or I want to become a manager or I want to become an environment, whatever that scope is.
(04:13):
I think there's real benefit to finding someone who's maybe done a few of those
different roles to kind of guide you like this is what you can expect to kind
of help you make that informed decision.
And also I think when you hit, I guess, career transition points,
when you're going from a junior to a senior or you're becoming a lead for the
(04:33):
first time, is people that are mentoring you around that transition period because
it's very different going from an analyst to becoming a lead running a squad
of people and there's a different skill set.
So I think that's an element that's really interesting. But for both of them,
it's like interpersonal skills are massive in those and that you need that skill
set to help kind of help constrict the dialogue.
(04:55):
Yeah, I agree with that, Steve. So I was just thinking whilst you were talking,
I've met many very technical people in my career, and those weren't necessarily
great mentors because they're very technical and they know their subject matter very well,
but they couldn't really relate to the problems I'm having or could I give advice
because they're already there and they know what they are doing.
So that interpersonal skills and someone that's recognized in your team or your
(05:20):
organization that people are recognizing this person knows what they are doing
when it comes to testing.
I kind of feel that's also important that other people see that person and recognize their skills.
And then I generally go there and say, all right, I can see that you know what
you are doing and you're also a good person to actually get that message across.
(05:41):
So that's kind of where I'm going from a mentorship perspective.
Obviously, technical Technical skills are important.
It's always important to have that, but that's not necessarily the most important
part when it comes to a mentorship kind of arrangement.
Yeah, so I think if you're going to be a mentor also, you need to have the passion,
you know, to teach and to coach other people as well.
(06:04):
You need to have like have the commitment to develop other people.
So as Johan just said, it should not just be about technical skills.
So you need to love teaching.
And you need to make time to make sure you have the necessary time because I
(06:25):
think being a proper mentor takes time.
I think it's not something you just do in half an hour and then that person
is coached up. I think it's typically when it's more on an individual level,
it's a long-term engagement.
You have to be, you know, you have to have that helpful mindset.
You need to be prepared, need to be approachable and doesn't help you trying to be a mentor.
And every Every time somebody tries to reach you, you've got that I'm too busy
(06:48):
kind of attitude, you know, and you need to be a patient, show commitment.
I think there's a lot of the softer skills that are just as important as the
technical skills and experience that you bring to the table.
You both raise good points when you started with it. And I think it's important
to find someone that wants to be a mentor.
So in organizations, often we set up structures and we ask people to be mentors.
(07:14):
To be mentors, you're a senior person, you will now mentor three others,
but that person's not necessarily in it.
You said it, Mamatla and Stefan, it's something that it's a person who actually
wants to share the knowledge, wants to grow the person they are mentoring.
So I think that's one of the key skills as well, or the key attributes is that
willingness to put in the effort and to mentor someone.
(07:37):
But then the flip side of that is also true, Jan, in that I think I think there
are a lot of people that say,
I want a mentor, but they're not necessarily motivated to put in the time and
the effort that actually is required.
So there's commitment that's required from both sides. I think it feels like
(08:01):
if you're the person seeking a mentor, maybe you're more invested, you're more motivated.
If you get given a mentor, maybe then it's slightly different and you almost
feel like it's getting forced on you.
But what we've discussed thus far feels like it's very much mentoring more junior people.
(08:22):
But of course, mentoring doesn't only talk to juniors. There's also mentoring
more senior people. And I,
We discussed this internally briefly yesterday in terms of even executives and
senior people, they still have mentors.
People have business coaches, people have life coaches, etc.
(08:45):
So mentoring never really stops.
And being a mentee never necessarily stops.
So on that sort of path, how do you feel your mentoring techniques or your mentoring
approach needs to change given the seniority level?
(09:07):
So if you're mentoring a junior versus someone more senior, what are those subtleties
maybe that you need to apply?
I think it's as you
mentor more senior people and then it
becomes less lecturing and more mentoring right so the
more senior people the more senior the person is that
(09:28):
you are actually mentoring the more you need to be open to
feedback and constructive criticism and
debating rather than just i will lecture you because this is the
way it has to be i'm a senior i know
this is the way and i'm not saying do that with juniors either but
a junior person will not necessarily push back as much as a senior
person would if i if i'm in a mentoring session with steve i
(09:51):
would hope that that he will push back and debate and through
that we will both learn so i think the more senior the person
is that you're mentoring the more you can also learn from that so in
a senior situation it's it's kind of both ways mentoring while in a little bit
more junior one it's more lecturing for the lack of a better word yeah i think
this i kind of expand on that i think like when you're a junior you don't know
(10:13):
what you need to know so the mentor's got to kind of help you craft,
what okay sounds like you're deficient in this we're putting to
touch talk here but all that i think at a senior level it's much more of a sounding
board like you answered it's i want to have tell me what you know about this
i need to understand this problem and just discuss this topic with you and get
your perspective on it and my perspective on it and kind of come up with it
(10:35):
i think it becomes a much more peer-to-peer constructive debate more than anything else.
What's the difference between a buddy and a mentor because because those terms
are often interchangeably used but but in my mind there is those are actually two separate things,
is anybody more of a peer somebody that's almost on the
(10:56):
same level as you and you might know a little
bit more like i always think of a buddy when a new starter starts at a company
you've got a buddy might not necessarily be the team lead but it's somebody
almost on your level but But it's almost like that more like a bi-directional
kind of learning curve where mentor might be a little bit more one way in a
way, you sharing more knowledge from your side.
(11:20):
And then I think a lot of what we've discussed is kind of alluding to one-on-one mentoring.
But mentoring takes on different, I guess, models or different ways of mentoring.
So, I mean, in some way, lunch and learn sessions and those types of things
(11:40):
are also mentoring sessions, but it's on a much bigger scale.
It's not that one-to-one.
Steven gave an example yesterday that he
often gets contacted on LinkedIn where people
want to be mentored but it's not very scalable because like we said at the start
(12:01):
if you're if you're actually invested as a mentor it's gonna it's gonna be time
consuming it's gonna take time and to have 10 or 15 people that you're mentoring
is very difficult because you're never going to do a good job.
So are there ways to mentor?
I'm going to say mentor at scale, or is it important to, to keep,
(12:22):
to keep your mentees to a very small number?
So is there a maximum that you can, that you can mentor?
Yeah, I think, I think if you split it into two sections, I think that, yeah,
the topic I had was because if if 30 40
people are messaging me on linkedin every month or
something to ask for me to help them with something i can't
(12:43):
i don't have a time to be able to do that right but i
still want to help those people so there's an element of
changes from mentoring to sharing
best practice and sharing training material like
the lunch and lunch sessions that we run internally with the company or our community practice
that we're building up those kinds of things to the wider audience and but I
(13:03):
do think mentoring because it is so time-intensive you need to build that relationship
up with on someone I think there is definitely a cap on how many people you
can you can realistically do that but one or two in my head I think any more
than that you're just not gonna be able to give those people the time that they
need because it's such an intensive task.
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think Steve, you said it well.
There's a difference between mentoring and teaching.
(13:25):
And in a teaching or lecturing, the amount of people doesn't really matter because
there's not that feedback from the audience or the people that you are teaching necessarily.
It's one or two questions. But a mentoring thing is a real relationship-building thing.
And the more you build trust in a mentorship relationship, the better you can
mentor and the better the questions would be as well.
(13:47):
And it's very time-intensive. you alluded to the time and the effort to put
in there and from from both things right so,
what i've seen is that people want to
want you to mentor them as i did with
steve but they expect you to be the formula one driver and they're trying to
to learn how to to drive a car right and they don't understand that there's
(14:08):
this whole five to ten years that you have to put in before you can drive formula
one cars well for me never but it's not if steve is my mentor tomorrow i can
and drive Formula One cars, right?
It's really not that. It is, I need to understand that I'm here and it's not an instant thing.
I need to build and I have to spend the time. And because of that,
mentoring is a very time-consuming activity.
(14:31):
And then that's why, Steve, I agree with you. It's just one or two people that
you can really invest that time and effort in.
Okay, so I think the other way, if you look at other spheres like business,
We get like books where, you know, people will write about their experiences,
you know, from when they started to where they eventually succeed.
(14:56):
They also put in the mistakes and, you know, some tips how to overcome the challenges.
This in testing we don't have such books whenever we get a book it's just a technical,
guide which we can also just get from you know like istqb so people like leon
(15:18):
we're still waiting for for books.
Fun,
Yeah, I'm listening to what you guys are saying. I think mentorship is important,
but a certain chunk of it we can get away with.
With the term you used, mentorship at scale, Leon, when you spoke about public collateral.
(15:42):
Using things like SharePoint or Confluence, there's a lot of collateral we can
use that people can help themselves without even having a personal mentor.
On that can be tool training standards and
processes templates or you know even career
paths like in terms of training if if you as
a company have a clear career path showing the
(16:04):
employees this is you can go into this technical section or
that section and this can split into that that's there's already a
lot of thoughts that you can sort of
or help people in the business to think
about where they want to go with their careers but you know
or even things like a guild where we have teams chats
for example where you can post a question and everybody's
(16:24):
helping each other it could be that i'm busy today but maybe
somebody else has got that specific piece of knowledge so there's
way that we can mentor each other but it's a bit more at scale but i definitely
think there will always be a place for for that personal mentorship because
if you do at that scale yes it can help but it's not that personal you don't
necessarily get that that sense
(16:45):
of somebody giving you personal feedback specific to your growth plan,
giving you support or encouragement which can help build your confidence and motivation.
But I do think it's – I just maybe reiterate what the other said.
It's not one or the other. I think both are very important.
And again, and maybe I'm showing my age now, but it feels like mentoring back
(17:09):
in the day was very much office-based.
You sit next to each other. whether you kind of watch what someone's doing or
you're following instruction, but it's very collaborative.
How is remote working and the fact that most people now work remotely and they're
isolated in their own room or office or study,
how has that changed the whole mentoring landscape and how much more difficult
(17:32):
is it now to mentor someone in that new way versus the old,
I'm going to say traditional way, which I just mentioned, which may not be the
traditional way at all anymore, more, but just in terms of that example.
Yeah, it's a good use case. So my first mentor was obviously in an office lab environment.
So I was interacting with them on a day-to-day basis and kind of understanding
(17:55):
how they worked and how they got to where they did.
But I've also mentored people and companies remotely as well,
and there's definitely a difference.
I think the challenges are it can take longer to create that peer-to-peer relationship,
that personal kind of style of how you communicate with each other.
It's going to take longer it's going to be on it's going to be on
(18:16):
team's chats it's going to be on messages it's going to it's going to
be distributed throughout the day so effectively it's
going to take a longer period of time before you kind of gel as a mentoring mentee
but at the same time you're probably going to
have a little bit more flexibility to talk about other aspects that aren't
constrained to being an office environment so some of the stuff i often will
post about is general stuff in my day that will that's helped me so going for
(18:40):
walks is one of the think i spoke about recently in my post where i recommend
it to anyone speaking to us like if you're struggling to think about a problem
just go for a five to a minute walk and come back
right like that little tip you can't really talk about that in an office environment but
when you're working remotely everyone can attest to yeah we set our desk too
often we don't really get out okay that makes sense why would i do that so i
think there's pros and cons to both but i think time is probably the biggest
(19:01):
difference i'm saying of how long it takes to gel that relationship together
yeah i guess in the old days you could just take a walk together let's go take
a walk Walk outside for five minutes.
We don't have that luxury anymore.
So if you look at, and maybe let's go back to the example of maybe a more junior person.
(19:22):
So a person just starting out
in the testing world, and maybe that's that person's first testing job.
What would you say are the aspects of testing which really lends itself to mentorship? And mentoring.
So it feels to me like, yes, you've got the obvious things like,
(19:46):
I don't know, test automation, etc.
But what are those main things which really lend itself to mentoring?
Let me put it a different way. Where does a mentor make the biggest impact into a junior's career?
Yeah, that's a better way, maybe a bit of a reference to the question.
(20:07):
I think for me, it was like the layer underneath that you don't see,
that's not in textbooks, a bit like what Matt spoke about,
is we could talk about how to better design a test case or how to run your script more efficiently.
But by the way, sometimes you'll have an interaction with, let's say a product
owner and the interaction will push what you want to, to get all the quality
(20:31):
of the products and you're going to have a difficult conversation and how do
you handle that conversation?
How do you frame it? How do you try and get across your point without creating
conflict, those kinds of micro interactions, which is a lot about testing is,
is trying to tell non-testers or trying to help non-testers understand our processes
and why we do the things that we do.
And I think that's something that is difficult or hard
(20:53):
to comprehend and mentoring is a good way of bringing that out
because you you've had those experiences and the junior person wouldn't have
had them you they wouldn't have had a PM say I'm going to go live on this day
I don't care how much testing you got left right and how do you have that different
conversation and in a sense probably just going to go okay well I guess we're
going live then and how do you have that different conversation is where your
mentor can really come in.
(21:14):
Yeah, I agree with that. I think testing is a very social discipline,
whether we like it or not, right?
And yes, backed up by technical skills, but what makes or breaks a good tester
are those social interactions, as Stephen said, within your team,
within the business, within the squad,
with stakeholders, and those kind of things that we really, as mentors,
(21:35):
need to bring to the table and let younger testers
understand how to deal with situations when in their eyes how
to talk to people how to talk to senior people
and especially in the beginning of your career you're quite scared of project
managers and program managers and those kind of titles and it's how do you still
talk to them get your point across in in the way that it makes sense and they
(21:58):
you respect them and they respect you and that's how you really build a career
in testing like i said it's very social discipline yes you can you can teach
them the technical skills,
how to do analysis or how to do code, but it's really these interpersonal skills
that should be the starting point.
It's 100%. And you almost took the words out of my mouth because what I was
(22:18):
going to say is what we've lost with remote working is actually seeing body
language and seeing how people interact with each other.
Because if you are capable of
sitting in a sprint backlog planning
session and you actually have a senior there
who is your mentor and you can see
(22:40):
how that person interacts with the rest of the team that the
sort of the body language that the human element like you
you just said it almost it takes me
back to that saying don't don't do what
i do listen to what i say but we know as humans we do what people do we we mimic
people we mimic that behavior and and that's the that's the one element that
(23:02):
well not one element it's it's it's one of the elements that we've We've definitely
lost with the fact that we're now having to work remotely and it's more difficult.
The other question I have is,
How do you find a mentor? So especially those testers who are maybe working
(23:23):
in a smaller company where there's a very small testing team, potentially.
I mean, there are companies where you have a single tester or maybe two testers
or three testers, but you're all sort of on the same level.
How do you find a mentor? How do you go about doing that if you're there and
you actually want active mentorship?
(23:44):
Well, I think if you are a test manager, by default in your job description,
you will be told that you need to mentor the junior testers.
Whether it is the right thing that we just need to establish that a test manager
by default should be your mentor. to.
(24:07):
But I think there are organizations that don't even have test managers,
Mamatla, where they literally, they're starting, they have maybe a junior or
intermediate or two intermediates. There's no test manager.
There's no one that they can actually look up to within the organization from
a purely testing perspective.
So you kind of need to go and look external to your own company.
(24:29):
Now, Stephen alluded to it earlier, people emailing him on LinkedIn.
So that's obviously one way, but are there other ways? Stefan?
Well, maybe the answer lies in you can have more than one mentor.
Maybe in a company, you don't necessarily have somebody that's purely in the
testing space, but they might be very good in terms of people skills and helping
(24:50):
you understand how to deal with certain stakeholders in certain positions. So that could be one way.
And then you can find your technical skills in other places.
In today's day and age, there are things like so many webinars and forums.
Rooms and join if you want a more personal approach i
guess you can join seminars and they have a
focused mission of building a network and speaking to people
(25:12):
and finding like-minded people so that's one way
it might not be one person that can meet all your needs yeah i think you mentioned
something important there stefan and that's building that network right it's
reaching out to like-minded people that can assist you in certain aspects because
you've also said that But a mentor is not necessarily an expert in all the aspects, right?
(25:33):
So it's finding that person or group of people that can assist you with that.
So there are a couple, to answer your question, there are a couple of online
communities where you can sign up to be a mentor.
And then you can also submit if you want to be mentored, right?
So then you submit your CV and you go through that.
But I think that's one option. The other one is building your network, Stefan.
And I think that's the right way, too. to where are people that I trust and
(25:57):
I see that I agree, in a sense, to what they are saying on social platforms,
for example, or webinars or seminars or wherever you go.
So this person, I can listen to them, I agree, I like their style,
and then that's reaching out to them.
Because, unfortunately, there's an effort required from you.
I hear what you're saying on my organizations.
(26:19):
It's sometimes a bit forced, and that doesn't really happen as you want it to
happen. Because if you are forcing someone to be a mentor or mentee,
they do it because they have to.
If you go search for people that can provide you with answers and help your
career, there's already that commitment from you. And that usually works quite well.
Yeah, I agree with both of your stuff, Alan, both of your points are like this.
(26:41):
There's definitely, yeah, there's communities, there's conferences,
there's meeting people that I'm a ministry of testing.
I'm a member of that. I'm on a forum quite recently often as just meeting,
just talking to people and interacting with them.
But I'd also touch on a point of one meant is not going to tick every box.
So the example I had was I didn't really understand in a part of my career,
(27:03):
how a program of work would kind of spin up from start to finish and how the
funding life cycle worked and where did testing fit into the organization.
So I had a mentor who effectively was just a business expert in that particular
area of the business of how programs were spun up and closed down.
And just to build that knowledge, it wasn't, wasn't a tester,
but it did help me understand the domain knowledge to understand where the testing
(27:27):
problems will lie in that company structure.
So as well, so I think there's an element of don't be afraid to look for mentors
that aren't in your craft they're also really useful as well and again it's
the same way of networking with the people within the company and outside of
it through your social media platforms and then forums and discord things like that.
Yep, I agree with that. And I know we're blurring the lines a little bit between
(27:49):
teaching and mentoring and learning.
But based on that, Steve, I think throughout your day job and throughout your
week, you can also look for people who can help you with aspects that you are struggling now, right?
So it doesn't have to be, I'm going to connect to a mentor. It's going to be six, eight, 12 months.
My thing is I'm struggling with this. I'm seeing that Steve is doing this well.
(28:11):
Steve, help, show me how you're doing it and just teach me how to do that,
right? So it can also be short-term things.
But again, it's you as a person who wants to be mentored looking out for that
knowledge and people who will have the knowledge that you want to obtain and connecting with them.
And even if it is a peer or someone in your team or someone in your organization
or someone outside of the organization, I have a problem and I – not necessarily
(28:34):
a problem, I have a need to know something more about a topic.
Who am I seeing that actually knows that and can I connect with them?
I think it's important to mention the fact that if you have a mentor,
it doesn't mean you can't ask questions of other people and learn from other people.
So, yes, use that mentor and you can have a very specific objective with your
(28:56):
mentor, but don't feel that you can only ask that person that question.
If someone else has a strength and you can actually tap into that rather,
or business knowledge or domain knowledge, et cetera, don't wait for the next
session with your mentor and sit on that question.
Rather, be proactive and ask what makes sense.
(29:17):
And what's interesting there, Leon, is that someone might know a lot about one
thing and very little about another thing.
And you need to realize that as well. So if Steve is my mentor,
it's not that he knows everything all the time.
I might know more of a certain topic and the roles may be reversed, right?
So don't just see a senior person
(29:37):
as a mentor and I have to believe everything they say on every topic.
I can also bring something to the table in some instances or someone else.
So I really agree with that.
Yeah, and just to expand on that, you could be a test manager and have an analyst
who's a mentor in something very specific that analyst is an SME at.
So you're a test manager who hasn't done a lot of performance testing and you're
(29:59):
with a senior analyst who's done performance testing for seven years.
They're going to be able to tell you a hell of a lot on how performance testing
works and what best practice is so that it doesn't have to be hierarchical in
nature. It's not always the senior person that is the mentor.
That's the advantage of it. That's one of the real bonuses to
especially more junior people they can mentor up yeah just
(30:19):
to tie into what you're saying there sometimes you
think i have to have 20 years of experience before i
become can become a mentor i think everybody has something
to offer as a mentor even if you're a junior you might come in with some experience
in the world that's might not be testing specific but i think it's important
to realize that everybody has something to offer and you don't have to wait
(30:40):
10 years before you should feel confident enough to share your learnings with your peers.
What are potential cons of mentoring or mentorship?
So we've talked about mainly the benefits here and what you can get out of it,
both from a mentor or mentee perspective.
(31:03):
Are there cons to this as well? We alluded to one earlier, which was time investment.
So there's a time sacrifice to do that.
I think the other one is kind of taking down the proverbial cul-de-sac.
So you think this person is an absolute expert on automation.
So you invest all this time in them and you actually tell them they don't know anything.
(31:24):
Or they've got a very poor methodology or very limited understanding of it.
And you've spent a lot of time and effort learning something that's a very little value.
So, which I think it bridges back to your hands point earlier of bouncing ideas
between multiple individuals and multiple groups, not just one single source of truth.
So choose your mentor wisely. And also, if you are a mentor,
(31:47):
sorry, Leonty, if you are a mentor, be open and brave enough to say, I don't know.
I'm not the best person for this, right? So often when people approach you and say, oh, I respect you.
I want you to be my mentor. You feel like I have to answer everything.
I have to guide this person. Be open. Say, well, actually, I'm not an expert
in this. Maybe let's find someone else that can guide you better.
(32:08):
I couldn't agree more. be be open to being vulnerable and and actually showing
that you have shortcomings as well because because that in itself actually is
is a life lesson no one is perfect no one knows everything,
especially with the junior people looking up to seniors like you said actually
showing showing a junior that you don't know everything and and and i still
(32:29):
have things to to learn as well myself it's that's a good skill to learn as
well sorry yeah yeah i was saying also with the mentees they They also need to put in effort.
You know, before you can go to your mentor, you need to do self-learning.
I think when you reach a point where you feel you have exhausted all your resources,
(32:53):
that is when you can go and approach your mentor.
So that element should not be missed, that you still have to do self-learning.
That's an extremely good point, Mamatla. right
having a mentor is not having chat gpt that
will answer all your questions for you on demand right it
(33:13):
is it is you doing bringing something to
the table your opinion what you've tried i've tried the following three things
which one do you think is the right approach what is the right way so the very
good point it's not just someone that's there to provide you with answers and
do the work for you on demand no no i just steven go for it you got you got
(33:33):
stuff on you're good you go.
So I was just going to suggest, it's a slight branch off topic,
but it's really a good point with the ChatGPT thing is, how do we think,
maybe a question to you guys, how do you think tools like that will change mentoring?
So will people not want mentors when they can just put a question into ChatGPT
and it gives them an answer and they think that's the absolute truth?
(33:54):
Do you think mentorship has less value because those tools exist or do you think
it just changes the landscape?
I think it changes the landscape, but it makes mentorship even more important
for someone who uses JGPT extensively.
You'll quickly realize that it just gives you an answer.
You still have to verify that answer and debate that answer,
(34:16):
make sure that that is actually the right answer.
An answer is a good thing, and we said it before, but is it necessarily the
right answer? So I do think use it and take it to the mentor and say,
I've done some research. This is what I do.
I've tried OpenAI or ChatGPT or whichever one.
And this is their answer. I kind of don't agree with this part or I do agree
with this part. What do you think?
(34:37):
So I do think in the world of AI, it's even more important to have someone to
bounce these things off.
Yeah, I completely agree. I agree. I think the good thing about having AI now
is maybe that starting question in that I'm a newbie, I want to learn whatever,
(34:57):
kind of map out my learning to me or map out that training and show me sort
of what does this roadmap look like towards me becoming somewhere,
getting to somewhere or a certain level. I think that never existed before.
So you typically got that from your mentor, almost guiding that ship in the
right direction or pushing that car in the right direction.
(35:19):
I think AI gives you that now, where maybe there is less of a need for those types of questions.
But again, we were talking about the social elements of testing and the social aspect of mentoring.
And I think that's something that AI can't address.
I think i think yeah there's definitely i don't
(35:40):
want to discourage using ai for for main
mentorship because i i think it it can actually mentor
you it if it's if it if it isn't it can mentor you but but i would still provide
guidance that a real life mentor is probably better because you can bounce ideas
you can sort of mimic you can that person can go to you into meetings where
(36:04):
the other person or the AI can't, et cetera.
So there's definitely benefits to having, I guess, both, using both to your advantage.
Especially the human aspect, Leon, I think is so important.
I want to use an example. I was in a pre-sales call yesterday,
and the salesperson was very stressed out about – because she has the material.
(36:26):
She knows what's going on, but she hasn't been exposed to many of these.
And I said, just come and listen to this. And after the hour pre-sales call, we had the discussion.
I said, it's so different the way you talk to people, the way you interact with people.
And that is really what is important in this
she had all the the material and all the facts and
(36:47):
figures but it's that part that was missing and
that you can only do through talking to
people right and and we said it belaboring the
point but that is the one of the key aspects to testing and
anything in life is that interpersonal interaction how
do you do this and if you have a senior person confidently doing
that in their work environment and in their testing
(37:07):
teams you can learn from that because those are the skills that you really get
out of this and those things although you want to get it from chat gpt you know
i necessarily get that there yeah try chat gpt to help you with developer that
is rejecting your high severity bug it's not gonna help you.
(37:29):
It can it can tell you what you should go tell him or her but it's not going
to be able to go tell him or her on your behalf.
Exactly that. It might, it might give you a script to talk to,
but it's not on a, it's not on a, what the person's like, their personality,
your relationship with them, the company that you work in, all the,
it's just not going to know that information.
The mentor can help you use that tool to give you the context.
(37:54):
Absolutely. So if, if you were to all give your opinions here,
would you advise or recommend
everyone in the testing world to actually identify
a mentor and find someone that can
act as your mentor if you want if
you are willing to put in the time and really
(38:15):
know what you want to get out of that right so what did
what did what i don't recommend is finding someone and saying
oh you're quite senior mentor me what do
you really want to get out of that as we said in the beginning of
this call it's a so one-on-one one-on-two kind
of relationship building thing so yes have a mentor but
understand what it is you want to achieve through
(38:36):
that process i think it's important before you even start so don't just jump
in and some people might may not need it now and it's also for you to understand
is this the right time for me to get there are there things that i can learn
on my own before i just start interacting and building relations with someone.
Yeah, I think my short answer is yes, Leon, but be wise in who you choose.
(39:02):
Make sure that, I think you mentioned it earlier, Jan, I mean,
a lot of people are out there sitting with knowledge, but getting that right
personality fit is also important because I think when you choose a mentor,
you might think it's only going to be technical kind of information,
but at the end of the day, to really get something out of it,
you need to make yourself vulnerable and be willing to accept good advice
(39:24):
also sometimes it could be tough criticism but
it's you need to trust that person and make yourself vulnerable to for and allow
that person to give you good advice and sometimes it's not news or information
you want to hear but you must know that mistrust that person enough to know
that that person is saying it to you so you can become a better version of yourself
so i think yes but choose wisely.
(39:46):
Yeah and just to expand on from this a level of maturity that you
need i think to answer your original question leon
yes but there's a level of maturity that you need to be able to engage in that
kind of relationship otherwise it's not going to work and i but i also think
it's very context dependent i think like there's times where mentors make much
more sense or landing a new role your recent promotion you've moved jobs you've
(40:10):
moved to a different company a different industry,
there's going to be much more benefit to get in that mentorship in that transitional
period than you've been doing this for 10 years and you're kind of treading water, so to speak.
It's maybe of less value or maybe more, but in my head, I've always found the
benefit from mentors in those transitional periods in my career.
(40:32):
I think what's also important to state is that it's actually okay to say no
to someone that approaches you as well.
So if you're already mentoring other people or you don't have the mental capacity
at the moment or you're going through something or you don't feel you're the
right person, you need to be able to say no as well.
(40:53):
And then obviously do that in the right way so that that person isn't completely
put off from identifying the next mentor. And I think there's a whole skill
around that as well and an approach in terms of how you do that.
But it feels like it's worse saying yes to someone when you're not necessarily
going to have the time or be committed and doing a half job as opposed to saying
(41:19):
to someone, look, at the moment, honestly,
I just can't do this. So I think that's okay as well.
And the flip side is once you've chosen a mentor and you've even asked someone
to be your mentor, it's not a marriage.
It doesn't have to be forever. And sometimes we make the wrong choices.
(41:41):
So if you do identify someone that you want to be your mentor,
and after a month or two, you realize that this isn't working out,
or I'm maybe not getting from this person what I wanted,
it's also okay to say to that person, look, I don't feel this is working.
And especially so if you're a junior and you have someone as a senior mentor, I think it's okay.
(42:07):
It's okay to say no in both those situations.
And it's important for people to know that they can say that.
Think we we've run out out of time
we've run over time definitely any closing
any closing thoughts any closing comments before we wrap up it just good luck
(42:28):
to anyone who's trying to find a mentor i think it's a valuable pursuit for
both sides yeah just thinking i should i you should break up with your mentor
with uh what do you say it's not you it's me how do you break up do you break
in the same way as with your girlfriend.
Trade carefully. Trade carefully. Okay, so.
(42:51):
The mamatla. Yeah, so, like, yeah, in my case, I would say I learned that in
sport, even the champion, they still have a coach. They still have managers.
So if you want to succeed in software testing, the same, you still need somebody
Somebody who will mentor you and coach you.
So everybody needs a mentor. Yeah, awesome.
(43:15):
All right. Thank you very much, everyone. Thanks for watching or listening.
I think in summary, we big, I guess we see the value in mentors and mentorship.
And mentoring isn't just for junior people. So even if you're a more senior
person and you feel that you need some guidance or soundboarding, et cetera,
(43:39):
definitely seek out those people that you feel can provide value to you in your
current role or maybe in your career.
So, yes, thanks very much, and we'll see you in the next one.
(44:01):
We're Driving Conversations.
Welcome to Testing Experts with Opinions, an inspired testing podcast aimed
at creating conversations about trends, tools, and technology in the software testing space.
Welcome everyone to I think what is our sixth podcast.
Today we're exploring a crucial aspect of professional growth and development
(00:23):
in the form of mentoring.
Mentoring, whether starting out in your testing career or whether you're experienced,
having a mentor can make a significant difference in your life and in your career.
And mentors aren't only there to provide guidance and knowledge.
They often inspire and challenge us to maybe go beyond what we think is possible.
(00:48):
So we've got our usual audience here. Is everyone doing well?
Very good. Thanks, Liam. yeah good thank you Leon yeah I'm
also doing good amazing okay so
just just in terms of of opening the conversation or getting the conversation
started so maybe let's start at the beginning could each of you share maybe
(01:12):
how you first got into mentorship within software testing what motivated you
to seek out a mentor or maybe become one yourself,
oh well i will start when
i started my career so i didn't
seek out a mentor actually the company
that i worked for they assign a career counselor for you just to guide you in
(01:37):
the in the in the process so that's how i started with the mentor and mentee program and for me it was,
I was like improving on my own kinetic when I went there.
So there was a senior engineer who I kind of looked up to and aspired to kind
of, well, I wish I could get to the kind of level that that person was at.
(01:59):
So kind of not a formal mentee, but I just took a lot of guidance from him and
a lot of his recommendations and we worked together.
So that was my kind of first accidental mentee, mentor, I guess.
Still i think in my yeah in my case i don't think it was a very formal process i think,
as a junior person stepping into the software testing you look up to the senior
(02:19):
people senior analysts and the team leads and they in a way just naturally become your mentors,
and yeah as as you progress your career anyways people
start doing the same and looking up to you and i think it's
sort of a soft landing until you eventually become like
a test lead or a test manage yourself and i think that
that responsibility grows to me it was
(02:42):
sort of a gradual move from a mentee into
a mentorship role yeah interesting question i'm
trying to think back when when i started tasting tasting at
least in south africa wasn't a very big thing so now i'm giving my my age
so when i started there
weren't many senior people or seasoned professionals in
the tasting world in south africa especially so my
(03:04):
my mentorship engagement was more peer type mentorship
thing so i said i went to seek out people my
peers who i felt were a step ahead and tried to latch on to them and then through
that process organically they became mentors but it wasn't official thing as
stefan said as well it's and and throughout my career i kind of tried to do
that to find peers and like-minded people that i can latch on to and have conversations with.
(03:30):
What would you say are the most important skills in someone within the software
testing landscape that maybe lends itself more towards mentorship then than others?
So what are those important aspects where a mentor can really make a difference
in a person's life or person's career? Yeah.
(03:53):
Yeah, so I think a couple there. So I think one would probably be like quite
early on in your career journey because testing is so broad, right?
It's like you start off as a junior analyst or something equivalent to that
and then where do you go to do, oh, I'm going to become a performance tester
or I want to become a manager or I want to become an environment, whatever that scope is.
(04:13):
I think there's real benefit to finding someone who's maybe done a few of those
different roles to kind of guide you like this is what you can expect to kind
of help you make that informed decision.
And also I think when you hit, I guess, career transition points,
when you're going from a junior to a senior or you're becoming a lead for the
(04:33):
first time, is people that are mentoring you around that transition period because
it's very different going from an analyst to becoming a lead running a squad
of people and there's a different skill set.
So I think that's an element that's really interesting. But for both of them,
it's like interpersonal skills are massive in those and that you need that skill
set to help kind of help constrict the dialogue.
(04:55):
Yeah, I agree with that, Steve. So I was just thinking whilst you were talking,
I've met many very technical people in my career, and those weren't necessarily
great mentors because they're very technical and they know their subject matter very well,
but they couldn't really relate to the problems I'm having or could I give advice
because they're already there and they know what they are doing.
So that interpersonal skills and someone that's recognized in your team or your
(05:20):
organization that people are recognizing this person knows what they are doing
when it comes to testing.
I kind of feel that's also important that other people see that person and recognize their skills.
And then I generally go there and say, all right, I can see that you know what
you are doing and you're also a good person to actually get that message across.
(05:41):
So that's kind of where I'm going from a mentorship perspective.
Obviously, technical Technical skills are important.
It's always important to have that, but that's not necessarily the most important
part when it comes to a mentorship kind of arrangement.
Yeah, so I think if you're going to be a mentor also, you need to have the passion,
you know, to teach and to coach other people as well.
(06:04):
You need to have like have the commitment to develop other people.
So as Johan just said, it should not just be about technical skills.
So you need to love teaching.
And you need to make time to make sure you have the necessary time because I
(06:25):
think being a proper mentor takes time.
I think it's not something you just do in half an hour and then that person
is coached up. I think it's typically when it's more on an individual level,
it's a long-term engagement.
You have to be, you know, you have to have that helpful mindset.
You need to be prepared, need to be approachable and doesn't help you trying to be a mentor.
And every Every time somebody tries to reach you, you've got that I'm too busy
(06:48):
kind of attitude, you know, and you need to be a patient, show commitment.
I think there's a lot of the softer skills that are just as important as the
technical skills and experience that you bring to the table.
You both raise good points when you started with it. And I think it's important
to find someone that wants to be a mentor.
So in organizations, often we set up structures and we ask people to be mentors.
(07:14):
To be mentors, you're a senior person, you will now mentor three others,
but that person's not necessarily in it.
You said it, Mamatla and Stefan, it's something that it's a person who actually
wants to share the knowledge, wants to grow the person they are mentoring.
So I think that's one of the key skills as well, or the key attributes is that
willingness to put in the effort and to mentor someone.
(07:37):
But then the flip side of that is also true, Jan, in that I think I think there
are a lot of people that say,
I want a mentor, but they're not necessarily motivated to put in the time and
the effort that actually is required.
So there's commitment that's required from both sides. I think it feels like
(08:01):
if you're the person seeking a mentor, maybe you're more invested, you're more motivated.
If you get given a mentor, maybe then it's slightly different and you almost
feel like it's getting forced on you.
But what we've discussed thus far feels like it's very much mentoring more junior people.
(08:22):
But of course, mentoring doesn't only talk to juniors. There's also mentoring
more senior people. And I,
We discussed this internally briefly yesterday in terms of even executives and
senior people, they still have mentors.
People have business coaches, people have life coaches, etc.
(08:45):
So mentoring never really stops.
And being a mentee never necessarily stops.
So on that sort of path, how do you feel your mentoring techniques or your mentoring
approach needs to change given the seniority level?
(09:07):
So if you're mentoring a junior versus someone more senior, what are those subtleties
maybe that you need to apply?
I think it's as you
mentor more senior people and then it
becomes less lecturing and more mentoring right so the
more senior people the more senior the person is that
(09:28):
you are actually mentoring the more you need to be open to
feedback and constructive criticism and
debating rather than just i will lecture you because this is the
way it has to be i'm a senior i know
this is the way and i'm not saying do that with juniors either but
a junior person will not necessarily push back as much as a senior
person would if i if i'm in a mentoring session with steve i
(09:51):
would hope that that he will push back and debate and through
that we will both learn so i think the more senior the person
is that you're mentoring the more you can also learn from that so in
a senior situation it's it's kind of both ways mentoring while in a little bit
more junior one it's more lecturing for the lack of a better word yeah i think
this i kind of expand on that i think like when you're a junior you don't know
(10:13):
what you need to know so the mentor's got to kind of help you craft,
what okay sounds like you're deficient in this we're putting to
touch talk here but all that i think at a senior level it's much more of a sounding
board like you answered it's i want to have tell me what you know about this
i need to understand this problem and just discuss this topic with you and get
your perspective on it and my perspective on it and kind of come up with it
(10:35):
i think it becomes a much more peer-to-peer constructive debate more than anything else.
What's the difference between a buddy and a mentor because because those terms
are often interchangeably used but but in my mind there is those are actually two separate things,
is anybody more of a peer somebody that's almost on the
(10:56):
same level as you and you might know a little
bit more like i always think of a buddy when a new starter starts at a company
you've got a buddy might not necessarily be the team lead but it's somebody
almost on your level but But it's almost like that more like a bi-directional
kind of learning curve where mentor might be a little bit more one way in a
way, you sharing more knowledge from your side.
(11:20):
And then I think a lot of what we've discussed is kind of alluding to one-on-one mentoring.
But mentoring takes on different, I guess, models or different ways of mentoring.
So, I mean, in some way, lunch and learn sessions and those types of things
(11:40):
are also mentoring sessions, but it's on a much bigger scale.
It's not that one-to-one.
Steven gave an example yesterday that he
often gets contacted on LinkedIn where people
want to be mentored but it's not very scalable because like we said at the start
(12:01):
if you're if you're actually invested as a mentor it's gonna it's gonna be time
consuming it's gonna take time and to have 10 or 15 people that you're mentoring
is very difficult because you're never going to do a good job.
So are there ways to mentor?
I'm going to say mentor at scale, or is it important to, to keep,
(12:22):
to keep your mentees to a very small number?
So is there a maximum that you can, that you can mentor?
Yeah, I think, I think if you split it into two sections, I think that, yeah,
the topic I had was because if if 30 40
people are messaging me on linkedin every month or
something to ask for me to help them with something i can't
(12:43):
i don't have a time to be able to do that right but i
still want to help those people so there's an element of
changes from mentoring to sharing
best practice and sharing training material like
the lunch and lunch sessions that we run internally with the company or our community practice
that we're building up those kinds of things to the wider audience and but I
(13:03):
do think mentoring because it is so time-intensive you need to build that relationship
up with on someone I think there is definitely a cap on how many people you
can you can realistically do that but one or two in my head I think any more
than that you're just not gonna be able to give those people the time that they
need because it's such an intensive task.
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think Steve, you said it well.
There's a difference between mentoring and teaching.
(13:25):
And in a teaching or lecturing, the amount of people doesn't really matter because
there's not that feedback from the audience or the people that you are teaching necessarily.
It's one or two questions. But a mentoring thing is a real relationship-building thing.
And the more you build trust in a mentorship relationship, the better you can
mentor and the better the questions would be as well.
(13:47):
And it's very time-intensive. you alluded to the time and the effort to put
in there and from from both things right so,
what i've seen is that people want to
want you to mentor them as i did with
steve but they expect you to be the formula one driver and they're trying to
to learn how to to drive a car right and they don't understand that there's
(14:08):
this whole five to ten years that you have to put in before you can drive formula
one cars well for me never but it's not if steve is my mentor tomorrow i can
and drive Formula One cars, right?
It's really not that. It is, I need to understand that I'm here and it's not an instant thing.
I need to build and I have to spend the time. And because of that,
mentoring is a very time-consuming activity.
(14:31):
And then that's why, Steve, I agree with you. It's just one or two people that
you can really invest that time and effort in.
Okay, so I think the other way, if you look at other spheres like business,
We get like books where, you know, people will write about their experiences,
you know, from when they started to where they eventually succeed.
(14:56):
They also put in the mistakes and, you know, some tips how to overcome the challenges.
This in testing we don't have such books whenever we get a book it's just a technical,
guide which we can also just get from you know like istqb so people like leon
(15:18):
we're still waiting for for books.
Fun,
Yeah, I'm listening to what you guys are saying. I think mentorship is important,
but a certain chunk of it we can get away with.
With the term you used, mentorship at scale, Leon, when you spoke about public collateral.
(15:42):
Using things like SharePoint or Confluence, there's a lot of collateral we can
use that people can help themselves without even having a personal mentor.
On that can be tool training standards and
processes templates or you know even career
paths like in terms of training if if you as
a company have a clear career path showing the
(16:04):
employees this is you can go into this technical section or
that section and this can split into that that's there's already a
lot of thoughts that you can sort of
or help people in the business to think
about where they want to go with their careers but you know
or even things like a guild where we have teams chats
for example where you can post a question and everybody's
(16:24):
helping each other it could be that i'm busy today but maybe
somebody else has got that specific piece of knowledge so there's
way that we can mentor each other but it's a bit more at scale but i definitely
think there will always be a place for for that personal mentorship because
if you do at that scale yes it can help but it's not that personal you don't
necessarily get that that sense
(16:45):
of somebody giving you personal feedback specific to your growth plan,
giving you support or encouragement which can help build your confidence and motivation.
But I do think it's – I just maybe reiterate what the other said.
It's not one or the other. I think both are very important.
And again, and maybe I'm showing my age now, but it feels like mentoring back
(17:09):
in the day was very much office-based.
You sit next to each other. whether you kind of watch what someone's doing or
you're following instruction, but it's very collaborative.
How is remote working and the fact that most people now work remotely and they're
isolated in their own room or office or study,
how has that changed the whole mentoring landscape and how much more difficult
(17:32):
is it now to mentor someone in that new way versus the old,
I'm going to say traditional way, which I just mentioned, which may not be the
traditional way at all anymore, more, but just in terms of that example.
Yeah, it's a good use case. So my first mentor was obviously in an office lab environment.
So I was interacting with them on a day-to-day basis and kind of understanding
(17:55):
how they worked and how they got to where they did.
But I've also mentored people and companies remotely as well,
and there's definitely a difference.
I think the challenges are it can take longer to create that peer-to-peer relationship,
that personal kind of style of how you communicate with each other.
It's going to take longer it's going to be on it's going to be on
(18:16):
team's chats it's going to be on messages it's going to it's going to
be distributed throughout the day so effectively it's
going to take a longer period of time before you kind of gel as a mentoring mentee
but at the same time you're probably going to
have a little bit more flexibility to talk about other aspects that aren't
constrained to being an office environment so some of the stuff i often will
post about is general stuff in my day that will that's helped me so going for
(18:40):
walks is one of the think i spoke about recently in my post where i recommend
it to anyone speaking to us like if you're struggling to think about a problem
just go for a five to a minute walk and come back
right like that little tip you can't really talk about that in an office environment but
when you're working remotely everyone can attest to yeah we set our desk too
often we don't really get out okay that makes sense why would i do that so i
think there's pros and cons to both but i think time is probably the biggest
(19:01):
difference i'm saying of how long it takes to gel that relationship together
yeah i guess in the old days you could just take a walk together let's go take
a walk Walk outside for five minutes.
We don't have that luxury anymore.
So if you look at, and maybe let's go back to the example of maybe a more junior person.
(19:22):
So a person just starting out
in the testing world, and maybe that's that person's first testing job.
What would you say are the aspects of testing which really lends itself to mentorship? And mentoring.
So it feels to me like, yes, you've got the obvious things like,
(19:46):
I don't know, test automation, etc.
But what are those main things which really lend itself to mentoring?
Let me put it a different way. Where does a mentor make the biggest impact into a junior's career?
Yeah, that's a better way, maybe a bit of a reference to the question.
(20:07):
I think for me, it was like the layer underneath that you don't see,
that's not in textbooks, a bit like what Matt spoke about,
is we could talk about how to better design a test case or how to run your script more efficiently.
But by the way, sometimes you'll have an interaction with, let's say a product
owner and the interaction will push what you want to, to get all the quality
(20:31):
of the products and you're going to have a difficult conversation and how do
you handle that conversation?
How do you frame it? How do you try and get across your point without creating
conflict, those kinds of micro interactions, which is a lot about testing is,
is trying to tell non-testers or trying to help non-testers understand our processes
and why we do the things that we do.
And I think that's something that is difficult or hard
(20:53):
to comprehend and mentoring is a good way of bringing that out
because you you've had those experiences and the junior person wouldn't have
had them you they wouldn't have had a PM say I'm going to go live on this day
I don't care how much testing you got left right and how do you have that different
conversation and in a sense probably just going to go okay well I guess we're
going live then and how do you have that different conversation is where your
mentor can really come in.
(21:14):
Yeah, I agree with that. I think testing is a very social discipline,
whether we like it or not, right?
And yes, backed up by technical skills, but what makes or breaks a good tester
are those social interactions, as Stephen said, within your team,
within the business, within the squad,
with stakeholders, and those kind of things that we really, as mentors,
(21:35):
need to bring to the table and let younger testers
understand how to deal with situations when in their eyes how
to talk to people how to talk to senior people
and especially in the beginning of your career you're quite scared of project
managers and program managers and those kind of titles and it's how do you still
talk to them get your point across in in the way that it makes sense and they
(21:58):
you respect them and they respect you and that's how you really build a career
in testing like i said it's very social discipline yes you can you can teach
them the technical skills,
how to do analysis or how to do code, but it's really these interpersonal skills
that should be the starting point.
It's 100%. And you almost took the words out of my mouth because what I was
(22:18):
going to say is what we've lost with remote working is actually seeing body
language and seeing how people interact with each other.
Because if you are capable of
sitting in a sprint backlog planning
session and you actually have a senior there
who is your mentor and you can see
(22:40):
how that person interacts with the rest of the team that the
sort of the body language that the human element like you
you just said it almost it takes me
back to that saying don't don't do what
i do listen to what i say but we know as humans we do what people do we we mimic
people we mimic that behavior and and that's the that's the one element that
(23:02):
well not one element it's it's it's one of the elements that we've We've definitely
lost with the fact that we're now having to work remotely and it's more difficult.
The other question I have is,
How do you find a mentor? So especially those testers who are maybe working
(23:23):
in a smaller company where there's a very small testing team, potentially.
I mean, there are companies where you have a single tester or maybe two testers
or three testers, but you're all sort of on the same level.
How do you find a mentor? How do you go about doing that if you're there and
you actually want active mentorship?
(23:44):
Well, I think if you are a test manager, by default in your job description,
you will be told that you need to mentor the junior testers.
Whether it is the right thing that we just need to establish that a test manager
by default should be your mentor. to.
(24:07):
But I think there are organizations that don't even have test managers,
Mamatla, where they literally, they're starting, they have maybe a junior or
intermediate or two intermediates. There's no test manager.
There's no one that they can actually look up to within the organization from
a purely testing perspective.
So you kind of need to go and look external to your own company.
(24:29):
Now, Stephen alluded to it earlier, people emailing him on LinkedIn.
So that's obviously one way, but are there other ways? Stefan?
Well, maybe the answer lies in you can have more than one mentor.
Maybe in a company, you don't necessarily have somebody that's purely in the
testing space, but they might be very good in terms of people skills and helping
(24:50):
you understand how to deal with certain stakeholders in certain positions. So that could be one way.
And then you can find your technical skills in other places.
In today's day and age, there are things like so many webinars and forums.
Rooms and join if you want a more personal approach i
guess you can join seminars and they have a
focused mission of building a network and speaking to people
(25:12):
and finding like-minded people so that's one way
it might not be one person that can meet all your needs yeah i think you mentioned
something important there stefan and that's building that network right it's
reaching out to like-minded people that can assist you in certain aspects because
you've also said that But a mentor is not necessarily an expert in all the aspects, right?
(25:33):
So it's finding that person or group of people that can assist you with that.
So there are a couple, to answer your question, there are a couple of online
communities where you can sign up to be a mentor.
And then you can also submit if you want to be mentored, right?
So then you submit your CV and you go through that.
But I think that's one option. The other one is building your network, Stefan.
And I think that's the right way, too. to where are people that I trust and
(25:57):
I see that I agree, in a sense, to what they are saying on social platforms,
for example, or webinars or seminars or wherever you go.
So this person, I can listen to them, I agree, I like their style,
and then that's reaching out to them.
Because, unfortunately, there's an effort required from you.
I hear what you're saying on my organizations.
(26:19):
It's sometimes a bit forced, and that doesn't really happen as you want it to
happen. Because if you are forcing someone to be a mentor or mentee,
they do it because they have to.
If you go search for people that can provide you with answers and help your
career, there's already that commitment from you. And that usually works quite well.
Yeah, I agree with both of your stuff, Alan, both of your points are like this.
(26:41):
There's definitely, yeah, there's communities, there's conferences,
there's meeting people that I'm a ministry of testing.
I'm a member of that. I'm on a forum quite recently often as just meeting,
just talking to people and interacting with them.
But I'd also touch on a point of one meant is not going to tick every box.
So the example I had was I didn't really understand in a part of my career,
(27:03):
how a program of work would kind of spin up from start to finish and how the
funding life cycle worked and where did testing fit into the organization.
So I had a mentor who effectively was just a business expert in that particular
area of the business of how programs were spun up and closed down.
And just to build that knowledge, it wasn't, wasn't a tester,
but it did help me understand the domain knowledge to understand where the testing
(27:27):
problems will lie in that company structure.
So as well, so I think there's an element of don't be afraid to look for mentors
that aren't in your craft they're also really useful as well and again it's
the same way of networking with the people within the company and outside of
it through your social media platforms and then forums and discord things like that.
Yep, I agree with that. And I know we're blurring the lines a little bit between
(27:49):
teaching and mentoring and learning.
But based on that, Steve, I think throughout your day job and throughout your
week, you can also look for people who can help you with aspects that you are struggling now, right?
So it doesn't have to be, I'm going to connect to a mentor. It's going to be six, eight, 12 months.
My thing is I'm struggling with this. I'm seeing that Steve is doing this well.
(28:11):
Steve, help, show me how you're doing it and just teach me how to do that,
right? So it can also be short-term things.
But again, it's you as a person who wants to be mentored looking out for that
knowledge and people who will have the knowledge that you want to obtain and connecting with them.
And even if it is a peer or someone in your team or someone in your organization
or someone outside of the organization, I have a problem and I – not necessarily
(28:34):
a problem, I have a need to know something more about a topic.
Who am I seeing that actually knows that and can I connect with them?
I think it's important to mention the fact that if you have a mentor,
it doesn't mean you can't ask questions of other people and learn from other people.
So, yes, use that mentor and you can have a very specific objective with your
(28:56):
mentor, but don't feel that you can only ask that person that question.
If someone else has a strength and you can actually tap into that rather,
or business knowledge or domain knowledge, et cetera, don't wait for the next
session with your mentor and sit on that question.
Rather, be proactive and ask what makes sense.
(29:17):
And what's interesting there, Leon, is that someone might know a lot about one
thing and very little about another thing.
And you need to realize that as well. So if Steve is my mentor,
it's not that he knows everything all the time.
I might know more of a certain topic and the roles may be reversed, right?
So don't just see a senior person
(29:37):
as a mentor and I have to believe everything they say on every topic.
I can also bring something to the table in some instances or someone else.
So I really agree with that.
Yeah, and just to expand on that, you could be a test manager and have an analyst
who's a mentor in something very specific that analyst is an SME at.
So you're a test manager who hasn't done a lot of performance testing and you're
(29:59):
with a senior analyst who's done performance testing for seven years.
They're going to be able to tell you a hell of a lot on how performance testing
works and what best practice is so that it doesn't have to be hierarchical in
nature. It's not always the senior person that is the mentor.
That's the advantage of it. That's one of the real bonuses to
especially more junior people they can mentor up yeah just
(30:19):
to tie into what you're saying there sometimes you
think i have to have 20 years of experience before i
become can become a mentor i think everybody has something
to offer as a mentor even if you're a junior you might come in with some experience
in the world that's might not be testing specific but i think it's important
to realize that everybody has something to offer and you don't have to wait
(30:40):
10 years before you should feel confident enough to share your learnings with your peers.
What are potential cons of mentoring or mentorship?
So we've talked about mainly the benefits here and what you can get out of it,
both from a mentor or mentee perspective.
(31:03):
Are there cons to this as well? We alluded to one earlier, which was time investment.
So there's a time sacrifice to do that.
I think the other one is kind of taking down the proverbial cul-de-sac.
So you think this person is an absolute expert on automation.
So you invest all this time in them and you actually tell them they don't know anything.
(31:24):
Or they've got a very poor methodology or very limited understanding of it.
And you've spent a lot of time and effort learning something that's a very little value.
So, which I think it bridges back to your hands point earlier of bouncing ideas
between multiple individuals and multiple groups, not just one single source of truth.
So choose your mentor wisely. And also, if you are a mentor,
(31:47):
sorry, Leonty, if you are a mentor, be open and brave enough to say, I don't know.
I'm not the best person for this, right? So often when people approach you and say, oh, I respect you.
I want you to be my mentor. You feel like I have to answer everything.
I have to guide this person. Be open. Say, well, actually, I'm not an expert
in this. Maybe let's find someone else that can guide you better.
(32:08):
I couldn't agree more. be be open to being vulnerable and and actually showing
that you have shortcomings as well because because that in itself actually is
is a life lesson no one is perfect no one knows everything,
especially with the junior people looking up to seniors like you said actually
showing showing a junior that you don't know everything and and and i still
(32:29):
have things to to learn as well myself it's that's a good skill to learn as
well sorry yeah yeah i was saying also with the mentees they They also need to put in effort.
You know, before you can go to your mentor, you need to do self-learning.
I think when you reach a point where you feel you have exhausted all your resources,
(32:53):
that is when you can go and approach your mentor.
So that element should not be missed, that you still have to do self-learning.
That's an extremely good point, Mamatla. right
having a mentor is not having chat gpt that
will answer all your questions for you on demand right it
(33:13):
is it is you doing bringing something to
the table your opinion what you've tried i've tried the following three things
which one do you think is the right approach what is the right way so the very
good point it's not just someone that's there to provide you with answers and
do the work for you on demand no no i just steven go for it you got you got
(33:33):
stuff on you're good you go.
So I was just going to suggest, it's a slight branch off topic,
but it's really a good point with the ChatGPT thing is, how do we think,
maybe a question to you guys, how do you think tools like that will change mentoring?
So will people not want mentors when they can just put a question into ChatGPT
and it gives them an answer and they think that's the absolute truth?
(33:54):
Do you think mentorship has less value because those tools exist or do you think
it just changes the landscape?
I think it changes the landscape, but it makes mentorship even more important
for someone who uses JGPT extensively.
You'll quickly realize that it just gives you an answer.
You still have to verify that answer and debate that answer,
(34:16):
make sure that that is actually the right answer.
An answer is a good thing, and we said it before, but is it necessarily the
right answer? So I do think use it and take it to the mentor and say,
I've done some research. This is what I do.
I've tried OpenAI or ChatGPT or whichever one.
And this is their answer. I kind of don't agree with this part or I do agree
with this part. What do you think?
(34:37):
So I do think in the world of AI, it's even more important to have someone to
bounce these things off.
Yeah, I completely agree. I agree. I think the good thing about having AI now
is maybe that starting question in that I'm a newbie, I want to learn whatever,
(34:57):
kind of map out my learning to me or map out that training and show me sort
of what does this roadmap look like towards me becoming somewhere,
getting to somewhere or a certain level. I think that never existed before.
So you typically got that from your mentor, almost guiding that ship in the
right direction or pushing that car in the right direction.
(35:19):
I think AI gives you that now, where maybe there is less of a need for those types of questions.
But again, we were talking about the social elements of testing and the social aspect of mentoring.
And I think that's something that AI can't address.
I think i think yeah there's definitely i don't
(35:40):
want to discourage using ai for for main
mentorship because i i think it it can actually mentor
you it if it's if it if it isn't it can mentor you but but i would still provide
guidance that a real life mentor is probably better because you can bounce ideas
you can sort of mimic you can that person can go to you into meetings where
(36:04):
the other person or the AI can't, et cetera.
So there's definitely benefits to having, I guess, both, using both to your advantage.
Especially the human aspect, Leon, I think is so important.
I want to use an example. I was in a pre-sales call yesterday,
and the salesperson was very stressed out about – because she has the material.
(36:26):
She knows what's going on, but she hasn't been exposed to many of these.
And I said, just come and listen to this. And after the hour pre-sales call, we had the discussion.
I said, it's so different the way you talk to people, the way you interact with people.
And that is really what is important in this
she had all the the material and all the facts and
(36:47):
figures but it's that part that was missing and
that you can only do through talking to
people right and and we said it belaboring the
point but that is the one of the key aspects to testing and
anything in life is that interpersonal interaction how
do you do this and if you have a senior person confidently doing
that in their work environment and in their testing
(37:07):
teams you can learn from that because those are the skills that you really get
out of this and those things although you want to get it from chat gpt you know
i necessarily get that there yeah try chat gpt to help you with developer that
is rejecting your high severity bug it's not gonna help you.
(37:29):
It can it can tell you what you should go tell him or her but it's not going
to be able to go tell him or her on your behalf.
Exactly that. It might, it might give you a script to talk to,
but it's not on a, it's not on a, what the person's like, their personality,
your relationship with them, the company that you work in, all the,
it's just not going to know that information.
The mentor can help you use that tool to give you the context.
(37:54):
Absolutely. So if, if you were to all give your opinions here,
would you advise or recommend
everyone in the testing world to actually identify
a mentor and find someone that can
act as your mentor if you want if
you are willing to put in the time and really
(38:15):
know what you want to get out of that right so what did
what did what i don't recommend is finding someone and saying
oh you're quite senior mentor me what do
you really want to get out of that as we said in the beginning of
this call it's a so one-on-one one-on-two kind
of relationship building thing so yes have a mentor but
understand what it is you want to achieve through
(38:36):
that process i think it's important before you even start so don't just jump
in and some people might may not need it now and it's also for you to understand
is this the right time for me to get there are there things that i can learn
on my own before i just start interacting and building relations with someone.
Yeah, I think my short answer is yes, Leon, but be wise in who you choose.
(39:02):
Make sure that, I think you mentioned it earlier, Jan, I mean,
a lot of people are out there sitting with knowledge, but getting that right
personality fit is also important because I think when you choose a mentor,
you might think it's only going to be technical kind of information,
but at the end of the day, to really get something out of it,
you need to make yourself vulnerable and be willing to accept good advice
(39:24):
also sometimes it could be tough criticism but
it's you need to trust that person and make yourself vulnerable to for and allow
that person to give you good advice and sometimes it's not news or information
you want to hear but you must know that mistrust that person enough to know
that that person is saying it to you so you can become a better version of yourself
so i think yes but choose wisely.
(39:46):
Yeah and just to expand on from this a level of maturity that you
need i think to answer your original question leon
yes but there's a level of maturity that you need to be able to engage in that
kind of relationship otherwise it's not going to work and i but i also think
it's very context dependent i think like there's times where mentors make much
more sense or landing a new role your recent promotion you've moved jobs you've
(40:10):
moved to a different company a different industry,
there's going to be much more benefit to get in that mentorship in that transitional
period than you've been doing this for 10 years and you're kind of treading water, so to speak.
It's maybe of less value or maybe more, but in my head, I've always found the
benefit from mentors in those transitional periods in my career.
(40:32):
I think what's also important to state is that it's actually okay to say no
to someone that approaches you as well.
So if you're already mentoring other people or you don't have the mental capacity
at the moment or you're going through something or you don't feel you're the
right person, you need to be able to say no as well.
(40:53):
And then obviously do that in the right way so that that person isn't completely
put off from identifying the next mentor. And I think there's a whole skill
around that as well and an approach in terms of how you do that.
But it feels like it's worse saying yes to someone when you're not necessarily
going to have the time or be committed and doing a half job as opposed to saying
(41:19):
to someone, look, at the moment, honestly,
I just can't do this. So I think that's okay as well.
And the flip side is once you've chosen a mentor and you've even asked someone
to be your mentor, it's not a marriage.
It doesn't have to be forever. And sometimes we make the wrong choices.
(41:41):
So if you do identify someone that you want to be your mentor,
and after a month or two, you realize that this isn't working out,
or I'm maybe not getting from this person what I wanted,
it's also okay to say to that person, look, I don't feel this is working.
And especially so if you're a junior and you have someone as a senior mentor, I think it's okay.
(42:07):
It's okay to say no in both those situations.
And it's important for people to know that they can say that.
Think we we've run out out of time
we've run over time definitely any closing
any closing thoughts any closing comments before we wrap up it just good luck
(42:28):
to anyone who's trying to find a mentor i think it's a valuable pursuit for
both sides yeah just thinking i should i you should break up with your mentor
with uh what do you say it's not you it's me how do you break up do you break
in the same way as with your girlfriend.
Trade carefully. Trade carefully. Okay, so.
(42:51):
The mamatla. Yeah, so, like, yeah, in my case, I would say I learned that in
sport, even the champion, they still have a coach. They still have managers.
So if you want to succeed in software testing, the same, you still need somebody
Somebody who will mentor you and coach you.
So everybody needs a mentor. Yeah, awesome.
(43:15):
All right. Thank you very much, everyone. Thanks for watching or listening.
I think in summary, we big, I guess we see the value in mentors and mentorship.
And mentoring isn't just for junior people. So even if you're a more senior
person and you feel that you need some guidance or soundboarding, et cetera,
(43:39):
definitely seek out those people that you feel can provide value to you in your
current role or maybe in your career.
So, yes, thanks very much, and we'll see you in the next one.
(44:01):
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