I spoke about “Empathic Mentoring for Developers” at JavaZone 2022

There is a ton of material, talks, and courses already about becoming a mentor, so why should you listen to this talk? I believe the existing material often misses some crucial points—the aspect of servant leadership, deep empathy, inspiration and vision. In my talk, I explain how I think about these important topics, and how I put them into practice. Empathy can quickly turn into just another empty promise if you do not show it through your actions and communication. In my talk, I share some advice on how to talk with empathy to demonstrate that you actually care and how to plan the mentoring journey with your mentees.

Mentoring by believing, trusting, supporting and deeply caring can transform the relations with your mentees, and I have personally seen wonderful people landing jobs and trainee positions one after another. They overcome challenges most others wouldn’t think they could, at times, not even themselves. The latter is the hard part of mentoring: change does not happen over the night or a couple of days, but several months. You need to be patient, and willing to follow up your mentees over a longer period of time. You will need to work on shifting mindsets and making people believe in themselves. The key here is a combination of you silencing your inner dragons, choosing a set of values and being humble, kind and honest. Your success is heavily affected by your inner belief in people in your care.

The last four years, I have spent most of my time mentoring developers in the Norwegian community. I focused especially on underrepresented groups and to help people with autism and aspergers, but I also worked with anxiety and depression. Too few companies hire or interview these people because of prejudices. Working for the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV), part of the government, made it possible for me to connect with many people who need help and inspiration. For that reason, I spent a significant amount of time giving voluntary mentoring and coaching sessions (in addition to my own full time job). Most of the people I worked with landed permanent, well-paid, jobs within a year and a half. In cases that I couldn’t provide long-term help to a person, I invited them to my office for free guiding and training.

People from underrepresented groups need human beings believing in them, seeing them and giving them a chance. Any person in a position of power can choose to use that power to help others or silently ignore people. As a leader, I chose to help underrepresented minorities into the communities and into mentoring programs so they can get jobs and job interviews. In the talk, I tell how others can do the same through mentoring.

Here is the recording of my talk.