Mentoring/Formal/USA/Guidelines

If you are considering, or are currently in a Formal Mentoring relationship, please read this entire page, and refer back to it as needed. You may choose to use all, or some of the approaches and options explained here.

Formal Mentoring Approach

Understanding the general approach to Formal Mentoring will help you decide if Formal Mentoring is a good fit for you.

Consider a Formal Mentoring approach as four steps that you can take in sequence. Review all the steps before you actually decide to participate in Formal Mentoring as a Mentee or Mentor.

Step 1: Do you want to be mentored or be a mentor?

Before you ask to be mentored (become a Mentee), or to become a Mentor, consider if this is the right approach for you.

Potential Mentees: Have you already read the Wiki? Have you looked through the Forum to see what topics make sense and engaged in conversation there?

Potential Mentors: Do you have enough time and patience to mentor others? Do you know what Waze skills you’d like to teach to others? Consider the benefits, responsibilities, and decisions below before you engage in mentoring.

Benefits

Benefits for the Mentee:

Benefits for the Mentor:

Learning the Waze environment and network of people more quickly. Having trusted individuals to ask questions without fear of asking a dumb question because they understand that you are still learning. Access to a trusted “sounding board” for your ideas and actions to share in confidence. Possibility to “act above your rank” during the mentorship, in order to learn skills appropriate to the next rank up. Potential accelerated rank and access as an Area Manager or Country Manager.

Increased contribution to the Waze community by leveraging your knowledge. Better insight into broader ideas affecting Waze, increased network of contacts. Improved self-awareness and skill development. By building up other members towards your own level, you reduce the long-term burden on yourself in managing your areas Mentors learn from Mentees!

Responsibilities

Responsibilities of the Mentee:	Responsibilities of the Mentor:
Having a mentor is a privilege and opportunity. Respect time of the Mentor, seek other sources of information such as the Forum and Wiki before engaging the Mentor and during the mentoring process. Write down and tell the Mentor one or more goals you have in the relationship. Respect confidences.	Being a Mentor is a privilege and responsibility. Help the Mentee, be supportive, be positive, be understanding. Respect confidences. Ask the Mentee what they want to accomplish. Put effort and energy into molding the Mentee, allowing him or her to grow in capability and rank/responsibility

Commitment

Decisions of the Mentee:	Decisions of the Mentor:
Can you articulate what kind of help you need? Do you have time to receive the mentoring you’re asking for? Do you want a formal mentor rather than asking for help in the Forum or WME chat?	Do you know and can you articulate the skill sets that you’d like to mentor? Do you have time to be responsible to potential Mentees? Rather than becoming a formal Waze Mentor, would you like to keep it simple, and just offer help in the Forum or WME chat?

Step 2: How do I find a Waze Mentor or become a Mentor?

If you are comfortable with the ideas in Step 1, then you need to find a Mentor or Mentee, enter into an agreement, and start participating. Here's how:

First: Identify candidates or make yourself available as a Mentor

Mentee: Finding a Mentor	Mentor: How to become a Mentor
Ask an experienced person you notice in the Forum or Mentoring Forum list to mentor you. Ask an experienced person for a suggestion about who might mentor you. Make a request on the Mentoring Forum for help.	Read and be familiar with this document. Read and agree to the Formal Mentor Training. Ensure you have time and can articulate the amount of time you have to any inquiring Mentee. Make yourself available by registering as a Mentor with Waze. Participate and make yourself available on the Mentoring Forum.

Second: Find a match and make an agreement

Not every potential Mentee-Mentor combination will work. Mentees might have to ask several people in sequence to be mentored until they find the right person. A particular Mentor may not have a compatible schedule with the Mentee or might already have a number of other Mentees they are helping.

Mentee: Agreement with a Mentor	Mentor: Agreement with a Mentee
Try to match with a mentor who is active in the same geographical area where you are active (not always critical) Send a formal request via PM to the Mentor. Identify yourself, your experience, what you need help with, and how you prefer to engage with the Mentor. Ask if they can help you. Continue dialog with potential Mentor to clarify what is needed. Consider if the Mentor is a match in skill and personality to you. If the Mentor is not a match, seek another.	Respond to requests for mentoring by giving some of your background, asking for clarification if needed. Continue dialogue with potential Mentee to ensure a successful relationship. If you’re not the right person, be prepared to suggest alternative Mentor(s) and explain why. Consider the personality of the particular mentee, your own skills, geographical area, common work hours, any conflicting commitments, and avoiding overcommitment.
Both Mentee and Mentor
If the Mentor-Mentee pairing is a good match, come to an agreement about how long you estimate mentoring is needed. This may be anywhere from week to many months, depending on goals and the scope of skills tranfer How often you would like to interact? Typically at least twice per week is suggested. What is the medium for interaction (WME chat, web conferencing such as Hangouts, phone, e-mail). Often, this requires frequent interactive mentoring for a few weeks and offline communication (e-mail, PM) afterwards

Step 3: Ideas about how to engage in Mentoring Relationship

Once you are in a formal Mentee-Mentor pair, then you need to plan, start, and achieve your objectives to complete your mentoring.

Beyond technical engagement with your Mentor-Mentee relationship, you may want to build trust by talking about other topics, interests, and experiences that surround your involvement in Waze. Your first interaction may be critical to make your relationship successful, so you might want to do it through live online chat, a voice call, or video chat where a relationship can be established. Remember that email and other asynchronous communication can be more subject to misinterpretations. In your first interaction, you should talk about:

• Both your backgrounds and interests surrounding your involvement in Waze
• Mentoring expectations for both
• Time commitment during mentoring and how long it will last
• There are many ways to engage in mentoring sessions. Some may be right for your partnership, others may not. You may wish to mix and match these to meet your needs:
• Private Messages (PMs)
• Personal Email
• Forum topic dialogue
• Live chat (e.g., Google Hangouts, IM, etc.)
• Video chat (e.g., Google Hangouts, Skype, etc.)
• Telephone conversations
• In-person meetings

Mentee Dos	Mentor Dos
Own and drive the relationship. It is up to you, not the Mentor. Active listening and be receptive to ideas. (Mentee should look up Active Listening and become familiar with the technique.) Be understanding. Share experiences, strengths, weaknesses and how you’d like to improve.	Actively listen to the Mentees objectives and questions. (Mentor should look up *Active Listening and become familiar with the technique.) Be understanding Provide support and encouragement. Help the Mentee succeed at Waze efforts. Challenge the Mentee to grow through other involvement in the Waze community. Assess whether the skill-building activity requires a temporary increase n mentee rank, and whether the Mentee is ready for such an increase, even temporarily. You may need to assess current skills at the beginning of the mentorship for a week or so to make this decision. Remember, you are responsible for any changes the Mentee makes at the increased rank! For this reason, you may want to ask the Mentee to only do edits under your supervision.
Dos for Both Mentee and Mentor
Be respectful and act with integrity. Ask for honest constructive feedback. Provide honest, constructive, feedback Allow issues in the relationship to go addressed; find a third party to guide you on whether to continue and how to continue, if you think there is something wrong that you are not sure about or feel uncomfortable bringing up with your partner.

Mentee Don'ts	Mentor Don'ts
No-show at your live mentoring sessions or cancel at the last minute. Arrive at your engagement unprepared. Expect instant answers from PMs or email. Ask questions that are too personal. Ask personal favors from your Mentor to promote you in the Waze community.	No-show at your live mentoring sessions or cancel at the last minute. Be unresponsive to PMs or email. Chide or talk down to your Mentee. Evaluate Mentee performance or skill Wait for a long time to hear back from your Mentee – If they do not take charge of communication, prompt them to engage.
Don'ts Both Mentee and Mentor
DON’T make unreasonable demands (err on the side of caution). DON’T ignore feedback. DON’T abandon or sabotage the relationship if it goes awry; find a way to end it gracefully and with ongoing respect. DON’T allow the mentorship to continue indefinitely. End and claim success for what you've achieved, then start a new arrangement.

Step 4: Completing the Mentoring relationship

After you achieve your objectives, you're not done! Consider the following items.

Depending on the objective of mentoring, it’s scope, and intensity of interaction, it is a good idea to specifically communicate that your mentoring relationship is over so that both of your expectations are clear. This does not prevent future interactions or even another formal mentoring arrangement. Either party of the mentoring relationship can suggest to the other when they no longer need to participate, or can no longer participate for other reasons, such as lack of time they can commit. It is always good to have a final interaction through messaging or live to close out the mentoring relationship.

Mentee: Completing the relationship	Mentor: Completing the relationship
Let the Mentor know that you no longer need the mentoring relationship, that you’ve achieved your stated goal, or another reason for your decision. Ask about any agreed upon rank or role modifications. Thank the Mentor.	Let the Mentee know that the mentoring relationship is no longer needed. For instance reasons might be that they have achieved their goal, that they seem doing fine with their work, or that your skills are no longer the best match. If other skills are needed that you cannot provide, provide that feedback and suggest the Mentee approach another person. Suggest people if you can. Suggest other next steps, if any, that the Mentee might take. Discuss with your regional coordinator (or other peer champs) whether the mentee now deserves a permanent increase in rank… or possibly a demotion. A third party may need to review the skills of the mentee, as the act of mentoring may color the mentor’s opinion of the mentee for good or for bad. Initiate any process for rank change (including removal of any temporary increase if it is decided to not make it permanent, or any permananet promotion or odemotion if warranted).
Both Mentee and Mentor
Agree upon future activity or interaction that is not formal mentoring, such as asking questions or advice through PMs and email. The agreement may be to not do so, or it may be allowed with some limits. Discuss what you have both learned from the partnership and the other person. Consider discussing what next steps the Mentee should take in skill building. This may include moving on to other skills, or focusing for a period on the skills just learned. Feedback & Improve! Maintain confidence with your Mentor and Mentee. Privately ask for feedback from one another about how you could do a better job in your roles. If there are ideas about how the Formal Mentoring Program can improve, bring these up to the Formal Mentoring team and leadership.

What happens if things don't work out?

As suggested above, there are a number of reasons why a Formal Mentoring arrangement may come to an end. We hope that the primary reason is that the Mentee has achieved their goals. In some cases things may go wrong because we have competing priorities and different personalities. Rather than harbor concern about what went wrong, try to solve and move past the issue and move forward. Here are some suggestions about what is reasonable and options you may have.

• Mentor is no longer available (for any reason)
  • The Mentor should seek to find a replacement Formal Mentor. If that doesn't happen, the Mentee should seek to find another Formal Mentor. The previous and new Formal Mentor should evaluate if the prior work and skill set warrant any rank or role change. Mentee and new Formal Mentor should work on new goals and agreement.

• Mentee can no longer participate (for any reason)
  • Mentee should inform their Formal Mentor rather than just abandon the relationship. It is up to the Formal Mentor to decide if there was sufficient progress for any rank or role adjustment. Temporary rank or role adjustments may be revoked at the Formal Mentor's discretion.

• Mentee abandons Formal Mentoring (for any reason)
  • Should a Mentee abandon Formal Mentoring for any reason such as becoming unavailable, not communicating at all or insufficient for the Mentor's needs, then the Mentor will indicate via a message that the Formal Mentoring arrangement has been terminated. This assumes that the Mentor has taken reasonable effort to contact the Mentee. Hopefully the agreement outlined the frequency of communication that would be expected. In such cases there is typically no rank or role adjustment and any temporary adjustments are revoked. It is less likely that this editor will be accepted into Formal Mentoring in the future.

• Personality Conflict between Mentee and Formal Mentor
  • Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, conflict can occur between two people due to personality or value differences. While we seek flexibility in both the Mentor and Mentee, sometimes it doesn't work out. In that case the team should be honest about the disagreement. The Mentor should help the Mentee seek another Formal Mentor. The Mentee may have to do this on their own if the Formal Mentor does not help. A third party should be contacted to mediate, and determine if the Mentees rank and role should be adjusted, and whether any  temporary promotions should be revoked. This should be handled by those managing the Formal Mentoring program. If they are unavailable or partial to the subject, they will assign another Global Champ Mentor. If you feel the Mentor has acted inappropriately see below."

• Poor behavior by the Formal Mentor
  • We do try to train and mentor our Formal Mentors! It is possible that they could overstep their authority, impose upon or insult the Mentee, or otherwise misbehave in their role as a Formal Mentor and editor. This will not be tolerated in the Formal Mentoring program. In such cases the Mentee should seek to deflate the conflict, reduce communication, and immediately seek help from those managing the Formal Mentoring program. Mentees may also seek advice from and inform a trusted Global Champ. If you feel comfortable doing so, please contact those managing the Formal Mentoring program. Let these people deal with the situation so you don't have to engage in conflict. Be prepared to clearly articulate the issue and present evidence of the issue. If validated, such behavior could lead to removal of Formal Mentor status or other actions as decided upon by the Global Champs or Waze staff.

• Poor behavior by the Mentee
  • The Formal Mentor should first start by professionally confronting the poor behavior as an issue in useful involvement in the Waze Community and incorporate learning into the Formal Mentoring about such issues. Poor behavior may include but is not limited to blatant repeated errors in editing that damage the map, not following Formal Mentor direction with an intent to frustrate, repeated rude behavior to others in the Waze Community, and intentional disrespect to the Formal Mentor. In such cases the Formal Mentor is expected to clearly articulate the issue and present evidence to other Champs for discussion and advice. Such behavior could result in ejection of the Mentee from the Formal Mentoring program and other appropriate steps as needed such as revocation of editing privileges.

This new page is currently undergoing modifications. The information and guidance is currently considered accurate enough to be followed now. Content is being prepared by one or more users. Do not make any changes before you send a private message to this user.

Mentoring is a great way to learn from those with more experience or to pass down your experience to others, but the interaction usually ends up helping everyone and creating a better Waze community for all.

Overview

Mentoring is the process where a more experienced person (the mentor) imparts knowledge and skill to one who is less experienced (the protege, or in the terms of Waze Formal Mentoring programs, the mentee).

Typically a Mentor is much more experienced than a Mentee. In some cases a Mentor may have less general experience, but significant specialty knowledge in one or more topics. For instance, such a Mentor may know a lot about a regional issue, city, or state, or type of road system. There are two main forms of mentoring in Waze; Formal Mentoring, and Informal Mentoring. One is not intended to replace the other, but instead they are designed to coexist. Each form has its' own benefits and disadvantages which will be discussed below.

Formal mentoring

For more details on Formal Mentoring, see Mentoring/Formal.

Formal Mentoring is a structured program, where a specific officially approved Waze Mentor and a Mentee are brought together, with a responsibility to accomplish a specific goal. The goal will be a defined objective, duration, and under a common set of rules, with the purpose to better some aspect of their Waze interaction. The objective may be building a particular skill over time, learning to participate in a certain aspect of the Waze community, learning how a portion of the Waze technology works, or mastering the skills required to increase the Mentees' editing rank.

Formal Mentoring can accelerate advancement of editor rank and/or roles while maintaining quality of editing and Waze Community interaction.

A Formal Mentoring arrangement will define the methods of communication, the frequency, and their intensity, and will include a definable objective, and normally a target date for completion.

Informal mentoring

For more details on Informal Mentoring, see Mentoring/Informal.

Most of the mentoring on Waze takes place informally, without structure. Informal Mentoring goes on all the time when one Wazer asks a question of another and when one Wazer helps another. This happens any time two editors with different experience levels in some aspect of editing get together to help the Mentee better understand that aspect, and how to implement that knowledge.

We encourage you to engage in such interaction regularly and have some ideas for you here. Examples include the Waze Forum, WME Chat, dialog through Private Messages, and much more. Becoming a regular Informal Mentor is a great way to see if you're good at teaching various editing skills, and might be interested in Formal Mentoring.

Informal Mentoring usually either has no goal beyond the immediate issue at hand, or it may be a repeated interaction without an overarching defined goal guiding all of those interactions. Neither party has any formal responsibility to the other.

Mentoring resources

A list of available resources which can be used as part of both Formal, and Informal Mentoring is available at Mentoring/Resources.

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All the Mentoring program pages are linked in the box below. New pages can be added to this list by clicking here.