Atlassian’s Futurist Dom Price shares his Top 3 Tips on how to choose a mentor.
Industry mentoring for young students is a tangible and practical way of helping them decide what possible future study and career paths are not just available but interesting to them, and helps them humanise and relate to people in real-world jobs and industry sectors.
But finding a powerful and inspirational mentor once you have begun to navigate the world of work is equally as important. The learning and inquiring shouldn’t stop once you get your first foot in the door.
In a rapidly changing professional landscape, the aim is to be continually questioning and creating, adapting and evolving, striving and succeeding - now more than ever with COVID-19 causing widespread disruption to traditional ways of working and distributed team collaboration.
Even when we’re not adapting to a global forcing function like COVID-19, dedicated industry and personal mentoring helps to shape professional growth, team-based performance and enterprise skills development, as well as encouraging confidence to be more than just another cog in the proverbial wheel.
Future Amp recently spoke to two dynamic leaders inside Atlassian - one of the world’s fastest growing and market-leading technology companies - both of whom have experienced active mentoring throughout their careers, and say there are few things more crucial to creating productive, purposeful and fulfilling work lives.
Mary Raleigh (Atlassian Head of Team Playbook) and Dom Price (Atlassian Work Futurist) currently play key roles in the 3000+ global workforce at Atlassian - one of Australia’s most celebrated ‘unicorns’ (companies valued at $1B+).
Founded by UNSW college friends Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar with a $10,000 credit card and a big vision in 2002, the Aussie-born-turned-global tech giant currently valued at $50B+ is a major global player creating SaaS development and collaboration tools targeted at software developers.
With a mission to help “unleash the potential of every team” - and leading the field as one of the world’s exemplars in terms of value-driven, ace-places-to-work companies right now - Atlassian claims it can help professions from medicine to space travel to disaster response to pizza deliveries, advance humanity through the power of software.
“I‘m a firm believer in unleashing the potential of humans as humans, not as robots, and finding ways of working that allow people to bring their true and best selves to work, and to do the best work of their life in diverse teams,” Dom says.
Dom’s been with Atlassian for seven years, and as a superstar futurist, ‘workopen’ and ‘teaming’ evangelist, his current role is to help people understand what the future of work looks, moves and behaves like - and to help today’s workforce navigate that change.
“The future of work is all about unleashing the power of teams. Organisations are being more urgent as they come up against competition, a faster innovation cycle and increasing needs of customers. Teams are solving more complex problems, whilst being increasingly diverse in their make-up, and often globally distributed. So at Atlassian we've strived to create a culture of innovation that is inclusive and exciting, and a set of team rituals and team playbook, that enables our teams to remain nimble, autonomous and focused.”
Alongside Dom in the Atlassian Playbook team is Mary, who has also worked at the company for seven years, but it wasn’t where she initially thought she would be.
“I interviewed for a marketing role for a product I'd clearly never used, but the interviewer thankfully steered me in the right direction and recommended me for the Head of Global Community role which I luckily landed and did for my first two years at Atlassian!,” she says.
While Atlassian has had a rocket-fast pathway to market, and those who’ve been inside the company have ridden the rapidly rising tide, mentoring has also played a big role in both Mary and Dom’s success and work life satisfaction to date.
“I think mentoring is important full stop. It benefits the employee, employer, mentor, and everyone in the broader community. The best mentors I've had have worked to understand me as a person, not a widget in a machine to make faster. That level of understanding and trust is essential,” Dom says.
“I've always had mentors since I started my career with Deloitte London in 2000. Originally these were always "in work" mentors, but I quickly realised that I personally learn better from people that have a tangential background and more lateral thinkers.
“Most of my recent mentors have been from a variety of industries, backgrounds and mindsets. They've supported me, challenged me, helped me grow - and helped me unleash my own potential.”
Mary has also found mentoring, which has come from both structured and less predictable sources, helps give her perspective on the day-to-day vortex, and the bigger picture.
“Without a mentor to check-in with I tend to get caught up in unimportant aspects of my work/life, and a wise mentor helps me look at my situations from multiple angles.
I also believe, "If you can't see it, you can't be it" - and mentors play a big role in that. Every mentor I have, I aspire to be like in some way. I even have mentors who don't know they are mentoring me - or don't even know me...yet! Like Sarah Blakely of Spanx and, of course, Oprah!” she says.
“Mostly, mentoring gives me confidence and, importantly, personal and professional patience.
I see how hard my mentors have worked to earn their success, so when I get frustrated that things aren’t happening fast enough (which is daily if not hourly!), I channel the voice of one of my mentors to ground me and remind me to trust that success takes time.”
Mary has benefitted from a range of mentoring styles, from skills-based internal mentoring (mostly from people she directly reports to or works with) in everything from pivot tables to crucial conversations, to those in her social or community network.
“I've had (various) mentoring styles from (people) in my personal life to help with my desire to contribute to my community and my professional roles, and I’ve also had the benefit of mentorship from a family friend who I often meet over a glass of wine or two.
“I also have more structured and consistent mentoring from wonderful, wise people like Madeleine (Grummet co-founder of Girledworld and Future Amp), who I was introduced to through a women's leadership program.And I have good friends who act as mentors even when they think they are just giving me friendly advice!” she says.
But overall, in her experience, Mary has found external mentoring the most powerful and effective for her in terms of navigating personal growth opportunities and career next steps.
“I personally prefer external mentoring as internal mentoring tends to turn into how to navigate the organisation to get what I want, and often it's harder to see the big picture.
“If I have a mentor at my company it feels like that person could impact my career there directly so I’m less apt to share frustrations openly.”
I also find internal mentoring always is less vulnerable because it's probably with someone more senior than me who I want to impress,” she says.
Dom, who acts as a professional mentor to many, picks his own personal mentors based on three factors:
Do they have a specific skill or ability he wants to acquire?
Do they have a demonstrated ability to share and coach it (do they know they have the skill I am seeking and is it actually teachable?)
Do they have the time to invest in him?
“My mentor relationships tend to last until I feel like I've acquired that skill. I'd guess that 90% of my mentors are still friends, colleagues or connections in my network. When it goes well, it's the first episode of a much longer relationship,” he says.
“I don't think you can force mentoring. It needs a pull, not a push.”
For more on the power of mentorship to help today’s students develop future skills and career pathways for tomorrow’s world of work, sign up to be first in line for Future Amp’s global platform release.