A community that becomes your cohort of mentors
I do offer mentorship and coaching, but I’m well aware that 1:1 coaching isn’t for everyone. That’s why I was nodding heavily while I read Jacob Evans’s article “Mentorship To Me” earlier today. In it, he explains that he learned from a lot of people, but most weren’t “people who signed up for the job”. What he means is, they didn’t call themselves “mentors”. They simply chose to share their knowledge online, and were happy to take others along on their own learning journey.
Jacob appreciates that he can tap many sources to feed his personal growth:
Being part of Cloudflare, T3 ecosystem, Theo’s, Kent C Dodd’s, and the various dev communities I’m in has taught me that the best mentorship is often ambient, it’s absorbing knowledge from many sources rather than one guru.
This is exactly why I founded The Server Room, my DevOps community of practice, two years ago. I’m on our community forum and our chat every day to help community members grow. But this community is different to my Office Hour live streams, where people come to ask questions and I try to give them useful answers. Our community has a far more complex and beneficial structure of knowledge flow and peer support.
The following list contains just a few examples of the interactions happening in The Server Room. None of them require anyone wearing a “mentor” label.
- On the forum, a community member shares their growth goals. Others not only give helpful pointers, but also follow up later to hold them accountable.
- During a “Hot Seat” session, a community member presents different options they’re considering as a solution to a problem. The other participants give them feedback based on their own experience.
- In chat, a community member shares their latest learnings, and others congratulate them on their progress. They also suggest possible next steps to tackle.
- A community member writes a forum post about the fun they’re having with a certain technology. Someone replies that it gave them the confidence to finally give it a try themselves.
- During a community workshop, a small sidenote turns out to be the missing puzzle piece that a participant had been searching for weeks.
- A community member describes a conflict they’re having at work. Others who had similar experiences provide them with both emotional support and actionable advice.
When people join The Server Room, they don’t sign up to a support forum where some lone veteran engineer answers their questions. They join a community of peers from which they can get help, and in turn are expected to make their own contributions themselves. This way, we create the proverbial rising tide that floats all boats.
Jacob put it really well in his conclusion (emphasis mine):
So yeah, traditional mentorship has its place, but don’t sleep on the power of community-based learning and peer networks. Sometimes the best guidance comes from the people right next to you in the trenches.
If this insight resonates with you, as it did with me, please consider joining The Server Room!