 Hi everyone, thanks so much for joining me today in Mentoring 101. I guess I should kick things off by introducing myself. My name is Elle Marquez and I'm the community architect for Operation Safe Escape. We're a 501c3 dedicated to helping victims of domestic violence through education and training in order to be able to get back their digital lives. I'd be happy to answer any questions you guys might have about that. I'll be hanging out in Slack. When people ask me who I am, that isn't what I say because that's what I do. When people ask me who I am, why say hi? I'm Ella Punk and I'm a professional noob. That might be a strange title but it really is what I believe myself to be. I will never be a subject matter expert and that's simply because I don't want to be. I love learning new things. I love the adventure and breaking things and failing miserably and then figuring it all out. The pride that comes from success after failure. But to be honest with you, I never take this road alone. I don't believe that I should have to reinvent the wheel in order to learn something. So what I've done is I've been able to rely on the community to be able to ask questions and get help and find my foundation in mentoring. And so what I'm here today is not to give you the tools or the skills that you need to be the best mentor or the best mentee. Because honestly guys, you already have them. What I'm here to do today is to teach you how to better wield these tools. So maybe you're wondering, well how are you going to do that? Our agenda today is pretty simple. What I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be telling you a story and that's my story. And I don't do it to tell you, oh look how amazing I am or feel bad for what has happened. I do it so that you can use it as a template, as a prompt, as whatever you need to be able to further your adventure without having to commit the same mistakes that I have. Now every good story begins with an origin and mine begins in a small town in Mexico. You see my parents were migrant workers so I had the joy of living here and living in Mexico and some might say, in fact they do say that I came from a disadvantaged background. But I don't see it that way. I see it as I had a very happy childhood. Yes, I lived off the grid but that was simply because there was no grid to speak of. But every good story has to have a turning point. And so I found mine when I was in my 20s and my partner, my husband had left and I was sitting there with three kids, no job history, no skills to be able to rely on outside of those that I had learned on the farm. Luckily, I found a boot camp called the Linux for Ladies program. Now this was a six weeks intense boot camp designed to teach the basic intricacies of Linux administration, MySQL and Apache to a group of women with little to no tech skills. But I did it, I enrolled. And you know something? I was successful in those six weeks but the way that I did it was by relying on the rest of the women there. Now we all had our own skills and we all had those things that we excelled at and those things that we did horribly at but we didn't focus on that. We focused on what we did well. We specialized in that. And then we stayed after class and taught one another and somebody would teach me about my SQL queries and I would sit there going like that's not even English and somebody else would stand up and go okay, what she's trying to say. And we'd work together to educate one another and to help us grow. Later, I came to believe that that is an aspect of what we now call cohort mentoring. No, there weren't specific mentors assigned but maybe there were. Those individuals who exceeded at that test were the mentors for that moment. Now every story though has to have a good villain. Oh, before we move on in case any of you guys were watching that's me right there. But every good story has to have a villain. And unfortunately in this story the villain is the community because it wasn't long until I started hearing that I was nothing more than a publicity stunt that the work that I had done the certification that I had received that the job I'd managed to obtain at Rackspace who Forbes 500 called at the times the job that I'd managed to get at Rackspace who at the time was touted as one of the hardest industries one of the hardest companies to get even a job interview in was simply because I was the diversity higher it was only because of Linux for Ladies and the publicity around it that I'd accomplished anything and what that did was that planted a seed of doubt inside of me and later I would figure out that that seed is what I think grew into imposter syndrome you know something my kids had gotten used to eating so I went through and I said all right I'm gonna do this job and I'm going to do it to the best way that I can. So I dove in and six months after this all occurred my tickets were reviewed by a colleague on a different shift and his review that went to myself and to my manager was simply even to this day those words hurt because as you can imagine it spurred that inside of me it was the water that grew that seed or as I like to say now it was the fertilizer that helped grow that seed of imposter syndrome so I went in that day ready to quit I was done I didn't want to do this anymore so I sat at my desk wondering how do I leave this job with a little bit of dignity how do I stop being that diversity card and letting people know that it got to me finally so I was quiet and I'm looking at my screen and one of my teammates rolls over and goes would you break after all it's the only reason I'm gonna be quiet right and I had a moment then so if you've been checking your email now or looking at your phone I want you to tune in right now because this might be the most important talk or most important part of this presentation because what I had then was a moment and it was a moment that we've all had and we all will have again and that's do you tell the truth or do you do what we all do and just shrug it off and say oh I'm fine don't worry about it but I had nothing left to lose so I told him what had happened and what I realized now is I took that moment and I passed it on to him now he could have just said what we all say oh you know that sucks I'm so sorry things like that happen I didn't know what he's talking about and moved on with this day but what I'm glad he did is he took that moment and he said you know what let me take a look at those tickets and I'll give you a real review something more than four words so off he went about an hour later he comes back and he says no look at these tickets I can see exactly what he's saying because yeah week one week two you could have been automated you were just giving statistics he started giving them to him he's like well look at two months ago you got mad and you just started solving the problems for them I think you're ready to grow here's a few scripts here's a few tickets I think they would work on why don't you review these and ask me questions as you go along now I want you to notice something there wasn't any type of mentorship mentioned in any of that but what he became is the hero of my story that's Aaron and yes he gave me permission Aaron would come by and even without me asking just say hey how are you doing do you understand that script and in time even though I never said Aaron will you be my mentor or he never said you know what I'm your mentor let's plan out your career it really is what he became because to me a mentor is someone who helps you fill those knowledge gaps who helps you seek opportunities to grow and excel that's exactly what he was doing you can let down your guard that's that moment of vulnerability that I was talking about it's someone who you can share your insecurities and ask all those stupid questions that we all have sometimes and I know everybody says oh don't worry there isn't such a thing as a stupid question yeah but when you're the one asking it it sure does feel that way you know what ended up happening is my whole team grew because I would ask Aaron a question and he'd start giving me an answer and after a time Corey would chime in and say the way that you need to look at it is and then Kevin would come in from the back and tell Corey something he hadn't thought about and then of course Avery had to jump in with something else and so what happened was every time I asked a question it became L Storytime the entire group was growing and learning new things here's that concept again of that cohort mentoring without any official titles that really came to resolve in myself that the way we should look at mentorship is that it's there for a reason and a season and a lifetime and what I need for you is for you to be that reason for you to take that moment and step in even if it's just a moment in time and it never goes anywhere else that's still a mentor that's still a teacher that's still that moment in time when you can make a difference in someone's life but these little moments they become like seeds and sometimes they're able to grow into a season now I loved my work with Erin and I'm still very close and we're great friends but what came out of that is I learned that Corey taught in the way that I learned he told things in parables and in stories and if you haven't figured it out that's the way that I learned in stories and so we kind of grew into a season because it was a time that I no longer wanted to be a Linux admin I was so tired of it so I went to him and I said I want to be a level 2 admin I want to grow, I want to look for something else and within that he said okay let's sit down let's look at the leveling exam let's see what positions they're open and we'll kind of help you delve through it he didn't do it for me but he gave me the tools that I needed to be able to do it for myself so we're about halfway through this talk now and some of you are like great you've had a great upcoming you've had great mentors and teachers but that's not what I came to learn about is how do I do that how do I get a mentor and if you've been listening this isn't going to come to a surprise to you and honestly some of you might not like this answer and that's you have to quit looking for mentors mentors have become such a formal relationship when I hear about some of these mentoring programs they're like A and B you will meet for six months and you'll have these goals and you'll accomplish these things like that almost seems like an arranged marriage to me and if you only have six months or three months or six weeks to figure that out that's way too much stress now I'm not going against formal mentorship companies or formal mentorship programs that might work for some in the small amount of time but I really think that we need to learn to go beyond that if we're truly looking for growth so what you need to look for is I think you need to look for teachers now I'm not saying that a teacher can't be called a mentor what I'm saying here is that you need to look for someone as I like to say that speaks your English we all don't learn the same way and there are people out there who are geniuses who are masters in their field who can explain things and draw them out and write white papers and they'd be absolutely no good to me because I don't learn that way I would struggle I need people who talk in stories who tell tells who explain the OSI model to me like a post office because that's a lesson that Cori gave me that I will never forget and when you find those people take your moment go up ask that question don't be afraid the worst thing that happens is they say no and they blow you off and guess what you're in the exact same place that you were to begin with and though when you ask those questions make sure to ask more I have people that come up and they ask me something and I explain it I can kind of see that they're lost and I'm trying to recalculate how to explain it better and they go oh thank you and they walk off and I'm like I know you didn't understand that why don't you follow up but people are so afraid of seeming like they're asking the same question or perhaps seeming dumb or feeling that they don't know anything and they never will that they don't ask that follow up I am great at saying okay so every third word that you said was English can we go from explain it like I'm 10 to explain it like I'm 5 please and if I truly don't understand because our methods don't work I will go and ask 10 different people the same question till I find someone who can explain it to me the way that I need who can give me the foundation and you know what sometimes go and ask 10 people because maybe you'll get a more well rounded answer that way and after that when you ask their help though understand what it's asking one of the hardest parts for me is when people come up to me and they say oh I loved your docker course I love the container course that you wrote help me get a job in containers okay I don't know what that means do you want me to look at ads for you do you want me to send you jobs when they come my way are you wanting to know more about docker that's a lot of stress on me I cannot write your career for you but if you come to me with very specific questions like I want to work in docker but I'm having a very hard time understanding how networking is or how networking works could you lead me to some documentation could I reach out to you once I look at your documentation if I need further clarification yeah those are things that I can work with I'm not making a commitment to other than to hey let me send you some resources and answer a few questions those are moments that could definitely grow into something more and they actually have when people have approached it the right way and finally this one's hard because it's going to be hard for everyone be open to failing sometimes you're going to make that approach and someone is going to blow you off oh that sucks that you don't understand that and they're going to move on it happens just because you gave the moment doesn't mean that they have to take it I found an amazing mentor a teacher who every time I asked him for help was so great at explaining things to me and I thought alright I'm going to go for the certification I'm going to ask him to help me and when I went to him he goes I can't I'm sorry and I think he saw that look of hurt in my eyes because he said it's because my wife is nine months pregnant I'm about to go and paternity leave would kill me if I made that kind of commitment I have embraced failure and I often tell people that I've made a career out of it and it's because I was reading this book by Samuel Beckett and it was the most powerful quote to me because he said ever tried, ever failed no matter try again, fail again and fail better you will never believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better this was a very powerful moment to me because it made me realize I will never accomplish anything and mentorship in my career if I don't just embrace that I'm going to break things and it's going to be awful but someone can help me put it together and I keep talking about goals and adding your questions and your adventure and some of you may be going I don't even know enough to know what that adventure would be so let's break down how you're going to go about it now some people have advised me to try bullet journaling to try OKRs to try dream boards and those are all great if that's what works for you but all of these are very abstract and there's a way to get to a very distinct way a very specific way at looking at those now some of you are about to roll your eyes I'm going to own that but I love using smart goals because smart goals can be a breakdown of your bullet journal and what you're doing smart goals can be kind of an actionable way to get to your dream board but I think that what people do wrong is that they teach smart goals in a very kind of a box way and the fact is that they don't have to be now this works for me but I recently took on a season with one of my favorite mentees and she is such a free spirit I could not put her in a box if I tried but that's OK because we just shifted these to fit to her she wanted something that was significant in her life something that was truly meaningful something that she could action on so we shifted this around to fit the way that she needed this tool to be do the same for you take some serious time thinking this through I've seen a people that have even changed the word a little bit to fit the way that they needed to look like so I'm going to break down the way that I've approached this and like I said please just craft this to your style but when I decided that I didn't want to be more like honestly I hated it I thought OK well I work at Rackspace it's the managed cloud company let me learn the cloud that's a dream like how do I know when I know the cloud what is the cloud so I said OK I'm working at Rackspace and Rackspace developed the OpenStack technology that builds the cloud so I'm going to learn OpenStack strange editing point here sorry my kids walked in the joy of working from home these days let's get back to it though I thought alright learning OpenStack that's not really enough how do I know what I'm doing how do I know when I get there so I needed something measurable at the time there was a certification test that was for an OpenStack administrator that could work I was either an OpenStack administrator or I wasn't there was really no great point there was something that was very measurable to me then I needed to ask is this actually attainable for me well I had three kids at home I was working full time I lived an hour from home I was currently had a group of mentees or people that I was teaching but it's something that I really wanted it's something that I could make attainable my kids would understand going to school to studying my mentees they would understand that I needed to step away from my own personal growth and really I could make it work if I just dedicated the time to do so alright we could do this so the next thing I needed to figure out is is it realistic for me ok the test was written by Rackspace that's a plus hey we have a training team at Rackspace for administrators and we have a group of administrators so I went up to the teachers and I said I want to do this could you guys help me set a path oh it's not that hard it's actually broken down into domains all you need to understand is what each of those domains are and be able to speak to them it's a practical test as long as you understand how the parts work it should be simple enough alright well now I know that I'm going to become an open stack certified administrator by taking things one domain at a time this is looking a lot better for me but this can still be a dream like how am I going to accomplish this is one of those things that I say is going to happen and two years later I'm thinking back like I really wanted that to happen and that's where the concept of time bound comes from now did I mention that I hated being a Linux admin I wanted out so what I did next I do not recommend but if you can do it more power to you I said I am going to accomplish this goal within 60 days and thanks to that amazing training team who kind of held my hand every time I broke something and honestly to my own studying I was able to accomplish that and a really interesting thing happened after that I went up to tell the training team hey I passed thank you for your help and they said we know the way you think now why don't you take that certification and come work for us these were all moments that led up to a season that was an amazing time for me if you're thinking that's cool like I love how you got there and I'm really comfortable where I am right now but I want to give back and I use those tools to be a better mentor your job is actually really simple and that's stop focusing on that let people grow on their own it is called self improvement self growth for a reason what you need to be there is for those moments when you can help them along my advice to you is simply be open be honest and be vulnerable be open to those moments when you see someone looking for help if someone comes to you and ask for help take the moment if it's 5-10 minutes if you can't dedicate a lifetime that's fine be honest about what you can do and at the same time when it comes to being honest be honest about what you know I can't tell you how many times my journey was set back because someone was unable to say I don't know or I can't understand so they would feed me lines that were just blatantly wrong and I had to go back and figure that out later and be vulnerable we all love to tell stories about how great we did and this thing that we fixed but it's hard to be motivated when you're talking to somebody who doesn't know what it feels like to break things somebody who has never failed the way that you have and that's really easy to feed that imposter syndrome now every good story it has an end right and I also told you that this journey is for a lifetime you've got your moment your season in a lifetime I can't tell you the end of the story I really can't because I'm not there yet I'm five years into my tech career the best parts I think are still to come but what about a lifetime I definitely feel like I've had a lifetime adventures and remember Cory who I told you about he was there day one during my interview at Rackspace he fought for me to be on his team he led my led my adventures so many times he truly has become my lifetime mentor and by this I mean I spoke to him shortly before I took this video every time I have a question on something that I don't know where to go to say hey Cory let me springboard something off of you and if he knows it he'll give me a bit of information and kind of set me on his way because after five years he knows the way that I think and if he doesn't know it he goes you know what I know somebody let me get you in contact with them now can I guarantee that this is all going to work for you no it's all about how you take this lesson take this template and write out your own story but what I can tell you is if you really dedicate to it you can you can really write your own adventure I keep saying that but that's the way it feels you can make the best out of everything that you have because in 2014 I didn't know what Linux was and later that year by October of that year I was a red hat certified system administrator working at Rackspace and not more than what two three months later I was a red hat certified engineer none of these were done alone they were all done by asking questions and asking for help and relying those around me when I became an open stock trainer I got to go to the summit met a wonderful woman named spots who helped me get on the mentorship team because I was really passionate about it shortly after I was asked to lead it she worked at Linux Academy guess where I work next it's not just about contacts it's about getting to know people asking questions and kind of inviting them to be on your journey I was never more proud than when operation safe escape asked that I could take the role because now I feel like I'm not only giving back but I'm helping to change lives that perhaps is the greatest adventure that I've had so far and I can't even think about what 2021 will come hopefully you've enjoyed this story and I'm hoping that you guys have some questions normally this is an hour long talk that I've really condensed so feel free to hit me up on Slack I live on Twitter I should be more embarrassed on that I have my own website email like I am readily available please feel free to reach out with any questions and I hope that you guys enjoy the rest of the conference. Hi everyone I wanted to say thank you so much for listening in I've had a few of you go ahead and ask some technical questions if you can talk to me in Slack I'd be so happy to share this moment with you but one question I wanted to make sure to answer live is how do you handle when you didn't connect with your mentor and mentee like how do you in that relationship and honesty this is the part where you have to just step up and say you know I don't think that we teach and learn in the same way I don't think that I can help further what you're doing however I would be happy to help you find someone who will you help them by helping you help them most by helping them take their next step help them understand what their question is or maybe even draw out those smart goals so that they can pursue their career and know that just because this didn't work out it's not on them it didn't work out because people have different ways of speaking and teaching so I want to encourage everyone that the biggest part of being a mentor and a mentee is the honesty behind it people will respect that and they're going to be more willing to continue their journey because they don't feel like they have failed maybe even quote that same by Samuel Beckett and understand that we all fail in our journey but that's just when we stand up and learn our lesson and keep going like I said I'd be available on Slack and happy to answer any questions but I've kind of pushed my time so if you guys want to talk to me there I'd be happy thank you