12 FAQs of Mentoring
It’s 2023 & am amazed at how the world still thinks a mentor ought to just teach. Here’s a comprehensive list of 12 FAQs from my mentoring sessions that’d help mentees & mentors alike.
⚠️Fair Warning:
Over the scope of this article whenever the word mentor is encountered it would apparently adhere to signify only the domain of product management, product-based organizations & startups to a large extent. And also needless to mention PM = product management.
📝Note:
When the format of this article could look more like a Q&A, please remember that it was deliberately intended to be kept that way so as to improve readability & accessibility.
1. What’s a PM role anyway & why is it so sought after?
At a broad level product manager figures at the intersection of business (strategy), product (market fitment) and user / customer experience. When it goes without saying that the role is totally growth oriented it applies both in terms of the org and the product(s).
So, the role is also naturally inclined towards communication and lots of it as a PM is often found interacting with each team there is in an organization over envisioning & taking the product from 0 to 1 and then being able to scale it n(x) | where 2<n<∞.
And the dynamic nature of the job makes it a mouth-watering prospect owing to the exciting days over the entire workflow irrespective of the time of day or day of week as one so often is getting roped into being part of discussions, meetings, briefings, standups, retros upholding the skill of problem solving all along.
2. Who can become a PM?
If the current trend stands testimony then there is absolutely no bar to who can take up the role and land that coveted chance to become a PM. Earlier it was largely believed that candidates with a certain background would be the best fit.
Although there still are organizations who find themselves going for prior experience over a domain, they are mostly typical of the ones whose products happen to be totally nuanced like for instance, an org that builds “payment gateway APIs” barring which that ask would be coming from orgs that aren’t totally focused on product building.
Also, a word of caution here, when anyone can become a PM, the categorization of holding the title of “great PMs” are apparently exhibited by only a countable few. So, there is a lot of nuance that ought to be mastered in quick time as much as it is about finding your groove, understanding the method to the madness.
3. Why are there only a countable few great PMs?
When many an argument has taken place and many a dialogue has been exchanged in this regard, some believe that product management is science when some are split over it being close to an art. But once you gain that little bout of experience you’d know it is a combination of both with the proportions varying based on the situation you find yourself in as a PM.
If you think of the product building or the engineering aspect then it surely is a science but when you look at it from the perspective of UX or design then it perhaps looks more like an art. But just like the many qualities successful PMs know which battles to pick and they’d quaintly distance themselves from such arbitrary arguments and concentrate on the outcomes and getting the work done without losing focus whilst also guiding all the other teams / stakeholders navigate their teams towards those outcomes as aligned with the goals.
Remember, commonsense and common knowledge prevail here over science and art.
4. What defines / is needed for PM’s success?
Ironic as it may sound and contrary to common belief in most places there could be very little clarity over the success or the parameters that quantify as input towards gauging the success of the role.
And there are quite a number of reasons to this which range from lack of high-level goals, lack of clarity over outcomes, a culture that underpins outputs, lack of shared understanding.
That’s perhaps why it is always a great idea not to assume things or even get lost in the luster of optics or the aura of the brand name of an organization and just pop the question straight at them interviewers as to how they would quantify the success for this role as quite frankly it could vary all the time depending on the goals that matter to the organization at that particular point in time.
5. What’s important - courses & certifications or experience?
When the answer to this question largely depends on the trend in the market, the current one seems to be tilted towards getting a majority of them aspirants to believe that taking courses or certifications is “THE WAY FORWARD” unless someone is a lateral hire holding some experience in the craft already in which case it’d be easy to make the cut.
But, there again is a chicken and egg problem, without prior product experience getting into a PM role may be difficult when getting into an entry level role requires one to prove the possession of some typical PM skills.
I have had people approach me to ensure whether they’re on the right path as they’re taking some short online courses on Udemy (the choice is based on the fact that it appears relatively cheap) & as much as an elaborate course at a top B-school like IIMs, ISB, Columbia University, Harvard (the choice goes based on the repute or the brand name). So, the confusion is REAL.
And, to settle it once and for all, NO! You won’t need certifications to bag PM roles provided you already know or you have someone experienced guiding you through to help you wade through the chaos and confusion.
6. Would it be a cakewalk to land a PM role after finishing those courses?
Ok, get this straight. It never was, never is and never will be easy landing a PM role, so one could just forget the phrase “cakewalk” being applicable in this parlance. About 6-7 years back when the whole PM thing started getting some air and began picking up in different pockets of the world that wasn’t essentially “the Valley” various B-schools took notice of this trend and added product management courses into their armory and even after finishing those courses people did find it a bit challenging landing a PM role.
Today that awareness in the market has multiplied 5x and there are more people who are taking to this craft, which also divides the probability of someone landing a role by may be 10x.
Also, when it goes without saying that the chances of landing a PM role do depend on the way the course is structured, the concepts that are taught alongside their scope, limitation & right application, the pragmatism and the dynamism of the role in itself adding to real-world complications that could make it seem like a driver who is a beginner having to wade through crazy city / urbane traffic with confidence levels taking a gruesome hit time and time again praying for survival at every step.
7. Do you need a management degree to land a PM role?
If you have ever had some experience in hiring or building teams over your careers you’d understand why some places demand fancy degrees from IVY league B-schools. It’s just to filter out the competition because if not for that the number of applications they may be starting at might as well be 300-400 for one single job opening.
Again, referring largely to the market trends, it is very evident that it doesn’t seem necessary for an aspirant to hold a management degree from a top B-school although there may still be the odd organization that demands one possesses those degrees if one ought to qualify to apply.
8. What experience is best suited to get into a PM role?
There have been a few myths floating around that if you possess a background in Tech and have held a few positions or played some specific roles like for instance: a business analyst, then the transition to product roles ought to be natural. But that’s far from the truth.
When a prior stint in Tech with experience over roles like business analysis may come in handy and may also get the profile an initial nudge at some places, it stands more than proven as a point today that good product orgs. don’t really fall for such factors.
If it’s anything that impresses it’s the way you present your profile so as to be classified as a worthy candidate suiting their requirements for the role of a PM effectively extracting those transferable skills and molding the experiences you’ve had in your past.
9. Where & how does impostor syndrome fit in to all of this?
The impostor syndrome exists and is also pretty real, alive and kicking than you think, applicable even to the best of product people with years of experience in product. But, come to think of its nitty-gritty, it is more like an event or a sequence of events that happen in your life leaving it all to the reaction which happens to be the decider of how you absorb it (akin to the “80-20 principle”)
So, there are 2 outcomes possible here:
you take it all to your head and let it bog you down
you fight it out and see how you can use that self-doubt to keep focus on trying harder and getting better all the time
10. When it comes to career options and guidance, what’s important between short / long term planning? And how does a mentor and his advice ought to fit in here?
First things first. When it could be very natural to think of the current and immediate timeline so as to skill up and make oneself suitably fit into a space where the demand lies by absorbing and mastering the right set of skills, it is also equally important to think in the direction of how the ownership & accountability being shouldered here is going to add value to the profile and your career in the long run.
So, the manner in which a mentor ought to fit in and add value is to help out the mentee figure out the best of routes to take from the various possibilities that exist now whilst also hatching out a feasible plan as to how those current outcomes in the short term would add up to aligning with the long term goals or plans that intern add up to a fascinating career putting one on the growth path.
Providing direction doesn’t only have to do with what to pick, it also ought to involve what to drop just as much.
11. Do you need a Mentor? Why do you need one?
Look back to your careers up to this point right from the time you were in school and how you had to dabble with a whole lot of subjects split over theory that happened over classroom sessions and the practical bit which happened over physical experiences with the actual stuff either amidst nature or in a simulated environment like a lab. All of us learnt everything as it was perhaps mandatory to undergo that bit, but there would have been quite a few things that we had just been a part of physically present there but out mental state depicted confusion and with these questions prominently ringing aloud in our heads:
why the hell am I doing this? &
why is it necessary that I have to go through / put up with this?
Correlate!?
Fast forward into your professional life, it is all very serious and you just can’t choose to go through the motions over your 40 hours per week. It’s got to fit your mind space if you have got to fit in there, more so over a PM’s role because of the dynamism & the high agency that’d be required.
So, the role a good mentor ought to play is to be descriptive and help you figure out what’s right or wrong for you, pick what’s within your purview of strength and help you learn to play to them whilst also paying enough heed towards mending your weaknesses just as much.
12. Who ought to be your mentor?
Let’s take the analogy of a class again. Let’s say you cleared 8th grade just now and would be going into the 9th in the upcoming term.
Can you teach the 8th class?
Well, that could be difficult though some may argue that it could be possible
But, can you teach the kindergartens / the 1st class?
Of course, that ought to be a cakewalk provided you know how to captivate a class and not bore them to death by reading out or making them read out from textbooks
Extending the same analogy, multi-dimensional experience is a must, so as to be able to save you from myopic vision.
It may not be enough to pick a mentor with some product experience irrespective of how many years that would be. It ideally ought to be someone from a skip-level at a bare minimum who ought to fit those shoes of a mentor for PMs.
Why?
The answer is very simple, it’s not about providing clarity on the immediate next step but also helping you chart out an action plan that’s well aligned with your long-term goals in your career.
Also, as I have seen it happen many times over how mentees aren’t really aware of where that PM role would lead them say in the next 10 years, in which case a mentor ought to be able to provide that clarity so that they can choose and set a long-term career goal & more importantly with the additional responsibility of guiding them stepwise over how to play to their strengths so as to help them set foot on the right path towards achieving those goals, not taking away anything at all from those stage-wise milestones & retrospectives at crucial junctures.
Conclusion:
Remember the subtle difference that lies between teaching and mentoring when that could look like a thin line to some.
When the former is about catering to a class mostly over a cohort / in mass with a good number of people in there and disbursing the right information, the latter has a much higher responsibility to cater & tune everything down to those individual needs, work with them 1:1 and that could range from upskilling over knowledge, practical real-world exposure & experience & helping mentees largely understand their shortcomings & charting out action plans so that they can overcome it all.