Mentoring

Definition

Mentoring transfers judgement rather than answers. It is how an architect's effect scales beyond the decisions they personally make, and it is consistently the highest-return use of their time.

Why it beats making more decisions yourself

An architect can be involved in a limited number of decisions. An architect who has developed judgement in ten engineers influences every decision those ten make, indefinitely, including the ones made when they are unavailable.

The arithmetic is not close.

What to actually teach

Not answers — the questions. "What happens when this dependency is slow?" "What is the cost of being wrong here?" "Is this reversible?" "What would make this the wrong choice?" Someone who has internalised those questions will handle problems you never anticipated.

Trade-off reasoning. The habit of stating what a decision buys and what it costs, rather than asserting that it is correct.

Pattern recognition, and its limits: name the pattern, then check whether the conditions that made it apply are present.

How to be wrong well. Making a decision under uncertainty, recording the assumption, and revising when evidence arrives.

How to do it

• Work through real decisions together, not hypotheticals. The context is where the learning is.
• Ask before telling. Let them reach the answer; correct the reasoning, not the conclusion.
• Let them be wrong where the cost is bounded. Recoverable mistakes are the most efficient teaching mechanism available, and preventing all of them prevents learning.
• Explain your own reasoning aloud, including the uncertainty. "I think X, mostly because of Y, but I am not confident about Z."
• Give them the decision, with support. Ownership accelerates development more than advice does.

What makes it fail

• Reviewing rather than developing — correcting output without transferring the reasoning.
• Answering too quickly, which is efficient once and unhelpful repeatedly.
• Only mentoring people who already agree with you, which narrows the organisation's thinking.
• No time allocated, so it is displaced by delivery every week.

Interview question

"How do you develop architectural judgement in an engineer, as opposed to reviewing their designs?"