If you find yourself in the mentor’s seat, congratulations! This is an experience that not everyone will get: an opportunity to learn in a fairly safe way about the job of management, and the feeling of being responsible for another person. It’s unlikely that you’ll get fired for being a bad mentor (unless, of course, you behave in an inappropriate manner — please don’t hit on your mentee!). For many mentors, the worst that can happen is that a) the mentee is a drain on their time and they get less coding work done, or b) they do such a poor job that someone whom the organization might otherwise want to hire/keep around has a bad experience and doesn’t join the organization, or opts to leave the organization sooner than she otherwise might. Sadly, the second outcome is far more likely than the first. Great talent is sometimes squandered by weak mentors who do little but ignore their charges, waste their time with trivial projects, or, worst of all, intimidate and belittle them out of ever wanting to join the organization. But you, dear reader, don’t want to do this. You want to be a great mentor! Or perhaps you are already a manager, looking to make your team more effective at the mentoring relationships you need them to take on. How do you create good, effective mentoring relationships without slowing development down too much?