Mentoring, when done well, starts to shape the skills every future leader needs. Even for those who won’t go on to make management their career, there are clear benefits to taking some time to mentor and learn from the experience, because mentoring forces you to hone your communication skills. It requires you to practice listening, in particular, because if you can’t hear the questions you’re being asked, you’ll never be able to provide good answers.
Senior engineers can develop bad habits, and one of the worst is the tendency to lecture and debate with anyone who does not understand them or who disagrees with what they are saying. To work successfully with a newcomer or a more junior teammate, you must be able to listen and communicate in a way that person can understand, even if you have to try several times to get it right. Software development is a team sport in most companies, and teams have to communicate effectively to get anything done.