The session starts with a branching strategy and ends somewhere else entirely. They tell you they have not slept properly in a month. Or that their team lead corrects them in front of the room and they have stopped speaking in standups. Or something about their health, or their family, said quickly and then moved past.
You will want to help, and the way you help with everything else is by giving good advice. Be careful here.
What has happened is that you became the person with time for them and no power over them, and the real problems find that person first. It is a compliment. It is also the edge of what mentoring is. You have no authority in their company, no view of the other side of the story, and no training in most of what they have just described. Advice given from that position can send somebody into a confrontation they will pay for, or keep them talking to you for six months instead of to the one person who could actually change it.
So do a smaller and better thing. Believe them, and say so out loud, because that alone is worth more than you think. Do not investigate. Ask what they want from you today, because half the time it is not a plan.
Then name the right route and be specific. Their manager, or their manager's manager. The employee assistance line, if the company has one, with the actual number. A doctor. A union representative. Somebody in HR who is known to be decent. Vagueness here is how people end up doing nothing.
Then offer the part you can genuinely do. Rehearse the opening sentence with them. Go with them, if that is allowed. Ask again on Thursday, and mean it.
And say plainly when you are past what you know. That is not abandonment. Pretending otherwise is the abandonment, because it keeps them with the only person in the situation who cannot change it.
Monday: find out what routes actually exist where you work, and write the numbers down now, so you are not searching for them halfway through a hard conversation.
– Asael Shinder
