Companies change. Bosses leave. Teams move. I've been through it. During one stretch of changes, I learned something. Mentoring others kept me clear when my own path wasn't.
An engineer asked for help. She'd joined a new team. Her new manager didn't have her technical background. He kept asking for improvements on a system that was maxed out. She couldn't explain the limits without sounding like she was pushing back. We talked it through. How to break down the problem. What her manager needed to hear. How to show constraints without being defensive. How to work together instead of arguing.
Halfway through, I realized something. I was fixing my own problem. My role had changed. My stakeholders had changed. My goals had changed. I couldn't see it clear because I was in it. I was stuck on what I'd lost. Not what I needed to do next.
For her, I could see it. Her role changed. Her stakeholders changed. Her metrics changed. Fighting it wouldn't help. She needed to learn the new ground. Rebuild trust. Show what she could do. For me, I'd been doing the opposite. I wanted my old world back. My old boss. My old targets.
I went back to my desk. I wrote down what my team was doing and why it mattered now. I mapped how our work tied to current goals. I reached out to new stakeholders. I stopped defending the old plan. I started building the new one. I didn't figure that out by thinking harder. I figured it out by helping someone else think.
That's the selfish part. I mentor because it clears my head when things shift. When priorities change, when people change, when the path forward gets murky, I can't see my own situation straight. Too close to it. But I can see theirs. And helping them organize their thinking organizes mine.
I've mentored through a lot of change. Team shifts. New priorities. Role changes. The talks didn't stop the change. But they helped me handle it. Mentoring isn't extra work I do when I have time. It's how I stay sharp when things move fast. How I work through hard problems. How I keep perspective when mine gets narrow.
It's also core to what I believe. Companies get strong when people help each other think. When people with experience share it. When we make space for real talks about real problems. Where helping someone succeed counts as real work.