How Design Mentorship Can Help You Steer Your Career
A look at Myplanet’s Professional Development program and internal Design Mentorship opportunities.
Our industry is fast-paced, rapidly evolving, and constantly growing, which means highly skilled individuals are highly sought after. That said, one of the biggest challenges facing our industry is ensuring that the people who work in it have the time and space to develop as professionals. Skills development and personal career growth can easily get lost in the day-to-day realities of business operations. That’s why, to help ensure a spotlight remains on this crucial piece of both personal and professional growth, Myplanet has an in-house mentorship program that pairs team members together, giving each individual the opportunity to plan out their own path to success.
Professional Development at Myplanet
Mentorship at Myplanet started in the very early days of our existence, somewhat informally. Originally, it centred mostly on specific skill growth, pairing an individual with someone else on the team who had more knowledge and expertise in the area they were focusing on. The program quickly evolved from there, becoming more robust and tackling more broad-reaching goals.
The expanded scope of our Professional Development (PD) program continues to offer opportunities for directed skills growth, but it also creates a space for team members to plot out a path for their own career evolution — within Myplanet and beyond — that can be integrated with our 360-feedback mechanisms to help support individual growth.
“The program is really built to answer how Myplanet can help you get from what you’re doing today to where you want to be in the future,” says Myplanet Senior Designer Yvonne Ho. “It’s focused on the skills and work experiences you need to reach your goals.”
Building community through Design Mentorship
Each Myplanet team member has access to a PD Mentor, but one thing we’ve learned through the years is that the program needs to have built-in flexibility to adapt to the needs and wants of the team members and departments it’s meant to serve. Design mentorship, for example, operates a little differently than Tech or Product mentorship, but for everyone the end result is the same: the chance to shape what your own future will look like.
PDs are an important part of how Associate Director of Design Lisa Hong makes and maintains a strong connection with the team. “With PD mentorship, we can dig in on who you are, what your aspirations are, and what’s truly of interest to you, and then figure out a way to fit that into your day-to-day work and into your learning,” she says. This is especially important in professional services settings, like Myplanet. In an environment where the skills you’re called on to use can vary from project to project, PDs offer an opportunity for designers to build out their core skills in a more methodical or structured way that lays the foundation for their future ambitions.
“A lot of times in professional settings like ours, you’re sort of thrown into the wild and told to figure it out and learn on the go, but we really try hard at Myplanet to figure out what’s going to keep you engaged and motivate your learning in a way that aligns with your growth path,” says Lisa.
Another benefit of our PD program is in the opportunity for more experienced team members to share their knowledge and provide valuable experiential insights to the team. In professional services, the opportunities for full-department connection and collaboration don’t usually come through project work, so creating a space that specifically enables that kind of interaction is important, and it can have a significant impact on an individual’s long-term growth.
“It’s really nice to get to work with someone you maybe wouldn’t get to be on a project with, but who has the same passions in your discipline as you,” notes Yvonne. “You can start to nerd out and talk shop on very specific things — like kerning typography, for instance — with more nuance and granularity.”
Connecting with teammates on their personal goals and aspirations also offers an opportunity for Yvonne to check in with her own growth and development. “Oftentimes, as we go over skills, I realize where my own blind-spots are and figure out where I need to brush up on knowledge, too. Standards change, and what was current a few years ago might not be any longer, so it keeps things fresh when I connect with newer designers.”
Aligning functional skills with personal goals
A key part of the evolution of the program was finding a way to incorporate personal professional growth plans with the skills needed to succeed at Myplanet. Creating the more structured PD program allowed us to look at skills development in connection with Myplanet’s internal growth frameworks, giving everyone a clear view into how to “level-up” in their current roles.
“There’s an opportunity for the mentor to help synthesize feedback and make it a more digestible thing, something more tangible for the individual to help make sense of as part of their plans,” notes Yvonne. Not every personal interest aligns with Myplanet’s skill needs and that’s okay, but understanding how your personal growth plans fit into Myplanet’s structures — and vice versa — is a crucial part of maintaining an informed and aligned team.
Sometimes, working through the PD sessions means uncovering new opportunities within the org as company skill needs and personal growth plans lead someone down a new, perhaps unexpected path. We’re firm believers that the best work comes from highly engaged, highly motivated team members, so our aim is to have everyone working towards goals that align with their aspirations and that can set them up for long-term success in their careers.
“Whether it unlocks a path that leads someone to a new function within Myplanet or takes them further along the course they’ve already charted, I really love being a PG mentor. I’m really passionate about it,” says Lisa. “I’m energized by happy and healthy teams. Once I enter a one on one with someone and help them see or work through their challenges, it just makes me feel like I’m making a personal impact on people. As a company we care about investing in individual performance and happiness and engagement, and I think that’s what makes a strong company, so I’m excited to be a part of it.”
Yvonne agrees. “I think more often than not that kind of investment makes people excited to continue doing the work we do, because we’re all kind of mutually invested in the growth and success of one another.”
The continual evolution of the industry means the needs of the business are always evolving, too. Ensuring our team members have the space to pursue their own professional evolution is important. Providing our team with the guidance and support that will enable them to improve their skills and tackle new challenges is a core part of our internal culture. We’re firm believers that great teams make great things, so an individual team member’s long-term success is a success for Myplanet, too. The PD program is a big part of how we all succeed together.
Myplanet is in a hiring surge! We’d love to have you join our team of collaborative, cross-functional designers working remotely from all over the world. Take a look at our open roles today.
