Question 1

What does Plato do?

Accepted Answer

About Plato

Plato is on a mission to elevate the leadership game in engineering teams.

We believe that there is a gap currently in what is offered to people getting into technical leadership. We also believe that one of the best ways to learn soft skills is through experience sharing and mentorship.

That is why Plato is a ++1:1 mentorship platform specifically designed for engineering leaders++.

At the heart of Plato is a strong community of more than 800 mentors who dedicate 30min of their time each week to help our mentees with their leadership challenges.

Our role as a platform is to make sure the right mentees are talking to the right mentors about the right things. We also take care of the logistics (scheduling, rescheduling, matchings…) and provide a framework for mentees to achieve their goals.

Our customers

We mostly work with VPs of Engineering who decide to run an external mentorship program to support the growth of their leaders. We are most effective when there is first layer of management rather well established (team >20-ish). However, we also support individuals (small startup CTOs, individuals in larger teams…) and can provide mentors for those individuals too.

Whether you are an individual or interested for your team, we'd love to talk! Reach out HERE

Resources

Question 2

Who are our mentors?

Accepted Answer

Our mentors are experienced engineering leaders from top tech companies

The heart of Plato is a ++strong community of more than 800 mentors++ who dedicate 30min of their time each week to help our mentees with their leadership challenges.

You can find the full list of our active mentors here.

How do we select our mentors?

It’s a 4 step process when vetting mentors.

++Relevant Experience++ - We look for people with relevant experience, who have management experience and have worked in sizeable companies
++Motivation for Mentoring++ - We look for mentors who are interested in giving back and learning, and evaluate their motivation through a survey and a call
++Content++ - We ask our potential mentors to share past experiences with us through stories, to check if they can share insights successfully
++Positive Feedback++ - We regularly check their ratings from mentees to see if they are appreciated

Question 3

As a mentor, how can I book calls with other mentors?

Accepted Answer

As a mentor, you might want to be able to learn from the community yourself and book calls with other mentors.

You can do so by upgrading your account to a Freemium Plato account

Here’s what you’ll be able to do:

Browse through mentors available in the upcoming days
Schedule ad-hoc calls with them up to one week ahead
Have access to a Mentee dashboard, where you can see your upcoming calls, and cancel them if needed

Please not that it is slightly different from a full paying mentee account:

No recurring sessions
No possibility to reschedule calls (only cancel)

You can see how to do so here: Plato Freemium

To activate this feature, contact us directly, via email to mentorship-success@platohq.com

Question 4

What are tips to make the most of my one-on-one session?

Accepted Answer

During your session

Q: As a mentor, how can I change my main slot of availability?

<p>| You can do so by navigating to your ++Mentor Space &gt; Availability++ (direct link <a href="https://www.platohq.com/settings/availability/mentor">here</a>).</p> <hr /> <p>++Need more help? You can contact us:++</p> <ul> <li>Via Crisp chat on our <a href="https://www.platohq.com/">webpage</a></li> <li>Via Slack on the <a href="https://platocommunity.slack.com/archives/CCPJXD36U">#support</a> channel</li> <li>Via email to <a href="mentorship-success@platohq.com">mentorship-success@platohq.com</a></li> </ul>

By talking to hundreds of our mentors, we've found a few proven ways to have impactful mentorship sessions. Like all pieces of business school wisdom, we've also found an acronym to help you remember how to have career-defining one on ones. Here are the ABC's of mentorship: Action Items, Background Information, and Candidness.

Action Items

Action items allow for mentees and mentors to iterate on challenges together.

In your next session:

Define a few action items based on your discussion
Schedule a follow up for when you think you'll have results

Background Information

Make sure you've identified the key pieces of background information your mentor should know to help you solve your challenge. This is your opportunity to give your mentor a holistic view of your challenge: they don't know your manager, your coworkers, or your company. They have a blank slate with no biases. You can talk about how this challenge became an issue, how it makes you feel, what you've tried to solve it, and the results of these efforts.

In your next session:

Define what background information is crucial for the discussion
Share this information in your Session Notes or during the beginning of the call
Eliminate as much bias as you can to give a holistic picture of the situation

Candidness

Your mentor is someone who's lived in your shoes. They've had similar experiences at different points in their career, and they've joined Plato to p

Question 5

As a mentor, how can I change my main slot of availability?

Accepted Answer

| You can do so by navigating to your ++Mentor Space > Availability++ (direct link here).

++Need more help? You can contact us:++

Via Crisp chat on our webpage
Via Slack on the #support channel
Via email to mentorship-success@platohq.com

Question 6

Why is Plato a for-profit if the mentors are volunteering?

Accepted Answer

Plato is a for profit company, and a marketplace, close to Open Source

The mentees are paying members (typically their company are paying for the membership)
The mentors are volunteering their time and do not get any financial compensation

Why does Plato require a paid subscription?

Today, Plato is a company of 35 people, working on different aspects:

Customer success
Mentor community
Engineers

The mentee do not only have access to a community of mentors, they also benefit from a hands on solution with challenges identification, mentor recommendation, mentorship program with success metrics etc

Besides 1-1 calls, they also have access to other content, such as mentor stories or group mentorship sessions (called Circles)

What are the incentives for the mentors?

Giving back to the community
Keep growing as leaders by helping people with different challenges and with a different company culture
Building their personal brand thanks to Linkedin and events
Networking with the tech community

Lot of mentors application (More than 50%) are actually organic inbounds! Experience tech leaders who heard about Plato and want to be part of a mentorship program where they can give some of their time and help inspire the next generation of tech leaders.

Why are the mentors not paid?

Like with every volunteer opportunities, it brings many perks:

Mentors who decide to join the platform are truly dedicated to help the community and are not doing it fo

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