Modern design culture is full of mentors, yet few surprisingly mentor within their own organisations. In fact, only 3% of design leaders mentor internally. Most mentoring happens outside the business, leaving internal teams unsupported and disconnected from growth.
Real mentoring requires courage - the courage to communicate change, challenge assumptions, and address behavioural patterns directly. Designers must learn to separate perception from perspective and understand how their interpretations affect others.
DaS™ places mentoring at the heart of team development. The Show and Tell stage, introduced earlier in the framework, acts as an internal retrospective for design. It allows leaders to share changes transparently with the design team before seeking external validation. This strengthens the internal system first, reducing confusion and improving consistency.
Effective mentoring starts with modelling behaviour. If you expect your team to document, you must document. If you expect reporting, you must report. Mentoring without practice becomes opinion. Mentoring with evidence becomes leadership.
Design leaders must build confidence through authentic accomplishment. Many leaders offer opinions instead of context, training, or structured guidance. True mentoring is measurable: it changes behaviour, expands capability, and improves outcomes.
To mentor at scale, leaders need four foundations:
— A clear idea
— A plan for success
— A framework they understand
— A structured approach for helping others
Begin.
Adopt.
Grow.
Help.
Connect.
Solve.
Make a dent.
This is the DaS™ mentoring ethos.
