I founded and work at Magnify Mentoring.
KMF
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Elle: I’d love to chat. My name is Kathryn and I am the CEO of Magnify Mentoring <https://www.magnifymentoring.org/>. You seem to have a strong CV and I’d be interested in learning more about your interests as I am quite frequently asked for candidate recommendations. I can be reached at kathryn@magnifymentoring.org. Many thanks!
Aww, thank you!! I am super pleased to hear that :)
Yeah FWIW my key takeaways while reading this was something like “Wow what a ridiculously good person. If this is failure, I might need to rethink some things.” :)
Organizational Update: Magnify Mentoring Applications Open
I know right- I also get nervous about the Forum. If I were to doom circle with anyone… <3 <3 Thanks :)
I am super pleased to hear that. Seems like, despite the scary-sounding name, people have had positive experiences with this which is great! :)
Definitely not—this would be total nightmare fuel for me ;) Thanks!
Hey :) Just a data point that I downvoted this because:
a. I would like to encourage environments in EA which are mutually supportive and kind. I think that there is already significant social pressure to be okay with receiving feedback at any time and in any form.
b. I think feedback is very important but generally, we want to prioritize results. How will the person getting the feedback best use it as a tool to learn and grow? What I have read seems to suggest that feedback is most effective in a pre-existing relationship of trust, and emotional, and relational security and with concrete and actionable support after and goals.
c. I can see a hundred ways this goes really wrong. The incentives are to provide harsh critique to appear novel and insightful of the other person. On the flip side, the incentives are to be/ appear to be okay with the feedback being provided. My general read is that consent is key here but that the social dynamics/incentives do not lend themselves well to allowing people to opt-in/ opt-out freely.
d. I know this is super unfair but… you work at CEA running events. I am worried this might seem prescriptive to the newer members of the Forum given your status in EA.
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I will flag I don’t like this on a gut level which may be clouding my judgment. The framing of what causes your doom feels very icky and just generally a bad framing for something that should be positive and mutually supportive. I can imagine this being fantastic for some people but I thought I would add some notes on why I feel concerned here.
You are amazing! Warmest Congratulations! :)
Update: New section added on the role of feedback in mentorship relationships. I additionally highlighted our recent Status Update:
WANBAM released their blog post “WANBAM: Successes and challenges from our first two years.” The post summarizes their activities, initial results, and their risk mitigation steps.
I really love this article, thank you for taking the time to put it together. Obviously, I am biased, but I think a potentially strong second conclusion is that we should continue to take seriously building a community that has strong norms around making sure we attract and retain the best possible people from a diversity of approaches and expertise. I worry much more about our failure mode being we inadvertently form an echo chamber and miss or overlook how to weigh the importance or likelihood of potential ways we might be wrong/ potentially doing harm than I worry about overt bad faith.
WANBAM: Successes and challenges from our first two years
Just popping up to say that I am continually amazed by your work :) I get the best mentees and mentors from you and I am blown away by your hardwork. Thank you so much!
FINAL CHANCE TO APPLY FOR THIS ROUND. Applications for mentees will close on the 30th. We are delighted by the applications so far and will be in touch with everyone who applied on the closing date with the next steps. Thank you so much! 🙂
Absolutely :) Sky Mayhew <sky@centreforeffectivealtruism.org> and <media@centreforeffectivealtruism.org>. Sky is incredibly kind and has always given me brilliant feedback when I’ve had to do external-facing stuff before (which I find intensely nerve-wracking and have to do quite a lot of ). I can’t speak more highly of their help. The people who have given me feedback on my sharing your video have mainly done so in the form of WOW face reactions on Slack FWIW- I’ll let you know if I get anything else. My husband also loves this type of stuff and was psyched to watch your video too. :)
Hey- Don’t be sad. It’s really brave to do work like this and make it public—thank you :) I’d definitely recommend this to newcomers (Indeed, I just did! Edited to add: The animations are so cool here!). You might consider sending future drafts through to CEA’s press team- they have a large network of people and I have always found the quality of their feedback to be really high and helpful! Thanks again for this!
To add to Barry’s point, WANBAM has interfaced with over 500 people in the first two years of our operations, so a smaller pool than this survey (more here). Our demographics (setting aside gender of course) are quite different from the EA Survey findings. 40% of our recent round of mentees (120 people in total this round) are people of color. There is also significant geographic diversity with this round of mentees coming from the US, UK, Australia, Germany, Philippines, France, Singapore, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway, Netherlands, Spain, Brasil, Denmark Mexico, India, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Ghana, Czech Republic, Finland, and Sweden.
Mentees most frequently selected interest in emerging technologies (67%), Research (59%), Public Policy, and Politics (56%), International development (49%), Cause prioritization (49%), Community Building (43%), High impact philanthropy (41%), mental health and wellbeing (40%), Philanthropic education and outreach (33%), Operations (33%), Animal advocacy (30%), Women in technology (29%), and Earning to Give (20%).I suspect there are subtle dynamics at play here around who is completing the survey. What’s your phrasing on the external communications around who you want to take it? Do you specify a threshold of involvement in EA? Happy to put our heads together here. Thanks! Warmly, Kathryn
Yes! We have a couple of pieces a bit like this, notably our career profiles and a blog I put together /update around once a round of resources recommended by our mentors/mentees and indeed the piece above. In our post-survey, I ask mentees what was a particularly useful piece of advice their mentor gave them, and plan to create a blog in that vein when it hits a critical mass (we have a large cohort this time so I think that might be next round). Thank you, John! :)
I agree. Next in the production line as our capacity (hopefully) grows! I can give my intuitions based on the program on the question of:
”Local group leaders like me often have to weigh a tradeoff of whether one-off calls like 80K’s or regular mentoring calls like WANBAM works better, so being able to view deeper impact data would be good!”Commenting on the models: I would say it depends on what your program user is looking to achieve and your capacity. At WANBAM, we have experimented both with one-off calls (now combined with access to our Slack and all our events) and our standard model of an average of monthly meetings for six months. To make this concrete, if I had someone who was interested in lots of different career paths but whose plans were still in the process of developing, I might connect them to a handful of people for a one-off call and then invite them to our events. If I have someone who is building their leadership skills with the aim of being promoted at work to management, I might connect them to one person who excels in this field to work with them over a period of six months. Essentially, capacity allowing, I work out (and this is not to say flawlessly- I am learning!) what we can concretely help with and try and tailor to do so. Thanks so much, Brian! Always happy to have a call with Group organizers if I can help :)
Hi :) I’d love to chat. My name is Kathryn and I am the CEO of Magnify Mentoring <https://www.magnifymentoring.org/>. You seem to have a strong CV and I’d be interested in learning more about your interests as I am quite frequently asked for candidate recommendations. I can be reached at kathryn@magnifymentoring.org. Many thanks!