7 Pieces of Advice I Tell Interns and Trainees
Originally published on July 7, 2013 on 7MTJ - 7 Mindset Tips Journal
This is a very old blog post that comes from my first blog in 2013. Nostalgia made me put it back here.
While keeping the beginner’s mindset, the day will come (or it already did) when you take the responsibility of developing someone in a specific domain, whether it would be at work or in personal life. Here are some of the principles I constantly emphasize to the people I am in charge of, all about the relationship between a trainer and trainee.
Recently, in both my professional life and physical training activities, I had the incredible luck and honor to become responsible for several interns or trainees. Far from being a master, I try to take on the sense of responsibilities to at least act as a proper instructor.
Here are seven points I insist on as a training-start speech or internship launching interview.
The 7 Core Principles
1. “Track Incremental Learning”
Force yourself to take regular notes of what you learn, even if it looks ridiculously small or if the effort of writing it down largely outweighs the likelihood of reading it again. Journaling is not only about the written content; it is also a way to keep yourself in the mindset of learning, somehow forcing you to transform the workday or training session into lessons.
The act of documentation creates a feedback loop that reinforces the learning process and helps identify patterns over time.
2. “Commit to… Yourself”
Training and internship objectives are yours, not mine. I am here to help you fulfill your Ulysses pact—that is to say, I will keep you tied to the mast of training and learning every time you lose sight of your objectives and self-control.
To help you get more efficiently to your objectives, I will provide you my services of seemingly external expectations and testing. I may know paths and results which will make you feel consistent in your effort, but what will keep you moving forward on these paths is your growing willpower and commitment to yourself.
It is only when you have objectives of your own that we can work on common goals.
3. “It’s Going to Feel Slightly Uncomfortable”
As far as I can, I will keep you slightly outside your comfort zone, just beyond what you know and what you expect, but close enough not to have you completely lost. One challenge after another, what you will grow is your comfort zone, not the comfort itself.
Expect the unknown; therefore, expect the unexpected.
4. “The Experience We Live Is an Exchange”
You learn as an intern or trainee, but I also learn as an instructor. Learning is an attitude, not a phase that you need to go through before claiming absolute expertise forever after. Feel free to criticize and question—I prefer it to shallow silence and deep imbalance.
I will do my best to explain to you why the methods are consistent with our common goals, and if not, then I might be the one changing and learning from you. Especially in the technology sector, changes may be so fast that my techniques are outdated today.
Technologies are mortal, just as we are, and as our strongest habits. Do not expect absolute truth from me: this is not a task I can perform. I can offer you guidance to consolidate your own understanding. Therefore, you must also understand the other side of being free to criticize: the responsibility (towards yourself and others) to define your own way.
5. “An Opportunity to Learn… to Appreciate”
Mostly, whether as trainee or as intern under my responsibility, you will have to work hard, or at least harder than whatever you knew before (that’s my objective—check point 3). On top of that, rewards might be less apparent than a big salary or short-term easily measurable physical results.
Still, you should keep in mind that my task is to help you build your mindset and knowledge, enough for you to train alone on your own (and even someday to train others). Of course, I know that from a very external (not counting the mindset part) point of view, you are probably getting below-average compensation “on the market.”
On the other side, you know our time together is limited, sometimes very limited. Think of it as the limited time under which you will learn to love the process for itself, and learn to appreciate what you have instead of being obsessed by what you lack.
6. “Change Happens Beyond the Training Grounds/Company”
If you put a glass bowl on top of a flower, for sure you can admire it from outside, but you will lose its perfume, and also deprive it of the necessary carbon dioxide. Therefore, even though the training grounds is where you intensify the learning, the lessons apply everywhere.
Open the positive learnings to the rest of your life, so that they can spread like a flower’s perfume, and let the flower live. Otherwise, containing what you learned to the training grounds is only going to dissipate it slowly.
Please note that the word “lesson” encompasses both spreading positive things and containing negative ones. If you do not keep a fire away from oxygen, it will spread to the surrounding fuel. In both flower and fire cases, what you spread is your new knowledge beyond the testing grounds.
7. “Thank You for the Meaning”
Last but definitely not least, and even probably the most important (at least for me), I thank you for the meaning you give me through learning (or reacting). Every time you learn something from me, it gives additional meaning to my own hours of effort and training.
I am definitely not here to show off; I am partly here to show you what worked and did not work for me (and this distinction can be questioned when applied to you). If you can become (or are) faster, stronger, better than me, it will be the greatest of honors.
While you have the satisfaction of receiving, I get the joy of giving. Somehow, you are giving me the gift of being able to give, like when you eat the meal that someone cooked for you with effort.
Conclusion
These seven principles form the foundation of what I believe to be effective mentoring. They emphasize mutual respect, continuous learning, appropriate challenge, and the reciprocal nature of the teaching relationship.
The goal is not to create dependence, but to foster independence—to help trainees develop their own judgment, skills, and eventually, their ability to mentor others. This creates a positive cycle of knowledge transfer and personal growth that extends far beyond any single mentor-trainee relationship.
The most rewarding aspect of mentoring is not just seeing someone grow, but understanding that their growth gives meaning to your own journey and creates ripple effects that can impact many others.
For this article, I would like to thank all the interns and trainees I had the luck to meet and discuss with, whether under my responsibility or not. Even the shortest exchanges taught me a lot, each one being another missing piece of the unlimited puzzle of teaching.
Have a smiling day!