In ages past, young men would be apprenticed out to a master tradesman. After a period of apprenticeship, they would graduate to a journeyman and after years had passed, the journeyman was recognized as a master of their trade. As a master, it was understood that they would take on and train a new apprentice. Although our training mechanisms have evolved from adolescents learning a trade in the master's house to universities and internships, we still periodically evaluate each other's skills. Whether it's an end of course test, or an annual review, our culture presumes a progression from apprentices to journeymen to masters.

The key to this system is learning to mentor others while being mentored yourself. I don't mean a casual, learn-from-the-old-dude-with-the-three-foot-beard-while-you-work type of mentoring. I mean structured mentorship, with dedicated time on a regular basis to ask questions, banter about ideas, and most importantly, review code. I think we all benefit when we have people we look up to as mentors. Finding and spending time with them daily or weekly helps us grow not only in technical knowledge, but soft skill, as well. The benefits of being mentored are pretty well-documented, and not really in the scope of this book. So, why bring it up?

I bring it up because I'm willing to bet you'll rarely be the least knowledgeable developer in the room. The converse is equally true. I doubt you're often the most knowledgeable developer in the room. Salesforce is such a vast ecosystem that it's likely you're a specialist, even if by accident. Your companies use all of Salesforce's offerings, but it's likely your team is focused on one cloud or another. As a result of this, you likely know more about the cloud your team works with than someone working with a different cloud. You may both be Apex developers writing code, but the way you utilize batch processes or queueable Apex is likely very different. In fact, your experience and knowledge are unique. Sharing your experience as a mentor, blogger, or user group speaker reinforces your knowledge and helps you master the platform.

How does teaching and mentoring help you master the platform? Easy. Science tells us that we're far more likely to remember and use what we teach others because when we're teaching others, we tend to make mistakes. We'll jump in with confidence that we've seen this problem before, or we've done something similar recently. Inevitably, however, we'll get the syntax just a bit off or forget a crucial step. In the process of teaching, we reiterate what we've learned not only by sharing, but by making mistakes and reinforcing the aspects we previously forgot. Additionally, teaching in a mentorship scenario means that we often get to start these kinds of conversations by discussing what the other person has already tried. In other words, we often get to start by discussing what's wrong before diving into the proper way of doing things.

There's a YouTube channel called Veritasium whose author, Derek Muller, is a master at demonstrating this. His videos focus on teaching average YouTube viewers basic physics. His PhD work at the University of Sydney demonstrated that traditional expository teaching—watching a video that simply and clearly explained basic principles of physics has a negligible effect on test scores. More importantly, Derek demonstrated that an alternative style of videos based in dialog were far more effective, almost doubling the test scores of viewers. His effective videos first discussed the principle and demonstrated the common beliefs around it. Then, the videos broke down the reasons these beliefs were wrong based on misconceptions or inaccurate science. Only after having walked viewers through what was likely their own original understanding of the situation and breaking it down would the videos explain the real science behind the principle being discussed. This dialogue-based approach is the tool we wield during mentorship. Having to rationally discuss the misconceptions of others in order to convince or teach others how to do it properly cements the principles for mentor and mentee alike.

Teaching others through mentorship can be a heady thing. Don't seek out mentees unless you yourself have a mentor. We need to be taught in order to teach. Having a mentor and being a mentor can help you master the Salesforce platform by providing you with both the opportunity to learn and to teach—to have our misconceptions discussed and overcome, even as we help others do the same. Learning the ins and outs of bulk Apex, unit testing, or any of the Salesforce1 platform technologies best comes through mentoring relationships.

So, how do you find a mentor? If you're looking for a job, find one where the team has members who are willing to mentor you. Ask how you can mentor them. Be determined and confident in your ability to both to be mentored and mentor others. Discuss what mentorship means to a given individual before you start. If you can't find mentorship at work, check out the Salesforce user and developer community groups; look on the left-hand side for all user groups by region to find user groups near you here: https://success.salesforce.com/featuredGroups. Work with others to start one up if there isn't already one near you. But don't stop at finding a mentor; find someone you can mentor, as well. If you're the newest person to the platform or the only one in your company, again look to the community groups. Volunteer to speak on a topic or to lead a discussion; find people with questions and issues and work with them to find solutions.