It usually shows up as a small moment. You are talking about their work, you offer your usual view on how the caching layer should be structured, and they answer politely with something you did not know. Not a guess. A clear, correct explanation of a part of the system they have spent the last six months inside and you have not touched in three years.
There is a quiet sting in that, and it is worth admitting to yourself, because what you do next depends on noticing it.
The tempting responses are all small defences. Moving the conversation back to ground where you are still ahead. Offering an opinion anyway, with slightly less conviction. Treating their knowledge as a detail rather than as expertise. Each of these teaches them that the relationship only works while you are the senior party, and people learn that lesson fast.
Better to say it out loud. You know this area better than I do now. Tell me how it actually works. Then listen properly, and ask the questions you would ask any expert. It costs you almost nothing, and it shows them something few people ever get shown directly: that being overtaken is a normal, good thing, and nobody has to pretend otherwise.
It also tells you something useful about the mentoring. On this subject, you are no longer the right source. If they still need to go deeper, help them find who is. Somebody on another team, an author, a maintainer of the tool they use. An introduction is a real gift at this stage, and a better one than advice you are only half sure of.
Then look at what you still bring, because it is usually more than you think, just different. You have seen more projects end. You know how decisions get made two levels up, how to handle a difficult stakeholder, when a clean design is worth fighting for and when it is not. That kind of judgement does not come from six months inside one system, and it is often exactly what an expert in one area lacks.
The best mentoring relationships change shape several times. They start as answers, move to questions, and end up somewhere closer to two colleagues who trust each other. Being overtaken is how you know you reached the middle part.
– Asael Shinder
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