Mentoring Skills for the HubSpot Ecosystem:
Effective Mentoring in the HubSpot Ecosystem
Ready to unlock your potential as a mentor? In today’s AI-driven world, human-centered mentoring builds trust & drives growth to truly make an impact.
Who is this for?
- Mentors and mentees participating in the HubSpot Ecosystem Mentorship Program
- HubSpot partners who want to support growth and knowledge-sharing across teams and clients
- Professionals seeking to build leadership and communication skills through mentoring
- Experienced HubSpot users ready to guide others and give back to the community
- Individuals new to mentoring who want practical tools to support others with clarity and confidence
What you'll learn
- How to articulate the goals of a mentorship program, and define your responsibilities and boundaries as a mentor.
- Demonstrate active listening techniques (e.g., attentive body language, paraphrasing, asking clarifying questions) to improve communication and trust with your mentee.
- Use open-ended and follow-up questions to encourage mentee reflection and problem-solving, instead of defaulting to directive advice.
- Establish a trusting relationship by communicating openly, setting clear goals and boundaries with your mentee, and creating a safe, respectful mentoring environment from the first meeting.
- Assist mentees with technical problems by using a guided approach—breaking down problems, asking insightful questions, and directing mentees to appropriate resources—thereby developing the mentee’s own problem-solving skills.
- Deliver balanced, specific feedback using best practices (e.g., the S.M.A.R.T. framework and positive reinforcement) and provide encouragement to support mentee growth and confidence.
Includes
Operations Artificial Intelligence
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Instructors
Jennifer Nixon is a Developer Community Manager at HubSpot with a focus on empowering technical users through AI literacy, mentorship, and inclusive events. Prior to joining HubSpot, Jennifer was a HubSpot Consultant specializing in marketing and RevOps for industries like real estate, finance, and tech. She was a HubSpot Community Champion and Certified Trainer, part of a community panel at INBOUND, and continues to host community events as a HUG Leader. She received her B.S. Architecture…
Crystal King is a Senior Professor for HubSpot Academy with a focus on social media strategy. Crystal has led global social media and community programs for companies such as Pegasystems, Keurig, CA Technologies and Sybase. She has taught classes in writing, creativity and social media at Harvard Extension School, Boston University, Mass College of Art, UMass Boston and GrubStreet, one of the leading creative writing centers in the US. Crystal received her masters in critical and creative…
Anton Bujanowski is the Founder of GraphiSpot with more than 20 years of experience creating functional, appealing, and user-friendly websites across a variety of CMS platforms and design tools. He began his career as a communication designer, completing his studies at the Faber-Castell Academy in Stein near Nuremberg in 2014, where he specialized in web and corporate design. Since 2017, Anton has focused on the HubSpot Content Hub (formerly HubSpot CMS), helping companies of all sizes…
Curriculum
Introduction to Mentoring & the Role of the Mentor
Lesson - 15 min
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Lesson instructor: Jennifer Nixon In this lesson, you'll explore the foundational goals of mentoring within the HubSpot ecosystem and how they shape the mentor-mentee relationship. We’ll break down what mentoring is (and isn’t), and why it matters — especially in today’s rapidly evolving, AI-driven professional landscape. You’ll learn how to approach your responsibilities with intention, set healthy boundaries, and show up with the right mindset from day one. Whether you're guiding someone through technical challenges or helping them build confidence, understanding your role as a mentor is the first step toward creating a relationship that empowers growth, for both you and your mentee. By the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to clearly articulate the goals of a mentorship program and define your responsibilities and boundaries as a mentor.
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Active Listening
Lesson - 20 min
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Lesson instructor: Jennifer Nixon In this lesson, you'll explore what active listening really looks like in a mentoring context and why it's one of the most powerful tools in your mentoring toolkit. You’ll learn practical strategies to stay present, manage distractions, and tune in to both what your mentee is saying and how they’re saying it. We’ll also break down how active listening helps you ask better questions, spot unspoken needs, and support your mentee in solving their own challenges. Whether you're mentoring someone new to the HubSpot ecosystem or supporting a more experienced peer, listening with intention helps you show up with empathy, clarity, and trust.
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Asking Effective Questions as a Mentor
Lesson - 21 min
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Lesson instructor: Jennifer Nixon In this lesson, you’ll explore the power of questions in mentoring. You’ll learn how thoughtful, open-ended questions can help your mentee reflect, clarify their thinking, and find their own solutions — rather than relying on you for quick fixes. We’ll break down different types of questions, when to use them, and how to avoid common pitfalls like leading or closed questions. By the end of this lesson, you’ll have a toolkit of questioning techniques that encourage deeper conversation, foster autonomy, and help you mentor with empathy and intention.
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Building Trust and Setting Expectations in Mentoring
Lesson - 14 min
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Lesson instructor: Jennifer Nixon Trust is the cornerstone of effective mentoring. Learn how to build psychological safety, set clear expectations, and create a space where your mentee can grow. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to establish a strong foundation for your mentoring relationship from the very beginning. We’ll explore how to create an environment of psychological safety, where your mentee feels supported, respected, and comfortable being open. You’ll also learn how to co-create clear expectations around roles, goals, communication styles, and boundaries — helping to prevent misunderstandings and ensure a more productive experience for both of you. With the right foundation in place, mentoring becomes not just more effective — but more meaningful for both mentor and mentee.
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Guiding Technical Problem-Solving for Mentees
Lesson - 12 min
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Lesson instructor: Jennifer Nixon In this lesson, you’ll explore how to support mentees as they work through technical challenges — whether it’s a tricky HubSpot implementation, a confusing API response, or a new feature they’re learning to build. You’ll learn how to coach their problem-solving process through thoughtful questions, reflection, and encouragement — rather than jumping straight to solutions. We’ll also discuss how to balance technical expertise with mentorship, so you can build your mentee’s confidence, independence, and decision-making skills along the way. By the end of this lesson, you’ll have strategies to guide technical growth without taking over the keyboard.
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Giving Constructive Feedback & Encouragement
Lesson - 11 min
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Lesson instructor: Jennifer Nixon In this lesson, you’ll learn how to deliver feedback in a way that builds trust, supports learning, and keeps your mentee moving forward. We’ll explore what makes feedback constructive (vs. discouraging), and how to pair clear observations with empathy and encouragement. You’ll also gain strategies for offering praise that feels meaningful, giving hard feedback without breaking trust, and helping your mentee reflect on their own progress. Whether you’re addressing technical work or soft skills, feedback is one of the most powerful tools in your mentoring toolkit, and you’ll learn how to use it with clarity and care.
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Course transcript
Introduction to Effective Mentoring in the Hubspot Ecosystem Transcript
[00:00:00]
Jennifer Nixon: Hi, I'm Jennifer Nixon, Developer Community Manager at Hubspot, and welcome to the Effective Mentoring in the Hubspot Ecosystem course.
In today's fast moving, AI driven world, human-centered mentorship is more important than ever offering personalized guidance, empathy, and critical thinking support from one human to another.
If you have a willingness to share your experience and support others, this course will help you become a great mentor! You'll learn practical, easy to apply skills to build trust, communicate effectively, and guide others with confidence, even if you've never been part of a mentoring program before.
If that sounds like you, then this course is exactly what you need.
The goal is to share your knowledge and build their confidence. To help others thrive in the HubSpot ecosystem, while developing your own leadership and communication skills. Over the next few lessons, we'll give you practical tools to become an effective, supportive mentor; from active listening and asking thoughtful questions to guiding technical problem solving.
Are you ready to get started on your mentorship journey?
Why learn with Academy?
It's Free
It's personalized
It's global
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