I was approached by my professional development manager, who asked me if I would like a mentor. I immediately jumped at the chance because I had been hunting for a mentor. I needed an insight into the advanced levels of my career and knew that a mentor could help show me more.
There is a big difference between Coaching and Mentoring, which I found out at an IntellectUK event on Wednesday 8 December 2010 with Jackie Elliott and Marina McGoldrick. Coaching is goal driven, whereas Mentoring should be mututally beneficial for both the mentor and the mentee. Mentoring is an open engagement that is usually industry, knowledge or skills specific and is relationship focused as opposed to being focused on outcomes of the relationship. This is where I have been extremely lucky. Purely by chance I met a manager who gave me some small tasks to do on the side of my main work. I was happy to help out and she seemed pleased with the first drafts of my work. When I was approached to become a mentee, I was really pleased when I was told that my mentor would be that enthusiastic manager.
Now, dear Reader, people who look for coaching are already confident & successful even before they are coached. Coaching is not remedial but accesses your strengths and develops self-awareness. However, mentoring is a soundboard for your reputation.
My first meeting with my mentor was focused on introductions and boundary setting for the relationship. What we could say to each other, what we couldn't disclose outside the relationship. What I could expect from and what I could offer to my mentor.
A mentoring relationship is heavily reliant upon the power of connections, business connections and personal connections. I am able to offer my mentor contacts and information from my network that she may not have direct access to and my mentor can offer me feedback.
Feedback is important because you MUST connect with people on a deeper level than just simple contact engagement. Just trading business cards or email addresses is not enough. You need to be able to open-up and be able to show your vulnerability, not just pay lip service to your mentor, your team, your colleagues.
The most recent meeting with my mentor has been an eye opener that I was not totally prepared for. We had built up a relatively firm relationship over four months or so. She had never been my line manager over that time but we had met up at work before and after the New Year in between our busy schedules.
So, after the IntellectUK Young Professionals Network event, "Mentoring and Coaching - why all the fuss?", and also a WIG Graduate Network event in January, I asked my mentor for feedback and I was instead given a double-edged question: What do you want people to think of you? What do you not want people to say about you?
It made me look at myself in a different way, through the eyes of my team and colleagues. Why is that important, dear Reader? Without fully appreciating how my team sees me, I can lose their respect for me. The team falters as a result and the project is less successful.
And that, dear Reader; is what happened to me today. I asked a team manager on my project what I thought to be a minor question. It must have been the way I said it or the timing but it was not received very well. I asked why we were doing something; why we were releasing something in a certain way. The question annoyed the team manager, who was clearly busy, and she told me as much.
This is the importance of being mentored. I considered how the team would see me as I reacted to this situation. I could feel adrenaline pounding through me has my pulse started to rise. I was ready to fight my point but knew that to "flip my lid" and let my brain become overloaded would be a very unprofessional thing to do.
I identified the emotion, gave it a name; anger. I calmed down and re-assessed the situation.
I don't want to be seen as hot-headed and unapproachable. I don't want to be seen as emotional and irrational. For a moment, while I tried to explain myself differently but failed, I lost the respect of my team. I could feel it. But I did not lose my cool.
You may not be able to see this connection, dear Reader. It did all happen in a flash and I did not pass the team feedback forms after the event to see how they matched up to my ideal model that I would like to present to my mentor.
Somehow pieces of the relationship that I have with my mentor and the lessons I am learning through professional seminars after work are making their way into my professional day and that for me, dear Reader, is The Importance Of Being Mentored.
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