So, I've not written
for a while. I've been mad-busy at work,
with my own business, mentoring and most recently have just agreed to take on
the accounts prep for my friend's charity.
All good, solid stuff.
I've done quite a
bit recently on the mentoring side. I've
now got three mentees who I meet up with regularly. It's quite an interesting thing. We tend to meet up, have a brew and talk
about what they've been up to. Sometimes
they'll bring problems in and we just talk through those things.
I recently did some
"next-level voodoo" stuff with the Civil Service and IIBA on action
learning, and the emphasis there is to just ask question upon question of the
mentee until they come up with the answer themselves. It works well, but it can be torture for both
the mentee and the mentor. If you've
never tried the technique, then you should give it a try. Personally, I prefer a more direct approach,
with "challenging conversations" to cover those difficult moments
when you have to deal with certain issues clearly but sensitively.
So, mentoring is the
opportunity to get that level of engagement from someone who's highly driven,
reasonably successful and prepared to volunteer their time to help mentees.
I attended a
mentoring evening this evening, which was really good and really well set
up. I really enjoyed the structure of
how it was set up. They had a "meet
the mentors" panel at the beginning and then we moved into tables and got
questions from the various different students.
I spoke with a few
groups and was a bit shocked that the students thought that mentors were there
to offer them jobs. I said to people
that I spoke to, "Mentoring isn't about offering you a job, it's about a
discussion over time that'll help you to develop". I talked about setting your own business up,
how the "gig economy" was taking off and that you could either work
in a company or be the company. I talked
about business models, multi-strand income models and all sorts of things. But I got a distinct idea that it came back
to "got any jobs?"
This is a
shame. The mentors had a wealth of
skills and advice to give, lots of opportunities, but it was all about
"got a job?"
YOU'RE MISSING THE
POINT. THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO GET A
LEG UP. And it may or may not lead
directly to a job…but it probably won't.
What it will do for you, is help you to gain an insight into how your
mentor thinks and deals with situations that you find yourself in. The discussions can be about anything, from
teamwork to job applications.
I even offer my
mentees more than that, I say to them that we'll set the regular meetings, but
also that I'm there to discuss things as needed (usually done via WhatsApp, but
could be phone or Skype) because I recognise that the need for a tune-up doesn't
necessarily wait for the monthly meetup.
But it's driven by the mentee.
I discussed the
"got a job" thing with my wife later and she said that even her ex,
who ended up working for KPMG or someone like that, didn't get in straight
away. It took experience,
entrepreneurship and top marks to get that.
His approach was to temp in various firms for a few years and that gave
him enough background to get his foot in the door. I didn't know that earlier, but I actually
said that complete solution myself, because I'd seen that work for others in
the past. It's good experience but also
a "try before you buy" - do you like the thing that you're opting to
do.
So, you have to have
the "plan B" (and probably a few more plans too) in case the graduate
scheme doesn't come good. Relying on
getting that graduate scheme opportunity may leave you without anything until
you hit the ground with a bump several months later, thinking "OK, what
now…?"
Overall though, I
was impressed that the potential mentees had plenty of options. In most cases, it was the difficulty in
making those decisions that was the problem.
A mentor won't make those decisions for you though. They can only really help you to make those
decisions for yourself.
