Mentoring can be double-sided!

Is there a mentoring scheme where you work? They often start off with enthusiasm but the day job just gets in the way, and the thought of another mentoring session with your mentee can feel like a chore, or perhaps something you want to do but just don’t have the energy for.

 I guess I have always been a mentor of sorts, perhaps without realizing it. As a Manager and Leader it’s always been important to me that anyone in my team knows WHY they are there, what part they have to play in the wider goal, and how they can best use their own unique strengths to benefit the team and themselves.

 As my life has taken an exciting leap from the corporate world into the shiny unknown recently, I have been doing a lot more mentoring. I have always found people gravitating towards me naturally for mentoring, and am presenting a training session on it to a groups of HR leaders early next year, so I wondered how other people see this valuable tool. I Googled it and felt decidedly unsatisfied with the explanations (not that Google is the answer to everything of course!!).

 There’s a lot of talk about helping people with their CV, sharing knowledge about your particular area of expertise, advising on career choices, talking about how important networking is etc etc. These are all great things of course, (albeit rather dull in my humble opinion) but I feel there’s a piece missing.

 I’d sum that missing piece up very simply as helping people figure out how to show up every day as their best, most authentic selves, and how to inspire others to do the same. Sounds a little fluffy perhaps? Not exactly a “practical” subject to tackle? Well I can assure you it’s not fluffy, quite the opposite in fact, and to reference it to the title of this blog, when you add an extra ingredient to the mix, mentoring really does transform itself into something that’s amazing not just for the mentee, but very much for the mentor too.

 Let me show you an example… I set 5 key questions as homework for a client recently before our first session as we already knew each other fairly well and I was confident that she would follow the instructions properly without slipping into negatives, (with brand new clients I would usually do this face to face at the first meeting as the juicy stuff some sometime take a little extra squeezing to extract!).

 So what happened when we met? Picture the scene…. We’re in the window seat of a busy café in central London, sipping piping hot latte’s on a freezing cold day. I ask her to relay to me the answer to the questions, then I sit back and watch her chatter to me at 100 miles an hour for the next hour, arms flying around excitably, barely taking a breath as she talks, describing to me her most positive work and life experiences with all with the enthusiasm of someone who had just won the lottery! On the rare occasions she pauses for air or a sip of now cold coffee, I poke a little to delve in deeper with a few laser guided questions, then use my listening skills to connect the dots if she misses them.

 The outcome was that with just a little prodding from me she decided that her most recent role wasn’t playing to any of her key strengths, and instead of feeling like she had failed miserably, she realized that the only mistake she had made was taking a job that had nothing to do with who she really was… Ta Dah!!

 For the remainder of the time we delved a little more into her strengths, not just the ones she recognised in herself, but those I spotted hidden in amongst the chattering, then we agreed some homework for the next session.

 In the next few days after our meeting, because her eyes were open now and she was looking up and around rather than down, and her mental energy was restored, she made some really bold moves, and is well on the way to securing a new role in a significant career change.

 Still wondering about the “double-sided” part? I am guessing that from my description you’re already feeling some of what I was feeling as I watched her talking. The energy and excitement radiating from her kept me buzzing for days afterwards, and watching her take a seriously brave step towards a new career gave me even more conviction to continue to pursue my dream without looking down (and definitely not backwards!). She is telling anyone who will listen than I am a genius and have transformed her life! I can’t really claim either of those badges, but I’ll take the compliments and store them in my happy bank for when I need a boost myself!!!

 Still wondering about whether you have the energy for mentoring someone? Give it a go, see how truly amazing it can feel, or why not contact me for a session first then spread that lovely buzz!!!

Lorna Stellakis - A woman on a mission to help as many people as possible to look up from their shiny screens and really connect with their co-workers (or whoever is around them that day) so that they can collaborate, learn from each other, become more productive, more efficient, and figure out what will make their day really great!! If you really look, the world is a lot shinier than those little screens… Look me up on LinkedIn or drop me a tweet @LJS_LORNA