I’d like somebody to be my mentor

If you want to help, please get in touch

Dan Barrett
Aug 8, 2017 · 3 min read

It’s been over 6 months since I posted the tweet above. When I wrote it, I knew the magical internet wouldn’t bring me the right person immediately; but I also knew that Twitter would give me a starting point and some helpful advice. I was not wrong. Thank you!

I lost momentum and the idea dropped down my long list of things to do. Then by chance, fellow #weeknotes-er Sam was also looking for a mentor, so we sat, we had coffee, we wrote in our respective colourful notebooks and ultimately we did the work of working it out.

TEAMWORK

This post represents the outcome of my conversations with Sam and outlines what I’m looking for in a mentor.

Please get in touch with me on Twitter or by commenting below if you’d be interested in an initial meeting or you have any further advice.

Also, if you’d be interested in mentoring Sam, then just click on her name or go and have a look at her post.


What I want

I would like to have an ongoing, informal mentoring relationship with one or more people to help me work out where I am going in work, and how to grow. I want to take some next steps in my career without having to fundamentally change who I am.

About me

I have been at the UK Parliament for most of my working life so far. I have had a variety of roles in IT, corporate office, and digital. I am in no hurry to leave Parliament, but I would like to try working somewhere else at some point. I want to do this to expand my horizons and stretch myself outside of a organisation culture that I understand.

Things I am good at

  • Planning
  • Delivery
  • Listening
  • Solving problems and fixing messes in a diplomatic way
  • Building, managing, and leading teams
  • People management, particularly helping people to develop
  • Collaboration
  • Being creative

Things I would like to improve

  • Being direct
  • Dealing with certain ineffective behaviours
  • Letting things go (I can hold grudges)
  • Managing my workload efficiently
  • Inspiring and leading larger groups of people, by which I mean doing more visible ‘leadership’ rather than managing a bigger team
  • High-level (organisational) strategy

Mentor person type

  • Open and honest
  • Committed to diversity
  • Committed to a healthy balance of work and not-work
  • Otherwise I don’t mind. I can get on with most people

Mentor desirable things

  • An unusual career path
  • Experience outside of the public sector
  • Experience working with geographically distributed teams
  • Experience of really large (national scale) projects
  • A broad network, which might help to identify opportunities to stretch me that I wouldn’t otherwise know about

Some of the activities I would like to do with a mentor

  • Helping me map possible next steps for my career
  • Helping me develop my leadership styles
  • Sharing experience
  • Talking through problems

What I can offer in return

  • I am pretty good at baking cake and bread
  • I can write you your own theme tune if you like

Thank you for reading.

To repeat: Please get in touch with me on Twitter or by commenting below if you’d be interested in an initial meeting or you have any further advice.

THINK OF THE CAKE AND THE THEME TUNES

Also, if you’d be interested in mentoring Sam, then just click on her name or go and have a look at her post.

Dan Barrett

Written by

Head of Data Science at Citizens Advice. These are my personal thoughts on work.

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