3 Things I Learned from Mentoring
I am currently part of the Shadow Board at Version 1. The Shadow Board is a group of people under 30 who provide feedback and ideas to senior decision-makers. Learn more about the Shadow Board here.
Each Shadow Board member has been lucky to have been assigned a mentor from the senior team. It is up to the mentee to drive the sessions, set the agenda and be open and honest to get the most out of the sessions. The mentors are not only excellent listeners but someone who will challenge the mentee, help them to set goals, and be a trusted advisor.
How to get the most out of mentoring
It can be hard to know what you want to get out of a mentoring session or how to approach a mentoring session — especially if it is your first time having a formal mentor. Here are some tips I have come up with for having a successful session with your mentor.
- Get to know yourself ahead of a mentoring session. In Version 1 we have access to a Personality Profile Analysis (PPA) tool. The PPA helps to enhance your level of self-awareness, find out what you are naturally good at and identify what motivates you. There are lots of self-awareness tools available online simply google ‘How do I become more self-aware’.
- Open up to your mentor, for them to help you — you will need to be open and honest with them. This can be sharing your career goals, motivations and your background as this is where you will want to develop further. All of this will allow them to gain a greater understanding of you and provide tailored advice. Identify your strengths and weaknesses. Explore examples of where these have helped you in your career and where they may have hindered you or held you back. Use these as a conversation starter with your mentor, who could then offer some guidance on how to overcome any issues you have identified.
- Another area you could explore with a mentor is a career change or progression — they will likely have a lot of years of experience, so could provide you with some details of their journey or give you pointers on making your next move.
So, on to the 3 things I learned from mentoring
The importance of time management as you gain more responsibility.
The Pareto principle or 80–20 rule states that ‘roughly 80 % of the effects come from 20 % of the causes. It’s an uneven distribution that can be found in countless life and business situations’. This principle can be used to help manage your time more effectively on the tasks that will drive the biggest impact. I now keep this in mind and do the following:
- Drop out of calls early if I don’t have any value to add or gain.
- Make a daily task list each morning, and review progress after lunch.
- Saying no to work/opportunities if they don’t align with your goals or are not an immediate priority.
- Learning to delegate tasks within a team.
It’s easy to list these all out, but harder to start putting them into practice. My advice would be to take one of these and start doing it for a week or two, and slowly you will find it becomes a habit.
The importance of setting short term and long term goals
Goal setting is something we are all aware of and at Version 1, we have to set quarterly goals which we review with our managers. I’ve learned from my mentor that it’s also important to take a step back and set goals for the year and even look further ahead. This makes sense, especially in my job role as a Business Analyst where I am involved in product roadmaps — mapping out the vision and direction for a product or project. This is a really important step in our forecasting, so why was I not doing this with my own career and even life?
My mentor suggested completing the wheel of life exercise, as I was finding it hard to start — this exercise helps you to understand how different areas in your life are balanced. This was a brilliant way to get started as I was able to set goals for the areas which were lower than expected, and maintain areas that were already at a good level.
Another idea is to look at writing a 5 year letter to yourself, imagine yourself in 5 years — where are you? what are you doing? What is your responsibility at work? What do peers think of you? This allows you to think about the type of person you want to become and can drive the more short term goals.
How to handle important conversations
One problem I came to my mentor with was having difficult conversations and struggling to say no or push back — this is something that aligns closely with time management. As a learning exercise, my mentor had me look at past conversations which went well and ones that didn’t go so well and make note of these. This helped me to understand where I could improve. My mentor taught me to ensure before going into these conversations that you have a clear plan set out, this ensures you get the most out of the conversation and don’t miss any crucial points. It is also essential that you deal with any negative emotions such as frustration or anger before the conversation as this can result in the conversation going badly and neither party getting a good outcome. These lessons taught me to take a step back before rushing into these conversations.
I would really encourage anyone who is looking to develop themselves or their career to explore getting a mentor. One important thing to remember is a mentor is there to guide you so you have to be open to the support in the first place, and also be ready to invest time in yourself.
Finally, I just want to say a massive thank you to Jarlath Dooley for providing me with this mentorship to date, and for allowing me to become more self-aware and develop these skills which will hold me in good stead for years to come.
About the Author:
Tanya Matthews is a Business Analyst here at Version 1.
