That phone call from
Istanbul, “Fortunate has won!” will not be forgotten very soon.A journey which
started late in December last year culminated in a young colleague, Fortunate
Mboweni, winning the 2014 Young Freight Forwarder of the Year competition which
is organised by the International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations
(FIATA). Fortunate is the first Africa
born African to have won this competition since its inception in 1999. What an
amazing experience to have been her mentor through the process.
This will change
Fortunate’s life forever. For those like me who are given the opportunity to
partner with our future leaders there were valuable lessons- in some ways I
learnt more than Fortunate.
As these are lessons
which may benefit others I would like to share them.
1.
The end is
the key.
Fortunate and I spent a great deal of wasted effort by misinterpreting
the requirements of the competition. Thanks to another member of the team’s
more careful scrutiny of the competition criteria we were able to focus our
efforts on what was really needed.
It is also vital to know what your respective roles are. It was a huge temptation
for me to over participate and carry out work which Fortunate needed to do, in
which case Fortunate would have learnt very little except to sit still, look
and listen.
2.
Be
brutally frank.
The whole objective of mentoring is to have your protégé succeed beyond
their wildest expectations, but not yours. In taking on a mentorship take great
care to understand the clay with which you are going to work.
If you are not 100% confident of your candidate’s capabilities, don’t
start the project. On the other hand do realise that, when the goal ahead is
very clear and very worthwhile, people do outperform themselves.
It is up to the mentor to carefully assess the potential of the person to
be taken on the journey. Mentoring is leading for success, not setting up for
failure.
3.
One of youse
ain’t gonna make it!
At different stages of our journey Fortunate or I became extremely
disheartened: there was too much to do in the time available, material we
needed was not forthcoming, material we did obtain could not be digestively
packaged within the constraints of the completion criteria, our presentation
concept was brilliant but it just wouldn’t work and so on. What kept us going
was the ability of the one who was standing to pick up the one who had fallen.
In a mentoring journey obstacles are inevitable: each will affect each
partner differently and it is up to each to counter the effects of each setback
on the other.
4.
There are
no rules.
Mentoring is very much like parenting: there may be guiding principles
but generally the rules have to be made up as you go along.
People change with time and mentorship is all about development. As
development takes place so the protégé needs to be taking on more
responsibilities whilst the hand of the mentor grows lighter and lighter.
As Fortunate’s mentor I knew I had done my job when she left for
Istanbul fully equipped to win the competition.
5.
It’s the
team which succeeds
Vital to successful mentorship is the opening of doors by forming a
support group around the protégé. The mentor doesn’t necessarily have all the
answers but does need a very wide network of contacts who collectively do.
As Fortunate so eloquently put it when she thanked everyone “A key part
of the presentation I made in winning the competition was to point out that
much of my success was attributable to the team which supported me, and that
means YOU. My winning was truly a joint effort in which I acted as your
spokesperson in articulating all the knowledge and experience you had poured
into my poor little head during my journey through the competition!”
6.
The
rewards far outweigh the pain
In general I estimate that every hour of a presentation takes 10 hours
of preparation. In Fortunate’s case the 15 minute presentation she made to win
the competition took not less than 100 hours. This just gives some idea of the
level of commitment needed to be a mentor for a project of this nature. One
thing is for sure though: the rewards from this experience will stay with me
forever- every second spent on this project was worth it.
It may be true that legislation
and other Government interventions may assist in transforming our society into
one in which the limitations on each individual’s success are only the
self-imposed ones.
I would like to
suggest that a more important element to a nation’s success is that those who have gained a measure of experience
and expertise take proactive steps in using those assets to invest in society’s
future – our young people.
This is how Eric Parsole defines mentoring "Mentoring is to support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order that they may maximise their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance and become the person they want to be."
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand our famous Wikipedia says: “Mentorship is a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person.”
With the opportunity and privilege I’ve been given to be mentored by Charles Dey my definition is more or less the same with these two definitions, but combined with the experience, the journey and off course with the knowledge I have gathered during the mentoring process.
Mentoring is not just a process it’s a trusting relationship between a mentor and a mentee. We all know of a saying that you must earn trust but mentoring works quite differently because you just need to take that risk and trust that your mentor will help you through. That is quite a challenge I must say. The thing that built the trust and the confidence in me is that Charles never in a single day doubted me and that really is very important.
It’s one thing to have ambition on the end it’s another thing to have a person like Charles who persistently empowered me with knowledge, wisdom and didn’t deprive me an opportunity to learn and be myself throughout the whole journey.
Indeed Charles leaves up to the quote that says: “A leader is one who knows the way, and shows the way” by John C Maxwell he patiently and continuously showed me the way by transferring his skills , knowledge and experience not forgetting his wisdom to me and his positive attitude rubbed off on me.
Charles, I don't know how to thank you for what you have done.
Thank you Charles Dey you are a great mentor, don’t ever stop mentoring me
Nice
ReplyDeleteThis is great and encouraging others.
ReplyDeletewe need more people like you:)
true that
DeleteThis is an excellent article demonstrating the results of good, dedicated mentoring. I myself am a product of mentoring as I have had very little formal education in my field and have learnt most of what I know from my mentors.
ReplyDeleteTo speak directly to the points that you've made herewith are my comments:
The end is the key:
Yes, without a doubt. Without an end goal or a set of goals set out it is all to easy to become distracted or way lain by matters of interest which, however pertinent, do not contribute to the success of the team and could be to the detriment of the entire exercise.
Be brutally frank:
However difficult this may be, it is a necessity. If you as a mentor fail to point out your candidate's shortcomings they will undoubtedly trip them up and give rise to issues that could have easily been avoided right from the start.
One of youse ain’t gonna make it:
Nobody's perfect, as much as mentors will always want to be the one carrying the protégé, this isn't always the case. Often times I have found myself being driven by my own candidates desires for success to carry me through the times where I felt I no longer had it in me to continue.
There are no rules:
Each candidate is unique and must be treated as such. The moment you become militant in your mentoring methodologies, principles and techniques, you stunt the output capacity and growth of your candidates. Not just last year was a candidate placed in my care. When after only a few short months she felt herself better suited as a Business Analyst and not a Developer. Initially I was taken aback by her decision however we eventually found a way to quite smoothly transfer her to the BA work stream without much pains caused to myself or the candidate.
It’s the team which succeeds
Following on from my previous point, transitioning my candidate to a BA not only brought about personal success for her, but for the entire team. It only took her a few weeks to gain traction as an analyst and the results spoke for themselves.
The rewards far outweigh the pain
This is always the case and should be kept as the alma mater for anyone looking to mentor, or even become a candidate for a mentorship program. We run a simple introduction course here at our company which is rigorous and stressful. Many have even quit their employ before completing the course. However, those who stick it out feel that the knowledge they gain is invaluable to them as individuals, some of them have even turned around to mentor the new candidates that have come to join the company.
Again, excellent work in achieving this award and I hope to see many more successes in the future.
Thanks for taking the trouble to reply so comprehensively Paul. My major concern is that I see very little culture of mentoring in South African corporate structures. What can be done to nurture and strengthen this?
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting question. In my opinion, the first step would be for people in this country who have the time and skills to invest to actually step forward and say, "Yes! I am prepared to be a mentor in someone else's career regardless of whether or not there is a guaranteed benefit."
ReplyDeleteSee mentorship needs to come from a place of selflessness and devotion to your protégé, irrispective of whether or not you stand to benefit. Because at the end of the day, you will benefit even if it's just in learning a new point of view on methodologies or industry standards that are so long in the tooth that they may have lost relevance all together.
I agree with you to an extent but is it not incumbent on company management to at least give some formal recognition (if not incentives) to those who are prepared to take on mentoring roles.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, by creating an environment in which the competencies of the experienced are transferred to those less so, does not the organisation reap substantial rewards?
Not to disagree with you, I just feel that a corporate giant cannot move in a direction in which it's feet are not prepared to carry it. Lest it fall face first on the ground. At IQ Business, senior employees are encouraged to mentor and guide the youth within the company, through communities of practice, communities of interest, competency leaders and so forth. In the short time I have been with them I have seen explosive growth due to these values, and the fact that they are driven by the people and not the directors. In short, good leaders look to their people for direction. As such the corporate response would be a greater success as a response by an internal desire to see growth within their own, rather than as an added bonus to an already encumbered workload.
DeletePaul you talk about " communities of practice, communities of interest, competency leaders and so forth". Who established these in your organisation? It seems that there is a very strong culture of learning and mentoring in the company and in my view such a culture can only be created and nurtured through the strategic direction from top management. Is this true?
ReplyDeleteWhat is very important is the explosive growth experienced by the organisation which benefits everybody. It seems however that many companies do not recognise the correlation between a learning/ mentoring culture and bottom line benefits? As a consultant would you agree?
The communities of practice & interest are started and run by senior staff within each department, not necessarily top level management. There is an interesting example where our Agile CoP had grown so much the company included it to our core market value propositions and appointed the head of the CoP as the head of the new division.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do agree with you that top level management needs to establish the direction within the organisation. There is no doubt about that. In addition to that there are bottom line benefits specifically within our organisation that serve in the interest of those who get involved with these activities. The reason I say that the members of the organisation need to step forward and start the practices themselves is to address the issue where companies do not see the correlation. In this case a demonstration of the practical benefit would serve quite well towards motivating top level management to make the executive decision and move in that direction. I do not mean to usurp the management of organisations but rather to inspire them through their own corporate body. Quite simply, if staff are not acknowledged for all they do within a company, they tend to leave in search for acknowledgement as they become disheartened and disenchanted with their current employment situation. The leaders in my organisation identified these aspects long ago, and set out to be an organisation that encourages mentorship and growth among their own.
There is a great need to interact with top level management in order to inspire and educate them along these lines. However I still believe that moving in this direction would be utterly impossible if the senior staff who would serve as mentors within the organizations are not interested, or worse off, they are motivated by selfish means as this move would be unsustainable.
Top level management, working hand in hand with a strong, competent and inspired complement of senior staff would be able to carry the culture through their company and see explosive growth and maturation across the board.