"Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a
push in the right direction."
I’ll be honest; I was quite apprehensive about the entire
process when I started with the mentoring session. The thoughts that kept
creeping in my head were – What questions will I ask a person with more than 4
times my work experience? What are intelligent questions and what constitute
dumb questions? Would the outcome be something implementable or be some more
“general gyan”?
2 sessions past, I now believe that THIS is one of the best
features about the entire 1 year Leadership program at SOIL.
I have learned some of the fundamental and essential traits
of management (personal and professional) during my mentoring meet – and from a
person who epitomizes simplicity & humility, is down to earth, considerate
and clearheaded.
It is said that, “An Advice is like snow; the softer it
falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.” I
have realized the truth of this statement in the last one month. Some of the
takeaways from my last mentoring session were –
* A manager can either assume that a person in the team will
not do work because he is just not interested and hence not give that person
anything to do or the manager could ask himself “what can I do to help this
person be a better contributor." It
is important that we create an environment that helps people do their job, that
makes people see value in what they are doing and feel motivated
* While managing people a leader needs to realize that each
person is different and unique, so the factors that motivate him/her would be
different as well. Each person needs to be treated differently
* How we react to
situations, what we are today can all be linked back to our past. We need to
figure what those experiences/incidents were (root cause analysis), get the
ghost out of the closet and bid it goodbye
* We can change the way we are, just need to understand why
we are that way and make a genuine effort to change
* Any good Action plan starts with identifying the areas of
improvement, root cause analysis of the developmental areas and then coming up
with the steps to bridge the gap between the desired and the present state
* Communication is the most important asset and a key to
successful negotiations, building strong relationships, motivating teams and a
lot more. And this is my focus area for the next one month. I have started with
reading the book, “I wish I’d said that!” and trying to identify if I have a
Noble, Socratic or a Reflective communication style.
While coming back from the meeting I remembered something my
boss had told me once -- A few things in
the world are much more powerful than a positive push - A smile, a word of
optimism and hope and a "you can do it". I think this is what good
mentors do!
