Over my career I have picked up numerous mentees either by participating in schemes run by the firm or purely by chance usually some random individual I come across who thinks they might benefit from my ‘wisdom’.
It takes an inordinate amount of time and usually happens at the most inconvenient times. Your mentee never has a crisis just at the point when you finished your last engagement, before you embarked on the next proposal and while your own job list has nothing of much note in the urgent or important boxes. How often have I picked up the phone only to hear the voice of my latest mentee and think ‘Not now. Please not now!’
Win-win situation
So why do I do it? I have thought long and hard about this. There must be reasons why I keep volunteering for every scheme and picking up the odd waif and stray along the way. I must be getting something from this. It can’t be pure altruism and anyway I often doubt how much benefit it is to the other party. Let me share my reasons with you.
Whatever stage you get to on the career ladder, the challenges do not change. There will always be people in positions of power and influence who want to direct you, there will always be colleagues failing to deliver what you want, there will always be things you haven’t done before and a task list that you will never be able to complete.
These challenges are the things that your mentee brings to you for you to help resolve. Of course, the reality is that you can’t resolve any of them for another person. You can’t be assertive for another person. You can’t set another person’s priorities for them. You can’t be courageous for another person.
Equally you can’t probe another’s priorities without thinking about your own. You can’t encourage another to assert themselves without mentally resolving to do so yourself and whatever fear of failure I might have, it is at its most weak as I explain to my friend that if he takes the first step his own fears will go away. So in addressing the challenges of another I also address my own.
Mentees inspire
Every individual I act as a mentor to is inspirational. I have picked mentees up by chance someone who asks for a chat, which becomes a regular chat. I have been allocated mentees according to some form of professional profiling that says we will be compatible.
I have had things in common with my mentees and I have had nothing in common with them. Whatever the scenario, I cannot think of one of them who has not, in their own way, been inspirational. I have sat with them as they face their major career decisions, preparing for interviews, in the aftermath of rejection and as they face up to the sometimes painful truth that occasionally one must bend to the world when the world won’t bend.
Every time they resolve to take positive action to move forward and every time they choose not to let the circumstances dictate how they will view themselves or their situation, they inspire me.
Learning curve
There is nothing about being good at what I do that I don’t already know. I have all the keys to success available to me. I have a wealth of contacts and many strong relationships. I know a lot of useful information and know where to go to get information I need that I don’t know. I have a lot of experience and a good, creative imagination. I have drive and stamina. If I make mistakes it is almost inevitable that they are mistakes I have made before.
When I meet with one of my mentees I hear them make good resolutions and I know that they have made those good resolutions before just as I have. I learn that, like them, when I do not do what I know I should do I must pick myself up and try again. The only lessons I don’t need to learn are those I have mastered. Mentoring takes up a lot of time and never at the most convenient time but I look at it from a purely selfish point of view.
I am delighted that my mentees continually tell me they benefit from that chat over coffee but I know that I walk away from that chat with the most valuable lesson of them all to practice what I preach.
Listen to mentees and learn
Let me offer the example of ‘George’, a fantastic individual, whom I have mentored for over ten years. Since I first began mentoring him, I have watched him progress from a young student trainee to director of the firm.
George is massively talented, driven and capable. Everybody loves him and he fits in well with many teams.
Once every few months or so we go for a coffee. The conversation is always the same. George isn’t sure whether he has the support of his superiors, feels he is working too hard and that his contribution is not recognised. He has a number of opportunities but is struggling to decide what to do.
My response varies. Often I just listen. Sometimes I say what I would do and sometimes I suggest things he could do. Sometimes I offer to intervene. Always I remind him of his value, his worth, his abilities, his strengths.
As I walk away from our meetings and mull over our conversation I put my own doubts over the support I have from my superiors to one side and remember, as I told George, that they are not ignoring me but trusting me.
I remember that I work long hours and push myself because of what I want to achieve and because of how committed I am to good service and quality work. I remember that I can be totally satisfied with my own sense of self-worth without worrying about external recognition of my contribution.
I walk away profoundly grateful to George for the help mentoring him has given me.
Vincent Neate is a partner at KPMG
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