Professional Mentoring Unpicked #5

Here is the next blog in my short series exploring the key aspects of mentoring others as a professional mentor.

Today I’m unpicking Key Aspect #5: Trust, Open Communication, and Mutual Respect.

“These are the foundational elements of a successful mentoring relationship. Without them, the relationship is unlikely to be effective.”

My take: Neither trust nor respect are given randomly. They are both earned.

Mentor and mentee must establish a working relationship which allows them both to be seen and to be
heard, non-judgementally and with the focus on the mentee’s development.

In an organisation’s internal mentoring programme, some of those conditions are already in place and established in the business structure. Some prior knowledge of each other may well already exist, trusted or otherwise, and an understanding of the business, the culture and the language pre-exists.

The challenge – and the opportunity - for the external mentor is to demonstrate to the mentee that they have the empathy and the experience required to support them from an external perspective, untrammelled by being embedded in the employer organisation, and informed by different professional experiences and perspectives.

The mentee should be reassured that any conversations are being held in a safe space. And that the mentor should be able to ask the difficult questions, be able to invite the mentee to open up in ways that they may not have felt able to do with an internal mentor or indeed, at all.

Agreeing to enter that relationship requires a preparedness to commit to the process, i.e. contracting, a mutual understanding about why and what the mentee is seeking support with and a mutual willingness to communicate openly and honestly, face to face or online, throughout.

Then the work can start.

Full Circle

Photo by Daniel Lloyd Blunk-Fernández on Unsplash

I recently took voluntary redundancy and amicably parted company with my employer.

This, however, was not my first rodeo. In a career of some 40 years, I have taken redundancy three times, for various reasons, none of which reflected fault on my part, but which were business, organisational or personal adjustments. 

The challenge for any individual in these circumstances is to try not to take it personally, nor  consider it as the end of one’s career, but to see beyond the immediate impacts, to look for the opportunities they may present, rather than to catastrophise and assume the worst.

“Easy for you to say”, I hear you say; “you were only part-time - and weren’t you going to retire soon anyway?”

Yes, I was. But I have learned over the years to adopt a more philosophical attitude to these challenges.

 

I recognise here that I write from a more privileged position than many - I was approaching voluntary ‘active retirement’ next year, (and had previously indicated so to my employer); I was already working part-time and flexibly, mostly from home; our children are grown up and our mortgage will be paid off by the end of this year. And I had some potential consultancy work already lined up. Many of my colleagues were not in such a reasonably comfortable place.

So I reflected that maybe it was time for me to step aside, to embrace my ‘active retirement’ as a freelance consultant/coach/mentor, whilst facing into a personally eventful 2025, with significant birthdays, anniversaries and other family celebrations ahead. In so doing, I took myself out of the pool for what my job was to become, hopefully creating the opportunity for other ‘at risk’ colleagues to step in or up, depending on where they were in their careers and personal circumstances - which is what happened.

Now it feels like I’ve come full circle. 

I started my working life as a professional actor. This meant i spent most of my early working years ‘out of work’ (i.e. not acting) but in that time I worked in many other roles - fruit-picker, postman, delivery driver, barman, shop salesperson, follow-spot operator, audio-typist, office manager - with the occasional acting job to keep me on my chosen career path. Acting contracts ranged from 6 weeks to 10 months. And then I’d be back on the job hunt again whilst typing solicitors’ letters, pulling pints or delivering building supplies. It was the original ‘gig’ career.

It was only after I walked away from an acting career which wasn't going anywhere quickly enough, to pursue more security, home and family building, that I realised that along the way I had developed resilience, adaptability and lots of transferable skills. And that I had NOT wasted the first 12 years of my working life - I had been preparing myself for whatever career paths lay ahead.

The story of how I became an IT Trainer, Training Manager and Learning Consultant over the next 30 years is for another time. Sufficient to say that those skills I developed in my early career and my capacity to deploy them and to learn new skills has got me to where I am today.

As we all know, the world of work is changing fast. There is no such thing as a job for life any more. Everyone will face redundancy at some point in their working lives, maybe more than once. Lifelong learning and a preparedness to grasp new skills and opportunities are skills in themselves and it behoves us to embrace them, irrespective of what sectors we may work in.

As I update my own CV, in readiness for another late career flexible working ‘gig’ life, I wonder how you see yourself, your strengths, your successes and what you can do to future-proof your employability. For example, one of the questions - amongst many - I’m asking myself right now is, what skills have I got that AI doesn’t and, if I have any, how can I leverage them over the next few years? And is that even a sensible question?

What questions are you asking yourself about your future of work and how are you preparing yourself for that? Let me know if I can help you with those questions or help you plan your future career strategy. My contact details are in LinkedIn.

The Garden of Ignorance

This is our garden. When we moved here 6½ years ago, it was just a grassy rectangle with a small square patio.

Once we had settled in, we got some quotes from gardeners to design an easy-to-maintain layout and planting. This is what we ended up with, and it has proved to be sufficiently low-maintenance for me to engage with trying to keep it tidy, planted and pleasant to look out onto and relax in. 

But I'm no gardener.

I do what I do from an ongoing position of horticultural ignorance.

Like many people, I suspect, I want to have a nice garden (be able to play the piano / be a Digital Learning Expert) without necessarily doing all the heavy lifting (practising / theoretical & experiential study) required.

But I’m happy to get stuck in.

I Google / read up / ask others / observe / try out stuff / persevere / try again – with the incentive that others have an expectation of me so doing but are also willing to work with me and support me to achieve the desired outcomes.

Does that make me ‘lazy’ / a ‘chancer’ / a yet-to-be-outed imposter? 

Or a learner?

Judge me by my results.

And keep challenging me to be better.

I might just surprise you.

And myself.

Socially Challenged

Yesterday, I had the privilege to speak at the Elearning Fusion 2019 Conference in Warsaw, Poland (#ELF19). This was my first 'international' speaking engagement, the invitation to which came 'out of the blue' when the creator and organiser, Marta Machalska, contacted me via LinkedIn some months ago and extended the invitation to speak. I was delighted to have been asked to speak at what was clearly a premium event.

I had a good look at previous years' Elearning Fusion Conferences on the Internet, and I was pleased to see several well- and some personally-known speakers at their earlier conferences. So I got my biography info and subject abstract in as quickly as I could

As a potential speaker, I found Marta and her team's communication to be prompt, unambiguous and effective. They confirmed all details, including flights and hotel arrangements promptly and I was reassured that I was in good hands.

And then suddenly, the time was upon us. In the week or so beforehand, I started promoting the conference and my session on social media - on Twitter and LinkedIn. I connected with my Session Chair and we messaged each other. I delivered my Presentation and story (about using social media to support social and collaborative learning) to the organisers via DropBox before the big day and, as I said several times beforehand, rehearsed, rehearsed and rehearsed.

And I'm glad I did.

Because I'd made one or two assumptions, based on looking at the previous years' events. I had planned a short practical exercise using Sticky or Post-It Notes, so that I could show a quick YouTube video and then reveal that it was a ploy on my part to demonstrate using social media for Social and collaborative Learning. This was dependent on the delegates sitting at desks or tables, as was the case at the previous ELF events.  I had also assumed that the previous session speaker would run to time. Neither proved to be the case on the day.

No tables! Delegates were sitting theatre-style, in rows. And my session, the one before lunch, got squeezed by over-runs by the other two (Two? Only supposed to be one!) speakers.

Thankfully, because I had rehearsed often enough, I was able to flex. I binned the practical, told them about it and showed the video anyway. I pressed on, trimmed some of my stories, still managed to ask a couple of questions, set my challenge to everyone and managed to finish only two minutes over time myself. No-one's hunger for lunch overcame their hunger to learn, and everyone stayed to the end of the session.

So, to the challenge I set my participants. I asked how many of them blogged. Several hands went up. I asked how many of those made blogging part of their learning practice and encouraged others in their own learning communities to blog and share. Fewer hands. How many video blogged (or 'Vlogged'). Not many at all.

I suggested that we could build our own skills whilst showing leadership and 'walking the talk', by blogging, vlogging, tweeting or posting updates about our experiences at Elearning Fusion 19; what we had learned, what we were taking away and what we would be introducing into our practice.

I had previously invited people in my Personal Learning Network (PLN) to share their 'social media for social & collaborative learning' stories. My challenge to the rooms was to do the same. I suggested using the conference hashtag #ELF19 and the hashtag for my challenge, #ELFusionSoMe.

This blog is my first effort at that. I'll be very interested to see who and what else shows up!

Running Commentary

I've never been 'sporty'. Never played football. Never done athletics or gymnastics. Hated 'gym' at school. Got out of it as soon as it became optional at age 13. Didn't learn to swim until I was 21 See my Blog "Fear of Swimming". Sometimes played squash. Enjoyed badminton. Never really took any of them seriously. Recognised early that I was not competitive. If someone else really wanted to win that badly, let them get on with it. Exercise, as a thing, was never a conscious part of my life.

Fortunately, I have always been healthy and never had any weight issues, else I might have had some problems. Always had a 'fast metabolism', or so I was told/told people myself. Walked a lot. Still do, particularly after my coronary bypass last year, as part of my recovery therapy. That taught me not to be complacent about my health and fitness.

So now I've started running. Decided I needed to do more exercise that played to my personal exercise style, i.e. only competing against myself. I'm following the 0-5k Runner programme, via an app on my phone. I checked with my GP first. He listened to my heart, took my blood pressure etc. Was encouraging. Turns out there's a weekly Worthing 5K parkrun at 9am on Saturday mornings. My GP runs it. He hopes to see me there one day. Seems I've got a target then.

I've never followed any kind of health/fitness plan. Didn't really know what to expect, other than that I might not enjoy it, find it too difficult, drop out.

But I'm still working my through the programme. Just earned the "Half Way to 5K" badge. That's taken me 6 weeks, when the programme suggests 4. But I'm going at my pace. If I haven't been able to run all the timed parts of each section as per the plan, I've done it again the next time, and again, until I've completed it. Week 4 Day 2 was a b*gger. Took 4 attempts (not 6 as I had previously thought) before I could move on to W4D3, which I breezed!

Do I feel better? Fitter? Dunno. But I'm developing calf muscles. My stamina is obviously increasing. I ran a full 16 minutes out of 34 on W4D3.

I'm surprised at how satisfying this feels. And even more surprised at how I'm prepared to do this every two days and how determined I have become to follow through. I expect it to get more challenging. I expect to get disheartened. But I'm finding some inner resilience and determination to achieve this. It's my intent to turn up to, and run, the Worthing 5k parkrun next year. I'll push through the programme, at my pace, until I can do that.

In the meantime, I'm not telling anyone that my goal is to have achieved this by the second anniversary of my first angina symptoms in April and heart bypass surgery in May. My little secret.

Oh, wait...

Thought Learnership

Yesterday, for no apparent reason*, I had a  sudden idea "I'm not a thought leader, I'm a thought learner". And without giving it any more thought, I tweeted it. Some people liked it. One or two retweeted it.

My initial reason for tweeting the idea was that I thought it made a pretty cool 'tweetbite', and I thought it might resonate for some of my network, followers and #PLN (Personal Learning Network). But since then I've been reflecting on the idea some more.

The label 'Thought Leader' does not sit well with me for some reason and I'm trying to work out why that's so.  What makes someone a 'TL'? How is it 'earned'? Who decides? Who applies it? Leading who's thoughts? On what? In what spaces and in what media? Do we need to have our thoughts led for us? Are we sheep? "Who made you God?", to coin a well-used phrase...

I think it's something to do with the singularity of the term, the implication that only one person has the knowledge and wisdom and that they dispense it to the rest of us (the masses) as a gift; that we worship at the feet of the guru, the all-seeing one...

As you might have guessed by now, I'm not one for the cult of the personality or for the elevation of one person over another, unless there's very good evidence of their worthiness for such status. And I have still less time for those who describe themselves as 'Thought Leaders'.

And yet, it's a term that is used lot in social media and in my professional arenas of HR, Learning & Development and Learning Technologies. And, indeed, there are many in those spheres to whom I look for inspiration, wisdom and guidance, many of whom make up the bulk of my aforementioned #PLN. I would, however, be astounded if many, or indeed, any of them, thought of or described  themselves as 'Thought Leaders'.

I accidentally came across a new (for me) tweetchat this afternoon, #Bufferchat, hosted by @Buffer.  One of my #PLN had tweeted a response to one of their questions and I felt the need to wade in, referring them to my original tweet of yesterday and then amplifying what I meant. In so doing, and during the rest of the tweetchat, where debate followed and others agreed with me, my thoughts clarified and have resulted in this #blog.

So, here's where my issues sit with the adoption - whether imposed by others or self-assumed - and use of the label, 'Thought Leader' - The arrogance. The assumption of status. The lack of humility. The self promotion. All the things which the tweeps in my #PLN DO NOT DO!

My #PLN shares, works out loud, challenges, gets into gnarly conversations and arguments, meets online and face-to-face in structured and unstructured, informal social and learning exchanges, with humility and compassion, and is authentic and human. They do not aspire to the status of, nor do they describe themselves, as 'Thought Leaders'. And yet, they influence, challenge and inspire not only my thoughts, but much more importantly, my behaviour and actions.

Now seriously, do your 'Thought Leaders' do that for you? Maybe it's time to drop the label and value our interactions with those who actually walk the talk.

* Perhaps I was subconsciously channelling Kandy Woodfield (@jess1ecat), who posted this tweet yesterday, unbeknownst to me...