Professional Mentoring Unpicked #4

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

Today I’m looking at Key Aspect 4: Skills, Knowledge, Career, and Personal Growth

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

“Mentorship encompasses a holistic view of professional development, including technical skills, industry knowledge, career advancement, and even personal attributes that contribute to professional success.”

Hmmm… how to write something about this that doesn’t sound like self-aggrandisement…

How about this?

I’ve been in Learning and Development for over 35 years – and I’m still waiting to be found out!

Seriously, I came to L&D late, having been a professional actor for some 12 years. In that time, I only acted for about four of those years; for the rest of that time – as my blog page header says – I was many other things, fruit-picker, postman, delivery driver, barman, audio typist/temp, ‘industrial overload’, professional actor, Office Manager, Business Owner, Trainer, IT Training Manager, Head of Technology Assisted Learning and latterly, Learning Consultant with the CIPD and Accreditation Mentor with the LPI. Meanwhile becoming a husband and father of two.

The common thread here was me trying to earn a living and ‘having a go’ at whatever opportunities presented themselves to achieve and sustain that objective. Along the way, I picked up a raft of transferrable skills and have used some or all of them at different stages of my career.

Resilience, flexibility, adaptability, learning, unlearning, leading, sharing, and yes, even performing.

And all the while, waiting to be found out, to be exposed as unqualified, inexperienced, delusional… Imposter phenomena, anyone?

And yet, here we are. Now I’m at the ‘late career/flexible working’ stage, it feels right to be bringing the skills and knowledge developed over the years into my role now as a professional mentor, supporting others on their career journeys.

There is no such thing now as a job for life. We all need to be able to flex, skill up, reskill, recognise our strengths and our areas for development, and take responsibility for our careers – never more so than now.

Let me invite you to take a reflective look back at your career journey so far. How much of it was intentional, planned, achieved? What impact have you had to date? What skills and personal attributes have got you this far?

And how often have you had to roll with the punches, get derailed, start again? What are you doing to prepare for an uncertain professional job market and the different roles and responsibilities therein? What are your transferrable skills? What’s missing?

Let me know if I can help you answer some of those questions and support your career journey.

#Mentoring #PersonalDevelopment #LnD #HR #ProfessionalMentoring #Skills #Impact

 

 

Professional Mentoring Unpicked #2

Photo by Masjid MABA on Unsplash

I wrote a couple of posts at the end of August into September, on the practice of #ProfessionalMentoring and the key elements that underpin it. This is the next post of the short series wherein I'm reflecting on and unpicking each of those aspects and how they inform my role as such a Mentor.

Key Aspect 2 - Guidance, Support, and Encouragement:

“The role of a professional mentor goes beyond simply giving advice. It involves active support and positive reinforcement.”

I see my role here being to help the mentee recognise the potential they have still to unlock, to build their confidence, help them celebrate wins along the way, and to stand with them when things get tough.

Some of my clients need support in raising their voice, internally and externally. We’re working on them showing up in the workplace, emphasising their own effectiveness and impact, sometimes being confident enough to say ‘no’.

In some instances, we’re working on them developing an external voice and presence, finding their tribe and engaging in discussion and debate whilst building relationships with fellow practitioners and other, more experienced practitioners, thinkers and commentators – online and face to face.

I’m listening and watching, amplifying and commenting publicly and also providing individual feedback and encouragement privately.
 
Some of my clients are people I consider to be my peers, in respect of career history, experience, seniority and – dare I say it - longevity, whilst others are at an earlier stage of their professional career.

I meet each of them where they are and we work out from there accordingly.

If any of the above sounds of interest and you think you could benefit from some professional mentor support, feel free to contact me for a no-obligation exploratory conversation, at niallgavinuk@outlook.com or via LinkedIn https://lnkd.in/eKGzSBz8

 
#Mentorship #Leadership #ProfessionalDevelopment #CareerGrowth

Back to Basics

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

I went to Olympia London on Tuesday 4^th February for a wander and catchup at the World of Learning Summit Exhibition. A relaxed and enjoyable experience, in a familiar and inviting space, I visited some exhibitor stands, purposefully - and sometimes accidentally - met some of my professional pals and basically recharged my L&D batteries.

A recurring topic of conversation was that the AI in Learning hype seems to have quietened down, as the reality of the tools, it’s limitations and its benefits, have challenged the L&D profession to really question its efficacy and relevance. In my view this is a good thing.

I detected a more mature repositioning of L&D’s attitude to and use of Artificial Intelligence. It seems it has challenged us to look at ourselves and what we do, through the lens of a powerful tool that will only serve us if and when we get our own house in order.

Initially, AI will work best for us as a beast of burden, taking on our boring admin, content scraping and weeding, and freeing us up to be more creative and relevant in supporting our customers with better learning solutions.

And we can do that better by going back to basics.

We need to get to grips with proving impact – and for that, we need data. And data is the lifeblood of AI. The insights and evidence of our impact should then follow.

On Monday, Wesley Atkinson (https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesleyatkinson/) posted a short piece on LinkedIn which prompted me to think about how L&D could meet AI in that space.

“If you’re not organised and don’t track/plan ahead, proving the impact of an e-learning course is going to be hard.

To do this properly, you need:
- A business counterpart to collaborate with.
- At least two measurable data points to track.
- To figure out what to track BEFORE you launch the course.

Proving ROI on an e-learning course is about tracking the right numbers from the start.

Without a plan, it’s impossible to demonstrate business impact.”

Boom! (Thanks Wes.)

Three things for me here:

-        An engaged business stakeholder is essential to assist learning designers to ensure their solution is relevant to the organisation.

-        No data, no evidence of impact!

-        AI to evaluate evidence, assess the impact and suggest further refinements .

Is AI the kick in the pants that L&D needs to be better? Or am I oversimplifying here? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this take.

 

 

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.

Screened

"Naked Drag Queens Pink and White" by Natasha Gavin

This morning's (Fri 15th March '19) #LDinsight chat on Twitter was a Doozey!

The facilitator (much kudos to them) disrupted the usual text chat format with an invitation for us to respond to the question "What do you think about the use of video for learning solutions?" USING VIDEO to reply.

I confess to being completely thrown by the challenge. I'd only been up for 15 minutes. I was still in my dressing gown. I had major bed hair. I had only had one cup of tea FFS! Suddenly, there was no hiding place. 

I had choices to make: Run away; Do/say nothing, just lurk and learn; Respond in the customary tweet format; or Person up, pause, prepare and do some kind of video response. I had no idea what to do.  

As I was considering my options, people began posting videos. How could they do that so quickly? How could they seem so considered, calm , well-dressed and made up already? I got very flustered. I drank some more tea.

Having used #Periscope earlier in the week at a Sussex CIPD Branch Meeting (https://bit.ly/2Fgg64r), I decided to do a quick Periscope video, using a print by my daughter (see above) as the visual interest and just voice-overing my initial thoughts. I faffed about with my mini-tripod, set up the title - and immediately started broadcasting the rustle and sleeves of my dressing gown! 

(Lesson 1: Ensure your kit is already set up and steady ready for you to commence recording/broadcasting your video).

Stopped, deleted video and settled myself. (Text from @MandyRG: "I've just seen a video of your dressing gown! Did you mean that to go out live?")

Started again. Phone cam steady, all quiet. Hit the broadcast button. Voice like sandpaper (see 'Tea' above). Half-formed thoughts, clearly unscripted (but I can do 20 minutes when the fridge door light comes on, so not too much of a problem). Doing OK. Cat decides she's hungry and being ignored; joins in, loudly. Throws me a bit. Press on. Cat persistent. Apologise for cat. Press on. Manage to finish my piece, reasonably coherently (https://www.pscp.tv/w/1OdJrRzEWQkJX)

(Lesson 2: There's a difference between Live and recorded! As I tweeted, "...spontaneity's OK in some cases (reflection etc) but planning and rehearsal essential if aiming for some kind of information/knowledge sharing impact". I would have had a much tighter script and been much better rehearsed with sufficient notice and preparation. In a recorded video, you can build in time and space for editing and refining content.)

Back to the #LDinsight tweetchat. So many videos and so much great comment and insight from the #PLN. Hope I haven't let myself down with my own contribution and that it's had some relevance to the discussion. Some nice feedback, likes and a couple of retweets. That'll do me.

(Lesson 3: Video is just another tool in our kitbag, both as producer/facilitator and as consumer of learning. We need to have a reasonable familiarity with its potential and some competence in its production and consumption.)

Some final thoughts: Context is really important here. Is video the right tool for the job in hand? Is it adding any value to the message/impact you are trying to share or achieve? Have you made it accessible and inclusive for everyone (captioning etc)? 

And a final question (Personal Bias Alert), do we really need to see more full-screen, self-satisfied, beaming faces about to launch into their 'shtick', in our timelines?

Unsaid

Here's a few of the undeveloped blogs that are currently languishing in the depths of my Evernote 'Blog Ideas' folder. Anything take your fancy? Please comment.

Photo under Creative Commons CCO 1.0

"Who's Lurking Under Your Bridge?" - something about trolls

"Why I'll Never be Eric Morecombe or Sean Connery" - something about confidence and voice

"Up Periscope!" - you could write this one yourself

"Motives and Madness" - Why show up? And what would happen if I didn't?

"Smiling Assassins" - a colleague's experience of being shafted behind their back

"Stranger Danger" - something about lessons from Netflix's 'Stranger Things'

"Ready for Redundancy" - preparedness for an increasingly likely scenario

"Who would want to listen to me?" - Imposter syndrome, social media & blogging

"Can't (Don't) Know it All" - and that's OK

"Intent versus Impact" - something about self awareness, assumptions, empathy

"The Universe & Me" - spirituality or philosophy?

"Unsaid" - something about blogs I may never work up and publish.

Oh, wait...

Proud

Earlier this week, I joined and participated in a particular professional tweetchat for the first time in several months and I was 'Mr Grumpy Pants' throughout. I found myself getting impatient with the L&D/ID/eLearning practitioner discussion, with only one or two other contributors reminding us about the 'customer' - be it the business or the learner themselves - whilst the main focus of the discussion rotated around eLearning outputs and related technology. I've tweeted and commented before about the tendency for us 'providers' to focus on our outputs, rather than our stakeholders' desired outcomes, and how we thereby perpetuate the disengagement of learners with 'product' and content, so I shan't repeat that here.

What really pushed me over the edge, however, was a comment made by one of the contributors, the CEO of a L&D/Training organisation, about their staff, which, I am sure, was meant in jest, but which surprised me by being aired in what I consider to be a reasonably 'enlightened' forum. The trigger word they used was 'subordinates'.

I've been a 'Manager' in both the public and private sectors for over 25 years. I've run my own business in partnership with my wife and others. I have a Level 4 Diploma in Management and have won a Training Manager of the Year award (for which I was nominated, without my knowledge, by my team and my own line manager). When I was ill last year, my team carried on our work autonomously and seamlessly, and continue to do so (apparently) now that I have followed a different professional path. If you read my LinkedIn profile, you will see that my career has always been one where I have worked collaboratively WITH others, even tho' I frequently held the title of being their 'Manager'. I have always considered those people to be my colleagues first and foremost and have never thought of myself as being 'superior' to them. I have always viewed my role to be that of developing my colleagues to get the best out of them that delivered the organisational requirements. To do that, I have met them as equals, as fellow-travellers with a shared interest in our field. And I have relied on them to fill in my blanks as I focussed on delivering our functional objectives.

So, back to the use of the term 'subordinates' in the above-mentioned tweetchat. I am not a fan of the use of the word 'passionate' in a professional context (as in, "I'm passionate about [insert subject here]". I think it's overused and consequently undervalued. It's become a cliche. As a result, I rarely use it. In fact, as circumstances and subsequent decisions have caused me to reflect on my professional future, I've realised that, actually, I'm not 'passionate' about L&D or Learning Technologies (that may turn out to be a career-limiting statement, of course). I'm good at them tho'. My track record demonstrates that. I am still very interested in and enjoy working in the field. I love the interactions and conversations I have with my peers and Personal Learning Network via Social Media and face to face. I know I have much still to offer, based on the knowledge, experience and skills I have developed over the last 35 years. But am I passionate about it? Really?

So I was surprised at my own reaction to the afore-mentioned tweet, referring to staff as 'subordinates'. I was genuinely shocked to see it, and I reacted in a totally emotional way. I was outraged. But I've learned about the pitfalls of 'firing from the hip' on social media What Else I Learned on my Holidays (2011) so I sat back, analysed how I really felt about it and then crafted and dropped a tweet anyway, acknowledging (hoping) that the comment had been made in jest, but challenging if that was an appropriate term to use nowadays.

One doesn't tweet challenging tweets without expecting some kind of response, so I wasn't surprised when the individual in question did respond. But I was surprised by the unrepentant (and frankly smug) response, that in their business, they do use that term (remember, this is the CEO of a large, apparently well-respected organisation, a self-proclaimed "performance training thought-leader"). 

Now well and truly triggered, I crafted and deleted several responses, finally settling on something close to what I wanted to say, which I then ran past my wife (@MandyRG) and asked her if I should even 'rise to the bait' by sending it. Her advice (as a trained psychotherapist) was that I was being invited into a 'game' and should be very careful about replying (wise woman!). But here's where 'passion' creeps back into the story. I really cared about this. I didn't want to let it lie. So I responded, acknowledging their right to operate their business as the liked, but that I chose to use different language in referring to my colleagues. Respectful but still making my point, I felt.

And then they hung themselves out to dry. Keen to get the last word in and/or to wind me up further, but forgetting that this was in a public forum, that their own staff may well see their tweets, forgetting that one person's 'humour' does not necessarily translate well in <140 characters, they further insulted their staff by tweeting two further even more dismissive and disrespectful terms to describe them. At which point, I withdrew from the conversation and walked away

Why have I shared this story with you? Not to name and shame (although regular followers may well have worked things out for themselves). Not to present myself as a champion of the underdog, nor some kind of 'supermanager'. But as a reflective piece on where and how it can all go wrong on social media, if and when we let our self-belief or passion (there, I've said it!) get ahead of our thinking and our mouths/fingers; how the difference between intent and impact should never be underestimated in public fora like Twitter.

Of course, I may have over-reacted to the whole thing. Maybe it was all tongue in cheek. Maybe I have played right into that individual's hands and shown myself up to be a self-righteous, humourless attention-seeker. I am, however, proud of myself. Proud of standing up for my values and beliefs in a professional and respectful manner. Proud of not being drawn into someone else's game. Proud of intuiting when to walk away.  And proud of not making a public and potentially business-impacting fool of myself.

Unless, of course, I have just done exactly that.

Your thoughts and comments are, as ever, very welcome.

Exclusion Zone

I kept away from social media yesterday. I felt that my SoMe (social media) communities were engaged in a collective discussion around a topic for which, although I had some sympathy, I was not 'qualified' nor engaged with enough to want to participate in or discuss, nor to raise any other topic which could be construed as 'off message'. The topic, of course, was the death of David Bowie.

This got me thinking about why so many people have a view that social media is 'not for them'; how they feel excluded from 'the club'; that they 'don't have anything to say' in those spaces. I get that. I have found a community - and a voice - in social media, principally in my professional field of Learning & Development, but also in other areas of personal interest. And those communities  have been enormously important and supportive to me and my family in this last year, for which I am eternally grateful.

But sometimes, it feels like I'm the only person in the world who hasn't been touched by - or indeed, cares enough about - some events. And that triggers my 'not belonging' injunction, big time. I feel myself drawing back into my shell, wanting to keep my head down, whilst trying to resist an underlying anger and almost contempt for others' genuine and sincere sharing of their individual feelings. This makes me feel even more unworthy and shallow, as though I am lacking in empathy or cultural awareness, whilst all around me are remembering, emoting, respecting and sharing their grief and their loss. 

This is difficult stuff, by the way, and I share my thoughts here advisedly. I made the mistake several years ago (2011 in fact) of expressing a contrary view to the death of another cultural icon in a fairly dismissive tweet, and was rightly called out on it. I blogged then about how that changed my perspective and thinking about intent versus impact in social media "What Else I Learned on my Holidays"

Nowadays, I try to exercise consideration (and thereby constraint) in my SoMe activities. I am very conscious of the appropriateness of topic or comment in the face of others' national, community, collective or indeed, individual experience, which is immediate and heartfelt. Whilst I recognise the importance and significance of David Bowie's leadership in our art, music and culture over the last 50 years, and I totally get how important he was to so many people - particularly, it appears, in my SoMe and PLN (Personal Learning Network) communities - and whilst sad for his family, friends and admirers for their loss, I remain pretty untouched by his death.

So I stepped back yesterday and let everyone get on with it. No offence intended.  As my Jewish In-Laws say at times like this, I wish you a long life.