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.

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

Professional Mentoring Explored (first posted on LinkedIn 25/08/25)

A view along a railway platform through
the open slam door window of a train

hashtag

Before I started my #ProfessionalMentoring service in August, I challenged AI to give me 'the current and most accurate definition of a professional mentor'.

The resulting description that seemed to align most closely with my thinking was this...

"A professional mentor is an experienced and trusted individual who provides guidance, support, and encouragement to a less experienced person (the mentee) to help them develop their skills, knowledge, career, and personal growth within a professional context. This relationship is typically characterized by trust, open communication, mutual respect, and a focus on the mentee's goals and development."

I take exception to the description of the mentee as "a less experienced person" as I see the mentoring relationship encompassing all levels of professional experience. Indeed, I am already mentoring a couple of experienced peers.

That said, it's a pretty accurate summary of what I do.

There then followed a list of 'key aspects' which expand on the above.

* Experienced and Trusted

* Guidance, Support, and Encouragement

* Focus on the Mentee's Development

* Skills, Knowledge, Career, and Personal Growth

* Trust, Open Communication, and Mutual Respect

I'm going to do a short series of follow-up posts, taking each of those elements in turn, examining, expanding on and sense-checking them here and on LinkedIn.

Look out for these over the next few weeks.

And of course, I'll be grateful for any comments, experiences, challenges, feedback or enquiries.

hashtag#ProfessionalMentoring hashtag#LnD hashtag#Mentor 

Why Mentoring? Why Now?

Today (Tuesday 29th July 205), I posted an announcement on the social media channels #LinkedIn, #facebook and #Instagram advising my professional community that, at this late stage of my career, I am now offering a professional mentoring service. The posts looked like this... 

And my social media feeds blew up! 

I have been overwhelmed with the responses. In LinkedIn alone, 100+ 'likes', 49 comments and endorsements and 11 reposts; in facebook, 19 likes and 15 comments; and in Instagram, 17 likes and 7 comments - all favourable, supportive, affirming and just downright humbling. I've never had such positive reaction to anything I've posted before. 

It seems like I've hit on a professional service offering that has resonated with many. 

Indeed, I've already had several enquiries and am lining up exploratory calls with some people to see if there's a potential fit and to consider options for entering into a mentor/mentee relationship with each other. I am very excited about all of this. 

But, to my initial question: Why mentoring? Why now? 

Because I'm not done yet. Yes, I'm 'getting on a bit' now, but everything still seems to be working (don't ask), although I no longer have the stamina for commuting, nor for working 5 days a week either, thank you.

My career has spanned almost 50 years, over 35 of them in Learning and Development, but I've got even more years of lived work experience dating back to 1976 when I left drama school in Edinburgh (See my profile at the top of this blog page). 

And now, as I approach my 70th Birthday in December, it's time to slow down, look up, and focus on what I seem to have done best all through my career - support individuals and help connect them with others on their workplace journeys. 

I want to acknowledge all the brilliant, talented and generous people I have worked or interacted with professionally throughout this time, many of whom have become good friends and many of whom I have looked up to - and still do - as leaders and mentors in their own right. You know who you are. 

So for now, onwards! Work to do. People to help.

I’ll keep you posted.