Mentoring 101

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Mentoring 101

• David J. Paisley
• Boeing Commercial Airplanes

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Outline

• Why Mentoring?
• Benefits
• Whats In It For Everyone Involved
• Why Mentoring Isnt as Easy as Many Think
• A Demonstration
• How To Go About Mentoring
• Some hints, tips and experiences
• The Role of the Professional Society
• QA

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Why Mentoring?

• Mentoring passes along the hidden knowledge
  that we arent able to articulate easily. Its
  nature isnt easily defined
• Part teaching tangible skills
• Part coaching semi-tangible skills
• Part friendship intangible
• Mentoring can vary from the totally informal to a
  formal, managed program
• Informal random, luck, perseverance
• Formal can be too rigid

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The Mentoring Arena
The Industry
Company
Other companies, Government, Academia
You
Prof Soc
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Whats In It For

• the Protégé (or Mentee)
• New skills, experienced insight, career options
• the Mentor
• Opportunity to understand own expertise better by
  explaining it, energy from protégé, enhanced
  ability of protégé frees mentor for more
  demanding tasks
• the Company
• Quicker development of employees, enhanced, more
  flexible work force
• the Industry
• More capable, motivated new employees, better
  recruitment, advancement of profession
• AIAA Mission Statement To advance the arts,
  sciences, and technology of aeronautics and
  astronautics, and to promote the professionalism
  of those engaged in these pursuits.

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Mentoring Options

• Within Company
• Advantages Close proximity, time available, can
  work on same projects, no proprietary boundaries
• Disadvantages Can be too close, lack of
  objectivity, especially if considering
  significant job change
• Outside Company
• Advantages Broader experience base to draw from,
  more objective, can be enabled/facilitated by
  Professional Societies
• Disadvantages Proprietary issues, fewer face to
  face opportunities

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Mentoring Programs

• Setting up a formal mentoring program is tricky
• Too little organization and it wont happen
• Too much organization will strangle it to death
• Need to find the right balance
• Need to teach mentoring skills
• Best done with both mentor and protégé present

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Why Mentoring Isnt Easy

• Few people are inherently good at mentoring
• Even those who are can benefit from training in
  mentoring techniques
• Most common problem
• Mentors end to overload protégés with too much
  information at once
• Simple demonstration
• Please find a pen and paper

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Mentoring Activities

• Here are a few actions that mentors can perform
  to facilitate the transfer of expertise
• 1. Choose (or recommend) challenging work
  assignments that will provide your mentee with
  opportunities to learn new skills. In this way
  the task becomes the teacher and the mentee
  learns by doing.
• 2. Integrate your mentee into the network of
  professionals within your company, NASA, your
  other customers, and your subcontractors and
  vendors. Expertise is not only what you know,
  but also who you know and how you know them.
  Show the mentee that there is a world of
  technology outside his or her backyard.
• 3. Schedule times to discuss strategies for
  enhancing the protégés professional and
  engineering skills development. You have to make
  time to meet with your protégé.

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Mentoring Activities (cont.)

• 4. Provide feedback and supporting actions that
  reduce unnecessary risks for the protégé. Share
  your experiences with the mentee what you have
  found to be some right and wrong ways to get the
  job done.
• 5. Take the time to reflect on your thought
  processes. Map your problem-solving techniques
  (your expertise) by using a process flowchart to
  map out the mental steps you undergo while doing
  your job.
• 6. Find something of value in the protégé as a
  person. Find ways to learn from your
  relationship. If you don't like your protégé,
  you probably won't take the above steps.

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The Role of the Professional Society

• Mentoring within a company has certain
  advantages, but the wider community is valuable
  too
• Communities of Practice
• Still nascent in companies, but Technical
  Committees are quite a good model
• Networking
• Societies are a huge resource here

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Communities of Practice

• Akin to mentoring in small work groups (like
  TCs)
• Still in the nascent stages in most companies
• Trying different ideas, seeing what works
• Boeing developing training class for prospective
  CoP leaders/facilitators
• Often use electronic means (email, websites,
  message boards) to create communities across
  geographic and organizational boundaries
• However, face to face meetings are still
  important for most people to establish
  relationships
• Imagine what will happen when the MySpace
  generation gets hold of it

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Communities of Practice - Benefits
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Networking

• Who you know, and perhaps more importantly, who
  knows you
• Experts Offer Their Tips For Fruitful Networking
  By Stacey L. Bradford From The Wall Street
  Journal Online
• Here are a few tips from experts to make your
  networking fruitful
• Prepare an "elevator speech." Write a summary of
  what you want people to know about you that can
  be delivered in less than 30 seconds. Make it
  upbeat and succinct who you are, what you do,
  what you're looking for. More than that, and you
  risk turning off the listener.

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Networking (cont)

• Show interest in others. Career experts say the
  secret is to stop focusing on yourself and take
  an interest in the other person. Ask questions
  and get the contacts to talk about themselves and
  their business experience. This is easier than
  you might think.
• Build relationships. Strangers won't put their
  reputations on the line for you. Build ties with
  a new contact before asking for help. Consider
  dropping a personal note to any new contact you
  meet at an industry event. Then follow up,
  perhaps with a helpful article or introduction to
  someone you know.

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Networking (cont)

• Don't be selfish. No matter how desperate you
  are, remember networking is a two-way street. If
  you've met with a recruiter, you can always offer
  to introduce him to the smartest people you know
  in your industry
• Don't abuse relationships. There's no rule here
  for how many phone calls are too many. Just try
  to gauge if you're coming across as always
  looking for a favor.
• Follow through. Nothing can kill a budding
  relationship faster than not writing a proper
  thank-you note. In many cases, you can e-mail it,
  but don't assume the content is any less
  important than in snail mail. A three-line
  message with a smiley face won't cut it. Keep the
  other person abreast of how your meeting went
  with someone he or she referred you to.

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Questions and Answers

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The Worlds Forum for Aerospace Leadership