Mentoring 101

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Mentoring 101

• David Paisley
• Technical Fellow
• Boeing Commercial Airplanes

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Agenda

• Definitions
• Why Mentoring is Important
• Why Mentoring is Difficult
• Summary, QA

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Definitions
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The Professional Relationship Landscape
NETWORK
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Mentors, Networks, Communities of Practice

• Mentor
• Usually a senior person in your own technical
  field, or one closely related.
• Communities of Practice
• Groups of employees whose members regularly
  engage in sharing and learning, based on common
  interests
• Typically limited to within a company, but could
  include partners and suppliers in the right
  circumstances
• Network
• The entire expanse of your contacts
• Work group, Related work groups, Alumni network
• Partner companies, Suppliers, Government
  Agencies, Research institutions, Universities,
  Industry associations, Professional societies

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Mentors, Networks, Communities of Practice

• Characteristics of the relationships
• Mentor
• Close, one on one, learning, counseling
• Communities of Practice
• Learning, understanding, improving
• Network
• Connections, opportunities
• Note networking in the business sense is most
  often associated with job-hunting. Here, I use it
  in the sense of simply developing relationships
  to enhance your career in general.

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Characteristics of Mentoring

• Informal Mentoring
• Random
• Luck
• Friendship
• Rewarding
• Formal Mentoring
• Planned
• Structured
• Skill Transfer

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Career DevelopmentBalancing Individual and
Company Needs
1. Identify the organization needs
6. Implement plan and monitor the alignment of
organizational and individual needs.
2. Identify personal needs (career goals,
interests, talents, etc.)
3. Identify opportunities to add value that will
both leverage your talents and meet your needs
5. Identify a support system. Get input and
support from others
4. Develop a plan to take advantage of those
opportunities
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Why Mentoring is Important

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Why Mentoring Is Important

• Mentoring helps people
• quickly learn the ropes of a new job.
• meet their new colleagues and build a social
  network.
• do their job correctly
• build confidence, because they get feedback about
  if they are doing their jobs correctly.
• feel competent by having someone who gives them
  credit for their work.
• feel satisfied in their workplace by providing a
  venting place for frustrations.
• stay in their jobs, by helping to make the
  workplace a better place to work.
• feel like they are in a professional setting,
  working with people who are serious about their
  jobs.

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Why Mentoring Is Important

• Most of the middle market firms I'm aware of put
  an effort into mentoring in order to attract,
  develop and retain the best quality people. The
  relationship they build with employees gives them
  a sense of ownership, a close tie to the firm.
  Scott Sachs, Managing Partner, Good Swartz Brown
  Berns
• http//news.jobsinthemoney.com/ITEM_FR/newsItemId-
  100374

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Why Mentoring is Difficult
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Friendship is Important

• Finding the right person to be a mentor can be
  difficult
• Forced matches dont always work well
• Finding the right match involves persistence and
  luck

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Brain Limitations

• Experts often try to teach too much all at once,
  ignoring the realities of how people learn
• Our Brains are Easily Overwhelmed
• Demonstration example
• Internal/External Data Confusion
• Our brains easily confuse what happened
  externally vs what our brain saw and remembers
• Context Is Vital
• Important to set the scene with the big picture
• Remembering
• Recognition is much easier than Recall
• Automatic thinking
• Vital for expertise, makes it difficult to teach

Gerard L. Hanley, Ph.D. (2000)
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Understanding Yourself and Your Organization

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Impact of Others Identify Organization Needs

• Mentors
• Can be very knowledgeable about organizational
  needs
• Usually aware of technology trends in the field
• Communities of Practice
• Working with closely related work groups you can
  often find some interesting synergies and
  linkages
• Extended Network
• A source of broad knowledge across industries
• Industry associations and technical societies are
  places where cutting edge knowledge is often
  shared
• Research Institutes, University projects often
  lead to breakthroughs keeping a finger on the
  pulse can give you an edge on where to focus your
  efforts

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Understanding Yourself

• Get as much insight as you can into what makes
  you tick
• Tools
• Myers-Briggs
• http//keirsey.com/
• Career Anchors
• http//changingminds.org/explanations/values/caree
  r_anchors.htm
• See next page
• Learning Styles (Several approaches)
• http//www.cyg.net/jblackmo/diglib/styl-d.html
• http//www2.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/
  public/ILSpage.html
• Try a few things and see what resonates with you.

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Career Anchor Descriptions

• Edgar Scheins work shows that most people have
  two strong career anchors from the following
  list
• Technical/Functional
• being good at something
• will work to become a guru or expert.
• General Managerial
• want to be managers,
• like problem-solving and dealing with other
  people.
• thrive on responsibility.
• need emotional competence.  
• Autonomy/Independence
• primary need to work under their own rules and
  steam. They avoid standards and prefer to work
  alone.
• Security/Stability
• seek stability and continuity
• avoid risks and are generally 'lifers' in their
  job.

• Entrepreneurial Creativity
• like to invent things, be creative and, most of
  all, to run their own businesses.
• ownership very important.
• easily bored.
• Service/Dedication to a cause
• driven by how they can help other people
• Pure Challenge
• driven by challenge
• seek constant stimulation and difficult problems
• will change jobs when bored
• career can be very varied. 
• Lifestyle
• Focused first on lifestyle and their whole
  pattern of living.
• Integrate work and life
• may take long periods off work

Schein, Edgar H, (1990). Career Anchors
(discovering your real values), Jossey-Bass
Pfeiffer, San Francisco
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Impact of Others Identify Personal Needs

• Others often have insights about us that are
  difficult to see from inside
• Mentors
• Can often provide a safe, somewhat objective
  view of what makes you tick
• Communities of Practice
• Some individuals within a CoP with whom you have
  worked closely may be able to help you identify
  what makes you tick
• Extended Network
• Working with a wide variety of other people may
  give you some insights into the kind of people
  you work well with and situations in which you
  work well and also the opposite

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Impact of Others Combining Personal
Organization Needs

• Mentors
• Can often provide insights into talents you dont
  recognize or value as highly as you should, or
  perhaps that you havent had the chance to use
  fully
• Communities of Practice
• The extended work network may provide you with
  some interesting ideas for high leverage work
  projects or new assignments
• Extended Network
• Many possibilities for random connections to
  result in an interesting idea or three

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Support System - Engaging Other People

• Seeing yourself through other peoples eyes
• Mentor
• Close, one on one, learning, counseling
• Communities of Practice
• Learning, understanding, improving
• Network
• Connections, opportunities

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Feedback

• True or False
• Feedback you receive has to be fair
• and accurate to be helpful

False
Feedback gives us insight into what other people
think. Whether they are right or wrong it is
helpful, although it can also be
painful Feedback is essential to learning
"Where's the Gift How to Achieve Phenomenal
Success by Discovering the Gift in All Feedback."
Nigel Bristow (www.targetedlearning.com)
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Mentoring Activities

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Mentoring Activities

• Here are a few actions that mentors can perform
• 1. Choose 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, external
  agencies, your customers, and your subcontractors
  and vendors. Expertise is not only what you
  know, but also whom 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 mentee's professional and
  engineering skills development. Remember that you
  have to make time to meet with your mentee if
  you're going to teach.

Gerard L. Hanley, Ph.D. (2000)
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Mentoring Activities (cont.)

• 4. Provide feedback and supporting actions that
  reduce unnecessary risks for the mentee. 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 mentee as a
  person. Find ways to learn from your
  relationship. If you don't like your mentee, you
  probably won't take the above steps.

Gerard L. Hanley, Ph.D. (2000)
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Communities of Practice

• Still in the nascent stages in most companies,
  agencies
• Often use electronic means (email, websites,
  message boards) to create communities across
  geographic and organizational boundaries
• However, face to face meetings are still
  important to most people to establish
  relationships
• Imagine what will happen when the
  MySpace/Facebook generation gets hold of it

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Communities of Practice - Benefits
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Networking

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Networking

• Who you know, and perhaps more importantly, who
  knows you. Some tips
• Prepare an elevator speech
• Show interest in others
• Build relationships
• Don't be selfish make it a two way street
• Don't abuse relationships limit favors asked
• Follow through thank those who help

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QA
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The Worlds Forum for Aerospace Leadership