8 GET A MENTOR
Having a mentor can be advantageous for your project management career. Mentors offer their skills, experience and, critically, their networks to their protégés or mentees. You can use a mentor to test ideas in a safe environment, ask for advice or just sound off about a particular problem.
MAKING MENTORING WORK
For the first edition of this book, Marina Sampson (now Tumblety) gave her view on having a mentor. When she moved into project management from running a successful customer service team, Marina found an experienced project manager who she felt would be a good mentor. Her mentor at the time worked with her to help her transform her experience of dealing with customers into a new toolkit for dealing with stakeholders and project teams over which she had no line management authority. ‘I have learnt so much from my mentor,’ Marina said. ‘Even though we work in very different styles she will look for the best results for me.’ She arranged informal monthly meetings with her mentor for a catch up over coffee and more structured sessions around the technical side of project management if and when they were needed. ‘It’s important to find someone you can be honest with,’ Marina advised then. ‘Whatever the issue is we can work together to figure out a resolution.’
Six years on, Marina has progressed to a senior project role and is now managing programmes as well. ‘I have taken on a project specialising in distribution deals and website projects,’ she says. ‘I think I have worked with pretty much all departments and was seeking a new challenge when a secondment into a Lean Six Sigma role came up, offering training, an exam and possible certification so I have grasped that and am learning some more new skills.’
Marina had a mentor up until a few months ago when the individual left to go to another job. ‘I have not yet sought another one as I am in a secondment and doing training so I will identify an appropriate mentor once the training and exam are complete,’ she says. ‘It’s something I find really useful and with my last mentor we bounced ideas off one another.’
Marina has also become a mentor herself. ‘I have been a mentor for two people, both of whom were in project roles at a lower level,’ she explains. ‘We took the time to set objectives for the sessions and they both progressed into the roles they were seeking. I still meet with them but no longer in a mentor capacity, more for networking now. I would be a mentor again if I was asked and if I felt I could help the person.’
Mentoring can have a very beneficial effect on the protégé’s career in terms of improved job satisfaction, more rapid promotion, higher salaries and increased access to organisational key players, according to researcher Kimberly McDowall-Long.96 However, choosing a mentor should not be rushed into. If your company has a formal mentoring programme you may be allocated a senior manager to support you in the role of mentor. You can still have a mentor even if your company does not have such a scheme, although you will have to seek out and approach them yourself. Either way, hopefully the person chosen as your mentor will play a supportive role in your long-term future.
McDowall-Long identified two groups of characteristics displayed by effective mentors: interpersonal skills and technical expertise. When you begin to think about who you would like as a mentor, consider their competence in both those areas. If you decide to use a formal company scheme ensure you will have the opportunity to swap mentors if the two of you do not click; it can be quite a personal relationship so it is important you get on. Give some thought as well to perhaps having different mentors for different things. The technically brilliant budget whizz may help you out of some awkward financial moments but she may not be the one with whom to discuss sensitive communications issues.
When drawing up your shortlist of potential managers to approach as your mentor consider the following:
• What sort of person do you feel comfortable opening up to?
• How much more senior than you do you want your mentor to be? Perhaps seniority is not as important as their project management experience or their character.
• Would you prefer a male or female mentor? Of what age?
• Do you want someone with an established network who could perhaps help you achieve your career goals?
• Watching them in their interactions with others, do they have the communication skills to be able to give you constructive feedback and set you challenging targets while remaining supportive?
Once you have selected possible candidates, find a convenient time to approach them one by one. Explain to your top choice what you expect of a mentor. How many meetings per month would you want to arrange? Would they be on a regular basis or ad hoc as you need them? How often do you expect to call on them and for what? Once you have outlined your objectives and explained what your prospective mentor is getting into, ask them to consider it and let you know in due course if they are prepared to step into the role. Being asked to be someone’s mentor is flattering but it is also a big commitment – informal mentor-protégé relationships can last up to six years.97 Let your candidate think about it and don’t take it personally if they say no. You might have cause to work with them in the future, so don’t feel rejected if they turn you down and, of course, maintain a professional relationship. It is unlikely that their decision was based on working with you personally. If they do say no, move on to the second candidate on your list and ask them. Alternatively, ask your top choice politely if they can suggest someone else: they obviously move in the right circles or you would not have selected them, so they may well know of someone outside your personal circle of acquaintance who would be a suitable mentor. And they will probably be pleased that you value their opinion enough to ask.
If the pool of possible candidates within your company has been exhausted, look elsewhere. There are benefits to having a mentor from your own company (increased internal recognition, improved promotion prospects, for example) but there are also advantages to having someone completely independent. There are professional networking groups for all professions, so you should be able to find someone somewhere doing a similar thing to you.
Mentoring can provide you with a great career advantage, access to another set of contacts, and a hotline to technical project management expertise, but you need to choose your mentor carefully in line with your own expectations of how the relationship will develop.