Find a Mentor |
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| Written by Graham Stoney | |||
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You could spend a lifetime deriving everything there is to know about being a great Engineer from first principles, or learning it from text books and courses; but you'll get there much faster if you have a mentor. Being great means standing on the shoulders of giants, and there's nothing like a good mentor to help give you a leg-up. Bearing in mind that other great Engineers more senior than you will be wanting to share their knowledge too, you'll be surprised how many senior Engineers are willing to take time out of their busy schedules to help foster your growth and development. Finding a good mentor means finding someone who has already achieved what you want to achieve, has common aims, goals and outlook to you, and who is willing to put in the time commitment to teach and direct you towards success. A good mentor will not do the job for you, and is likely to spend more time listening and acting as a sounding board than they will telling you what to do. The aim is for you to learn how to set a long-term direction for yourself and to solve the organisational and career problems that arise as roadblocks on the way. Often a logical choice of mentor is simply your current boss; in many organisations, coaching you is one of their existing job goals anyway, and their performance in this respect should be assessed at their performance review. But there's nothing like taking the initiative; if your boss knows that you are keen to learn from them, they are more likely to spend the time with you because they know it will be productive. On the other hand, in organisations with a project-dominated structure, your boss may be a project manager whose skills and interests are different from your own. Don't choose a mentor whose current job role you don't aspire to, or whose passion is very different from your own. The organisational hierarchy can get in the way sometimes, particularly if you're stuck with a boss who you don't relate to easily; you need to be careful that if you pick a mentor other than your immediate boss, you aren't stepping on their toes. In matrix styled organisations, it's relatively easy to pick a mentor from somewhere else in the organisation, and many managers encourage this because it also assists inter-team dialogue. Also consider approaching your human resources department; it would be a pretty backward HR department that hadn't heard of the benefits of mentoring, and even if there's no formal company mentoring program they're often in a good position to assist you finding a mentor, and justifying why the time you spend with them is a net pay-off in the long run even when your current schedule has you fully booked until retirement. Successful senior Engineers and exectutives know that they are not indespensible, and most likely have career objectives of their own that involve eventually moving on themselves from their current roles. Often they like to groom a successor for their position so that they can sleep well at night knowing that their old ship is being steered by good hands. Finding a compatible mentor who is also looking for a successor to groom will accelerate your career advancement dramatically. But keep in mind that your focus should be on how to maximise your potential in your current role first; once you do that, the climb up the corporate ladder will follow automatically. Focus primarily on that climb though, and it will a struggle. Social Bookmark this page:         
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