Archive for the ‘mentor’ Category

Maximum Mentoring: How To Get The Most From The Relationship

Thursday, July 29th, 2010
Image Credit It Takes Work To Get The Most Out Of A Mentoring Relationship

It Takes Work To Get The Most Out Of A Mentoring Relationship

Finding a mentor can be a real challenge for any IT Leader – they seem to be few and far between these days. However, if you think that when you get someone to agree to show you the ropes that the hard part is over, you’ve got another thing coming…

Get A Backup (Mentor)

The one thing that none of us seem to have enough of these days is time. The same is going to be true of anyone that you find who is willing to act as a mentor for you.

Since you know going in to the relationship that they may not always have enough time to work with you, it makes sense that you’d pick out (or have them recommend) a backup mentor. Having multiple mentors means that the load on any one given mentor will be less and yet you’ll still get the guidance that you are looking to get out of the relationship.

Be Careful Who You Pick

Just to make sure that you get off on the right foot, you need to be careful who you pick to be your mentor. It’s a two-way street, but it needs to be a good thing for both of you.

One of the biggest pitfalls seems to be those situations where you “get assigned” a mentor. That’s never a good idea – you may not want them to be your mentor and they may not want to be your mentor. Whenever possible, make sure that both parties are willing to enter into the mentoring relationship of their own free will.

Lay Out Some Ground Rules

The key to any good relationship is for both sides to both agree to a set of ground rules. We’re not talking about a legal document that you have to sign, but rather a set of agreements that you can both live with. No lawyers need be involved.

Key agreements that you need to work out in the beginning include such things as what you are looking for, what your mentor has to offer, and such mundane things as how often you are going to meet.

It’s All About Feedback

The question that will keep coming up over and over again is “how am I doing?” Both the mentor and the person being mentored are going to be looking for answers to this question.

One important feedback channel needs to be from the mentor to the person being mentored’s boss. This type of communication allows any issues that show up to be identified early on and a solution created quickly.

What All Of This Means For You

A mentoring relationship could be the “secret sauce” that could move your career to the next level. However, once set up you can’t let your mentoring relationship run on autopilot.

In order to make your mentoring relationship successful, you need to know what you have to do. Make sure that you have a backup to your primary mentor, pick the right mentor in the first place, have ground rules, and create ways so that both of you can provide feedback.

A good mentoring relationship will save your career a great deal of time. Yes, you’ll have to make an effort to get the most out of relationship, but if you do then you’ll find that a good mentoring relationship will allow your career to move along much faster than it is today…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: How many backup mentors do you think that you should have – is just one enough?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

If you’ve been reading any of the trade press over the last couple of years, you have undoubtedly run across story after story that talked about the next big thing in IT: on-demand computing. I’m willing to bet that members of your IT team may be clambering to take your next project “into the cloud”. Sure it sounds sexy, but should you do it…?

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Why Does Mentoring Go Bad?

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
Image Credit If A Mentoring Relationship Goes Bad, You Could Get Bitten

If A Mentoring Relationship Goes Bad, You Could Get Bitten

Quiz: what’s the best way to get your IT Leader career on the fast track to success? Answer: find yourself a good mentor. If you can find such a mentor, then you might think that you’ve got it made in the shade, so to speak. Umm, maybe not. If that mentoring relationship goes bad, your career just might be in trouble…

You’re Not Like Me – And That’s A Bad Thing

One of the key components of any mentoring relationship is that both the mentor and the mentee (is that even a word?) need to be compatible. You might think that this is a no-brainer, I mean the mentor accepted the role, right? However, this is not always the case: sometimes companies step in and assign mentoring pairs. In these types of cases, incompatible personalities can find themselves thrown together.

If you find yourself in this type of mentoring relationship, something’s got to give. Either you or the other party is going to have to make some changes in order to make the relationship work. If neither one of you is willing to bend, or bend enough, then it may be time to dissolve the deal.

I Don’t Have Time For You

When someone agrees to be a mentor, it’s really as though they are taking on another job. This is all fine and good, until their “real” job starts to require too much time. If this happens, then there’s a good chance that they won’t have enough (any) time to spend mentoring.

If you are the one being mentored, then if your mentor all of a sudden stops having time to work with you, what are you going to think? Clearly you’re not going to be happy about this and if it goes on for even a short amount of time you are quickly going to become resentful.

Even if the mentor’s time frees up again, the damage will already have been done. No longer will you be open to working with him/her and the benefits of mentoring will have evaporated for both of you.

Hey, Stop Doing That!

The worst thing that can happen to a mentoring relationship is if the mentor starts to manipulate the person that they are mentoring. This type of bad behavior most often occurs when the mentor is somewhere along the mentee’s reporting structure.

Manipulation can take on many forms. One form occurs when the mentor starts to boss the mentee around. Once again, this is an easy role to fall into if the person being mentored actually reports to the person doing the mentoring.

Since a mentor often has the ability to assign work to the mentee, this is another area where manipulation can creep in. By either assigning the wrong tasks or by withholding the right ones, a mentor can wreak havoc on the mentoring relationship.

What All Of This Means For You

There’s no doubt that a mentoring relationship can be one of the best things that can happen to any IT Leader’s career. It’s just that you need to make sure that it doesn’t lead to a divorce.

Mentoring relationships can go bad if the two parties are incompatible, don’t have enough time to nurture the relationship, or engage in manipulation. Once started, any of these actions can have a disastrous effect on the mentoring.

If you find yourself in a mentoring relationship that is going wrong, take action quickly! The longer that you stay in a bad mentoring situation, the less effective it’s going to be for both of you…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: What would you do if you found yourself in a bad mentoring relationship?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Finding a mentor can be a real challenge for any IT Leader – they seem to be few and far between these days. However, if you think that when you get someone to agree to show you the ropes that the hard part is over, you’ve got another thing coming…

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5 Steps To Help An IT Manager Find A Mentor

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
Find Single Mentor No Longer IT Manager Can

Find Single Mentor No Longer IT Manager Can

Mentoring is sorta like that networking thing. You know that it’s probably a good thing to be doing. However, you’re not quite sure how to get started with it and so it seems to always end up on your “should do” list where, of course, it never gets done. Whenever you read about someone’s success in business, they always seem to give credit to their mentor. Man, I guess having a mentor can help one succeed in business, I really should get one of those…

A traditional mentoring relationship was when an older colleague would talk a younger colleague under their wing and they would show you the ropes and maybe even open some doors for you along the way. Bad news: those days are pretty much over at this point in time. Today mentors need their own mentors in order to keep up with all the changes that are occurring in technology, globalization, workplace diversity, etc. Since the old way of mentoring is now officially broken, IT managers need a new way of getting the guidance that mentoring used to provide.

A clever solution to this problem is instead of limiting yourself to one mentor, instead develop a small network of mentors – each having a particular area of speciality. Keep in mind that mentors for this “personal board of directors” do not need to come from where you work: professional societies, university, friends, all are potential candidates. Here are 5 steps that will help you build your mentor network:

  1. First Look In The Mirror: How can you ask others to help you unless you know what kind of career help you need? Spending time listing out your strengths and weaknesses is the best way to decide what kind of mentors you need.
  2. Determine What Your Needs Are: Once you know what your strengths and weaknesses are, then you are ready to decide what steps you need to take in order to achieve your goal. If you want to be CIO, then you probably need to first be a Director, next an Executive Director, and so on. Knowing this type of information will help you to understand what types of mentors can give you the coaching that you’ll need in order to get promoted.
  3. Pick Your Mentors: Instead of waiting around for a kindly Sr. Executive to reach out and offer to coach you (just like in the movies), you need to select those whom you will invite to be your mentors. Remember that mentoring has to be a two way street so make sure that you have something to give back to the people that you ask to mentor you.
  4. Weed & Sow Constantly: As time goes by, your mentoring needs will change. This means that you need to be constantly re-evaluating who is currently in your mentoring network. Over time your needs will change and you will need to gracefully swap out board members.
  5. Give More Than You Receive: Keep in mind that mentoring is a two-way street. Ultimately you will want to be sought out by others to be their mentor so that you can learn from the best and the brightest. The only way to make sure that this happens is to develop a reputation for being a great mentor yourself.

Do you currently have a mentor? How did you get your mentor – did you select them or were they assigned to you? If you developed a mentor network, how many people would you need to have on it? Where would you find people to be part of your mentor network? Leave a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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IT Employee Motivation: Fixes Are More Important Than Problems

Friday, July 11th, 2008

How You Handle A Mistake Is More Important Then The Mistake Itself

The engineer in all of us can rise up and take over whenever a problem shows up. In the world of information technology, when either ourselves or one of our staff screw up, personnel issues can get shoved aside as we focus on finding a solution to the problem at hand. However, if you can take a step back for just a moment, you’ll find that this is a rare opportunity to define your career. In this day and age in which IT employee retention is so important, the ability to pause can be critical.

We all make mistakes and the same goes for those who either work for us or work on our team. When somebody really makes a mistake, the whole world seems to come to a screeching halt when both the problem and the person who caused it are finally identified. What you do next will define how everything turns out. You’ve got a bunch of options:

  • Don’t Go Bi-Polar: All of us tend to favor an extream reaction when we realize that a mistake has happened. Either we blow our top and insist that someone else is responsible or we get very embarassed and think “Oh no, I really screwed up this time.” Both reactions are the wrong response — instead, take a step back to evaluate the situation and keep calm even if that is the hardest thing in the world to do.

  • Plan, Plan, Plan: don’t ignore the problem. And yes, you should probably tell your boss about it so that he hears it from you and not someone else. Be sure that you accept responsibility (I mean, what else can you do?) and make sure that you have a plan for what to do next BEFORE you tell him.
  • Don’t Point Fingers of Blame: Focus on finding a solution to the problem instead of focusing on the source of the problem. One key aspect of IT jobs is that we seem remember and reward the heroes who fix problems and we rarely seem to remember how the problems happened in the first place. This is your time to shine!
  • Find A Problem Mentor: If ever there was a time in your career to find someone to talk to about your situation this is it. Keep in mind that they may not be in your office and may not even work for your company. Find them, explain the situation, and seek their guidance as to what you should be doing next.
  • Say That You Are Sorry: Amazingly enough, this may be the perfect time for you to simply say “I’m sorry”. A sincere apology may be the hardest thing in the world for you to do; however, it may act like a sudden rain storm over a forest fire. If an apology is not appropriate or needed, then at least state how you feel “This is a bad situation and I’d like to help correct it” and then move on.

We have all made mistakes in our career and we will probably make even bigger ones as we move forward. However, it’s how we react to these mistakes that really defines who we are.

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