The Best Breakthroughs Come From Moments of Doubt

A few months ago, I learned about a 12-week leadership development opportunity provided for Adobe employees by Team4Tech to learn and grow by virtually volunteering to support the nonprofit organization, Cambodian Children’s Fund. CCF is a nonprofit organization whose Education Program seeks to provide a pathway out of poverty for students and their families in the heart of Phnom Penh. CCF also ensures that students graduate with a strong sense of social justice and a commitment to making a better future not just for themselves, but for their community and their country. 

As I learned more, I knew I was extremely interested in being involved. I immediately applied and was delighted to learn I was one of ten applicants that were accepted a few weeks later! My subteam of three other Adobe employees (based in SF, India and London) were assigned 3 mentees each and would be mentoring them in how to use Photoshop via Zoom. Through the mentorship, our goal is to work with each of our mentees to create tutorials, handouts, training materials, and additional resources in Khmer (local language in Cambodia) so they will be able to turn around and train others (Train-the-Trainer Model). 

As someone who has a commercial photographer background and has used Photoshop my entire professional career, I was eager to share all my knowledge with my mentees. My mind immediately began to race as I had lofty goals of cramming in as much as possible into our short time together. After having two "get to know your mentees" Zoom calls before the actual mentoring, I realized this virtual program was going to be a lot more challenging than I had initially thought. With a 14+ hour time difference, differences in cultural learning styles, and language barriers, I found myself frustrated at times with the progress that I wanted to teach them at. Everything that made sense to me of how I would explain and learn seemed 10x harder when you can't physically be there in person to show them something and gauge their understanding. 

It was perfect timing when Team4Tech gave us an article to read called The Best Breakthroughs Come From Moments of Doubt. In it, Sandy Speicher, the CEO of global design firm IDEO talks about "Disequilibrium = when you begin to see things in the world that don’t make sense to you. The things you thought you knew—the things that helped you feel stable and clear—are now in question. This state is hard. We crave equilibrium." This article made me realize that even though I had preconceived notions of how the mentorship was going to go, it's ok when things don't go as planned and to feel out of control. Instead of wallowing in frustration, I've decided to use the times when I feel like something isn't going the way I thought to pivot and try a different teaching technique. This mentality has given me a new understanding of how to communicate with each mentee. As a result, I've gotten to know my mentees better and have discovered new things they want to learn. 

I know my time is very limited with my mentees and I can only do so much virtually, so I don't beat myself up when I feel like I didn't accomplish everything I wanted. When I do feel out of control, I acknowledge my state of disequilibrium and ask myself:

• What can be controlled?
• What additional pieces of information might be helpful to proceed forward and how to get ahold of it?
• What assumptions could be made that lead to a plan of action?

Asking these questions has given me a different perspective on the situation and help me figure out a new approach of mentoring. At the end of the day, I want to use the time we have to guide and ultimately inspire them to learn more about Photoshop on their own and how they can utilize it to their full advantage.