Do you think your skills can't improve as an IT practitioner? Try Business Mentoring.

You'd be surprised how often we, the IT team, neglect what we're supposed to support: the business. Business Mentoring is the perfect way to remember that… not only because you share your knowledge, letting someone else capitalize on it, but also because, with some luck, you'll learn a lot about the business and yourself.

Most of us, the IT Crowd, come from and live in IT - a functional area that continuously improves to align technology with business needs, right? To do so, we've learned to collaborate as closely with the business team as possible, even evangelizing Agile practices, defining roles, responsibilities, and working dynamics to co-create value sustainably. We've also learned to use tools to build solutions effectively, efficiently, and quickly. And we're looking (or at least we should be looking) to improve the overall IT process - either getting the most of the technology or improving the talent, always focusing on our customers.

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But beyond this IT scope, how close are we to the business? Of course, if we look at well-established companies such as Marsh McLennan and Oliver Wyman , we can find a solid business knowledge base through practices, policies, and processes. We can see the business purpose, the code of ethics, and our sustainability efforts. Yet, as pure recipients of this knowledge, we find ourselves being more mentees than mentors.?

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So, how can we get further engaged with all this wisdom? How can we ask ourselves to learn more about things that we don't have to? Mentoring can help us refine our skills and acquire new ones.

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I'm going into my fourth year as a mentor at the? Cherie Blair Foundation for Women , and the experience has been enriching and gratifying. This program supports entrepreneurial women, mainly from emerging economy countries, providing them with resources that include mentoring by a business domain expert. When you sign up as a mentor, besides a genuine interest in serving others, you must provide your areas of expertise to match a mentee looking for that particular skill set. Also, you need to complete a pre-matching training consisting of videos and a final assessment. And that's it! You're ready to start mentoring.

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Once you get matched and have attended the first session (in which you get to know each other), you'll be encouraged to share part of yourself and establish rapport and trust. Likewise, you'll learn about several things that provide the context in which the mentee tries to thrive in her business. You'll learn about her challenges and how to help her move ahead. Did I mention that one thing you'll exercise is active listening? It's essential to remember that this is all about her needs, environment, and business; you'll often be tempted to drop an answer rather than a question, but she has to find her way.

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Naturally, the real challenge begins when you start having the actual mentoring sessions. You'll need to get in touch with the initial objective of the mentoring. However, although framing the purpose is undoubtedly relevant, some basic things often need to be resolved before others can be optimized or automated. Remember, this is a start-up (typically requiring much baseline, foundational guidance). Although we may introduce AI here to potentialize several aspects of the business, talking about DevOps or Transformation Projects might be too early if optional!

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When you engage your mentee and as soon as you start asking what, how, why, and who, you may also become aware that your mentee needs to be more transparent about her purpose or even have sound reasoning behind her actions. When discussing financial modeling, you'll need to help her envision how profitable her small business can be without necessarily drawing from your knowledge of MMC's more extensive and established structure. Finally, can you advise on the technical aspect of a solution if your mentee has yet to determine if it will be cost-effective or even a value-adder? Forget you can; do you think that makes sense?

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At this point, the open questions will start flowing between mentor and mentee, and the conversation will eventually propel the business effort forward. The discovery journey has begun, and the relationship will flourish through informal counsel and candid feedback. It's remarkable to come upon aspects of the business that we take as given and then restart or revisit the essential components that help set up the core business processes, which will require definition, implementation, execution, and automation.

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So, do you dare to challenge yourself to go beyond your safe and known IT land?

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Please take my word - it's worth it!

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