Quietening your inner critic to become a mentor

We hope you enjoy our post below from Ian Roberts, Agena’s Commercial Director. Ian has worked in senior commercial roles within the public and private sector for over 20 years. Reflecting on this period Ian believes that the most important things that he has learned in this time have come directly from the numerous talented, positive and determined people that he has been fortunate enough to work closely with. Ian is convinced that without the generosity and willingness of those people to share their experiences and knowledge with him that he would not have been able to achieve the successes he has in his career to date.?As you will read, Ian is a keen advocate of mentoring.

A little over 2 years ago Agena’s Senior Management Team (SMT began to discuss the idea of a self-administered mentoring programme, and, within weeks, we had put in place the beginnings of a now fully fledged mentoring programme, “Bright Stars”. The programme entailed each member of the SMT becoming a personal mentor and all Agena employees being encouraged to apply to the scheme.

Having had the benefit of a mentoring relationship in the past myself, I was a keen advocate of the idea. However, and simultaneously, another part of my brain was whispering to me “are you qualified to mentor? What do you know about being a mentor?” then, the part of my brain where imposter syndrome likes to reside awoke and chipped in “who do you think you are to be considering mentoring, you’re no mentor”, adding the further unhelpful advice “professionals train for years to do this sort of thing, you are going to embarrass yourself. What are you thinking ?!!”. Managing to ignore these unhelpful thoughts I, along with the rest of the SMT, committed to implementing the mentoring programme and making it a success.

We created a very simple application process, requiring applicants to share a little about themselves, what they would like to achieve and the areas of their own, perceived, weaknesses that they would like to work on, should they be a successful applicant. From the outset we were determined for the programme to be focussed on the “individual” and not how the “business” may benefit (indeed one successful mentoring outcome in the first year saw a mentee realise that there was a different career path that they would rather follow, and they were supported in a return to education to follow that path). Each successful applicant would receive 12 months of one-to-one mentoring from a member of the SMT and each year we would re-run the application process and add new mentees to the programme.

With the decision made I quickly realised that I needed to do some homework! I found a couple of books on “how to be a mentor” and hurriedly read these in advance of my initial sessions. ?

When it came to beginning my first mentoring session, I was still a little nervous, wondering how much (if any!) benefit I could be to my mentees. By shear good fortune, my daughter, who was in the process of completing her sports psychology masters and knew that I was taking on a mentoring role, suggested to me a podcast that I might find helpful, one that she had herself used as part of her dissertation. That podcast was #TheHighPerformancePodcast, which, following my daughter’s advice, I began to listen to. I very quickly learned that there is a huge amount of fabulous free content available via podcasts such as High Performance (and others*) and I soon I became an avid listener to these podcasts, sharing with my mentees the mentoring gold that was being freely dispense to my ears by various experts from around the globe.

Listening to many of these podcasts and reflecting on my own lived experiences, I soon lost any nagging doubts about being an imposter, posing as a mentor and, a few sessions in, I became convinced that I really was able to add real value to my mentees and help them achieve their goals. Any feelings of trepidation I had felt ahead of my mentoring sessions very quickly disappeared and the sessions soon became something that I very much looked forward to each month.

Approaching the completion of our initial mentoring year our first year’s cohort were invited to share their mentoring experience with all of the company’s employees (via zoom), ahead of the following year’s application process. Listening to the feedback from the mentees was humbling. It was incredibly rewarding to hear the positive impacts that the programme had had on so many of the mentees. Here was proof positive that we had made the right decision to take the risk and set up a self-administered mentoring programme. Year two’s applications were, as year one’s had been, oversubscribed. The programme was truly up and running! ?

Any who...the reason that I have published this post (my first ever) is to encourage business leaders to do as we have in Agena and (should you not have already) set up self-administered mentoring programmes within your own businesses. I wanted to share how such programmes can be set up and run at little or no costs (but with huge benefits!). I wanted to also share that there are many excellent (free!!!) tools at your disposal, should you take the mentoring programme plunge. Lastly, I wanted to share my personal experiences of being a rookie mentor, the doubts that I first suffered (and that you may too – ignore the negative voice in your head, as I did !!) and the real rewards that can be achieved. One thing I was surprised and very happy to learn about the mentoring process, was the personal upside. A natural by-product of being a mentor is that the process causes you to self-reflect on your own performance, makes you dedicate time to reconsider your own work life balance and whether you have it right. Listening to all the great podcasts I have listened to and reading the enlightening books I became aware of, provided me with a healthy dollop of what feels like self-mentoring. I am definitely a better person for being a mentor. Mentoring has become one of the things that I most enjoy in my working life and, if you are thinking of doing it yourself, in your own business, then I could not recommend it more highly. If, however you remain to be convinced, why not try it for a year and see what you think then? You won’t regret it.

If you are thinking of becoming a first-time mentor, then I’d be happy to have a conversation with you (and your inner critic ??) on the topic, should you wish. ?

*FYI - other podcasts which I highly recommend for the would-be mentor are – #SlowMo (Mo Gawdat) and #TheDiaryofaCEO (Steve Bartlett). I could list more however, including the High-Performance podcast, you have 3 of my favourites, each of which have hundreds of episodes, and each will introduce you to other amazing people/mentors/podcasts. My top book recommendation (my mentoring bible) is The Chimp Paradox (Prof. Steve Peters), which I wish was written, and that I had read, 30 years ago!

?Happy mentoring.

?Ian?