Stories from our world of MENTORSHIP

''I was first introduced to the AmCham mentoring program by a colleague that strongly recommended the program. He did his best to describe the benefits of the mentorship, the workshops and the network he got after the course. But I will be honest, the only reason I applied where the workshops. They resonated with me from the start. Great, I thought, I will learn something new. The mentorship was a necessity I would need to go through to get to partake in the workshops. So when my mentor scheduled our first lunch I wasn’t exactly thrilled, I was nervous, quite frankly very nervous. The way I normally tackle nervousness is to prepare, but how do you prepare for your first meeting ever with a mentor? A person that you don’t know? To talk about yourself? Quite frankly, you can’t, you just dive in uncomfortably.

If you are fortunate you will meet a kind face on the other side of the table that has taken time out of his schedule for you. A person that will spend the next eight months asking you: why not? And I cannot tell you how pivotal that precise question has been for me. It has stuck with me and become a natural part of attitude towards things.

The concern I had in regards to talking to a stranger about myself has also been what I have appreciated the most. This person has absolutely no incentive to neither boost your confidence or push you down. The feedback and input is not colored by a prejudice of your relation, it’s objective, it’s raw and it simply is.

Someone once said that just like you upgrade your cellphone with new software, you need to upgrade yourself occasionally. So if you are ready for the 2.0 version of yourself, find a mentor who will help you get there. This whole experience has truly been fantastic and I will ensure I will always have a trusted mentor at hand to ensure I am always upgraded!''

Sarah S-Latef Engstr?m, ?Telia