Why you need a mentor as well as a manager

I made a mistake!I accidentally sent out a confidential email to the wrong person and I got a scolding for it from my manager. Rightly or wrongly, this event had the effect corroded the trust in our relationship at work. Mistakes and disputes like these at work are normal but if handled incorrectly, they can evolve to become an impasse that can only be resolved by an intervention of some kind or a very strong will to forgive and move forward.

As I have worked in a lot of companies experiencing all sorts of good, bad, nice or mean managers, its very hard to see past my own experiences, I took it very hardly. The more baggage you bring to a job, the harder it tends to be to see the situation for what it is. A lot of past experience is not something that’s typical of a grad, they tend to be quite new to the working world but not everyone’s journey is the same. *My next post will go into the reasons why I have had so many jobs.

Seeing things through your own perspective and bad history can cause significant blindness, willful or otherwise and defense mechanisms can activate which can compound the tension. This coupled with a bout of low confidence made the disputes look bigger than they actually were. This is why I recommend that early on in your career to find an outside mentor who is not your line manager, this provides you that crucial perspective you are missing. Your conclusions at the point of receiving the criticism can be very limited but a trusted person looking a the same problem with another pair of eyes can really help.

Introduce my mentor, a vice president of a Turkish international oil company thankfully arranged by CES mentoring scheme by Westminster university. Upon disclosing the incident at work to her, She really got to work by scolding me affirmatively for this mistake made but the key difference was she went onto on to reaffirm that she has made these mistakes and how in this digital day and age we find these things are happening more and more due to the ease that these messages are sent. What a relief and what a fair summary of the issue that I wouldn’t have been able to muster even if I tried. The conversation boosted my confidence restored my waning confidence and refocused my mind back on the real issue, the need to resolve the issue in a mutually beneficial manner and restore my manager and I’s working relationship.

This advice worked so well because it was so fair balanced and it was coming from someone with a lot of experience. Getting career advice from your immediate family is not enough, they can be a little bit biased which can be very helpful in some instances but there is nothing like finding a professional that’s is further ahead than you, someone that has been ahead of you, whether on the managing side or the receiving side. In your career, next time you are faced with a career struggle like mine, remember that a mentor might be able to show you that crucial perspective that could put an end to your current career struggles.

Credit to Westminster university for their CES program. A lot of universities have similar programmes. All it takes will be appropriate research. A future post will go a bit deeper into how to meet and cultivate a mentorship relationship.