Project Management in Science

Mentorship - it's not me, it's you

1/26/2016

In my role, I have the opportunity to work with some amazing individuals on so many different fronts and levels. Over the last few years, I’ve been a mentor to some great people looking to learn and grow as professionals. Some are making a career transition, others are “new to the game”, and a some are just looking to learn a few new tips and tricks.

I confess I never really thought about mentoring – as a mentor or a mentee – until a few years ago when I was asked to be a mentor to someone. It was a rather formal professional invitation, part of a professional development program. I agreed to be matched with someone, and duly awaited my mentee’s introduction.

At this point in my career, I hadn’t formed a good impression of the process of mentorship. A few years earlier, someone who I didn’t know very well (and didn’t especially admire) offered, without invitation, to mentor me. We were assigned to work together on a strategic planning exercise, and in one of our first meetings they outlined to me the great benefits of this opportunity for me to learn from them. Mm-hmm.

It didn’t work especially well. Not because I don’t think I need to learn from others - far from it, I learn from others every single day. It didn’t work because it wasn’t invited. The proffered mentorship created a strange and largely unworkable relationship, mostly due to the uninvited nature of it (why would I want to learn how to be more like someone I didn’t want to emulate?) but also because of their misinterpretation of mentorship (a.k.a. mentee as acolyte or servant). Needless to say, we’re not connected on LinkedIn.

So when it was my chance to be a mentor to someone, I definitely did not want to be that person. Being a mentor is a privilege - to be acknowledged as someone with the experience and skill that someone might want to learn from and emulate, makes one both proud and humble at once. It’s also a responsibility – how you do it can influence a person and their career, so you better do it well.

My three priorities when mentoring:

Practice what I preach – it cannot be a “do as I say, not as I do” approach. A mentor should base their guidance on their own experiences, and be able to share anecdotes and examples of how they approached issues and solved problems that align with the mentee’s emerging experience. Not to say that my way is always the right way, but being able to describe a real situation and its resolution enhances both the credibility and the utility of the guidance given.
Listen, ask questions, repeat. The best way for anyone to learn is to figure things out for themselves. A mentor provides the best learning for the mentee by listening to their questions and issues, forming a clear idea of the lesson, and then asking more questions to lead the mentee to the answers. Providing insight based on experience, as well as anecdotes as lessons, helps to illustrate principles and good practices, but ultimately you should want to help the mentee figure out the approaches that work for them and, even better, how to figure those things out on their own.
Mentorship is a project – it should have a plan, and ultimately an ending. It can be a long-term relationship, but as anyone moves and grows in their career, their needs will change. Neither the mentor nor the mentee should feel obligated to continue if there’s no longer anything to teach or learn.

To me, the most effective mentorship occurs when both mentor and mentee choose to work together. Much like most effective relationships in any setting, both parties have to be in it together, and to see some individual and mutual benefit.

An interesting wrinkle in the relationship occurs when the mentor is also the supervisor. It’s important for the mentor to maintain clearly when they are putting on their supervisor hat, such as when the conversations become about performance, discipline or company policy. But as a supervisor, providing mentorship opportunities should be part of the required activities. Those who work for you are also your responsibility – being accessible and providing staff with an engaging environment should be standard procedure. A bit like common sense, though – actually, pretty uncommon.

Although the supervisor-as-mentor relationship lacks one of the key elements – choice – it is still an effective environment for mentorship, as long as it’s something that both supervisor and employee want. Not all employees want your mentorship, but supervisors should be open to providing it when they do.

Mentorship provides the opportunity to guide and support developing professionals through the various angles and avenues of career progression, and can cover a wide range of objective and subjective parts of a mentee’s growth and learning. Unlike an apprenticeship, where there are specific skills and knowledge to impart and tests to pass, mentorship is a safe and nurturing environment because the subjects can be expansive, and there are no tests.

There is mutual benefit. The mentee should gain from the expertise and experience (dare I say, wisdom?) of the mentor. What does the mentor get out of it? In addition to the tips and tricks and new ideas that I take away from mentoring, the most obvious thing to me is the opportunity to give back – to contribute to future leaders and developing (dare I say, younger?) managers. A key lesson from one of my leadership favourites, Ernest Shackleton, is “leave a legacy”. Part of that is passing on lessons learned and experiences had to those who can use them to shape their own styles and careers, setting an example for the mentors of tomorrow.

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New year, new goals

1/9/2016

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January is the month of goal setting and resolutions, a time when most people make big plans for themselves – for both work and life – that they spend the rest of the year trying to achieve. I’m an active annual participant in this ritual, making a list each year of the things I want to do, learn, change and grow in each year. I rarely accomplish everything, but making the list gives me perspective on what’s achievable and makes me accountable to myself.

I call my main list “resolutions”, but it’s really a combination of goals (things I want to do) and resolutions (ways I want to be). As a project manager, I recognize the need for goals to be SMART (in case you’ve forgotten: specific, measurable, agreed upon, recorded, and time-framed). Resolutions can be more vague, more about general improvement or change. A resolution could be, “write more”, but that’s hard to keep track of, so instead it’s a goal: one blog post per month. A resolution is, “don’t be abrasive”, meaning to be careful of mood and tone when dealing with others, so is less about completion and more about ongoing awareness. I also organize my list into categories, to help make sure I don’t miss anything: family and friends; relationship; music; money; travel; health and fitness; work; other.

It’s also the time of year that I revisit my work priorities. My own approach is an adaptation of The Wheel of Life. My approach involves three steps:

List the criteria that are important to you in any position or work role. These are quite personal, as everyone has their own criteria to determine satisfaction with their work: status or compensation, upward mobility, job security, etc. List the things that matter to you. For example, mine includes, “opportunities to contribute to the development of others”. Other people might include, “opportunities for promotion every 6-9 months”.
Next, rank the importance of each of the criterion as high-medium-low. This is probably the hardest part of the exercise: making the distinction between things that are high, medium or low. Since it’s rare will you have a position that satisfies all criteria, the ranking helps when evaluating the inevitable trade-offs. Not everything can be high priority; there have to be some things that are more important than others. This three-point scale is a bit easier than a complete ranking, but use whatever works as long as not everything is mandatory or high.
Then, on an annual basis or whenever makes the most sense for you, evaluate your current position/role against the criteria, as to whether or how well that criteria is being met. The idea is to see not only which criteria are being met, but also to evaluate overall if ENOUGH of the criteria are being met to indicate whether things are good or if a change is required. For example, if a “high” criterion is only being met at a “medium” level, but several other low ones are being met at a high level, perhaps things are satisfactory overall. This also gives some guidance when looking to make a change – either within a current role or when looking for a new one – as it becomes clearer where dissatisfaction might be coming from and so what needs to be changed, or whether a new role might meet the overall criteria better.

As an example, one criterion might be, “a team with common priorities, mutual respect, and a sense of fun.” In terms of importance, you might rank this as medium (not that it’s not important, just relative to the other things it is of medium importance). In your current role, this criterion is satisfied at a high level. Therefore, the current position exceeds requirements for this. Another one might be “autonomy and flexibility with respect to time on the job”. Importance is high, but the current job meets this at a low level. Is the trade-off between a great team and autonomy okay? Looking at the balance of all priorities can help identify areas for change and improvement, things to monitor, and areas of risk.

Monitoring change year over year (or how ever often you evaluate things) can provide some focus on specific challenges and changes required.

You should also include all of your work in your evaluation of your current position. For example, I have both a full-time job and work as a consultant and trainer in project management. So my evaluation of my priorities includes both roles, as both contribute in different ways to the rewards and responsibilities of my work life. Perhaps your day job is less than ideal, but it provides the means for your dream work as a writer or musician – your priorities and criteria should reflect that dependency, and your assessment should consider how well the priorities are being met overall in your current situation.

These approaches are about providing tools for prioritizing – statements of objectives and scope that allow you to identify opportunities for change, improvement, and mitigation of risk, as well as decision making when considering new or additional work.

A simpler approach can be just identifying the roles that are most important to you, and then saying “no” to anything that doesn’t fit in or add to those roles. It can work well when things become overwhelming. Saying, “I’m these 5 things” and then eliminating anything that doesn't fit within those, can help clear some of the clutter and noise, allowing you then to focus on the priorities for those things.

For a more in-depth approach, you could consider a life audit - just be sure to give yourself enough time and space to do it well. Or adapt part of the process for yourself.

Ultimately, some way of prioritizing and organizing is essential to managing your time and energy in ways that help you achieve your own personal goals.

How you set goals? Do you have an annual review or system? Use the comments below to share ideas on ways to make resolutions and goals.

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