How to go from Good to Great – with your Mentoring Skills
Good mentoring relationships can be richly rewarding, not only for the person being mentored, but for the mentor as well. Mentors can provide exceptional learning experiences for their mentees and expand their mentee’s knowledge, awareness, insight and perspective. There is a difference between informal mentoring, which many people do, and formal mentoring. In formal mentoring programs, the goals of the mentee should be stated very clearly up-front and the mentor who...
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Sometimes, the boss really is a psycho
Man, how many of us have had a boss we were pretty sure was a “psycho”? Here’s an article from CNBC by Allison Linn outlining some interesting research on the topic. Why DO companies promote these types of individuals? I’ve been fortunate to have some great bosses in my life – the best two just happened to be women. They were fair, very supportive, always had my...
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What Inspires Me: Watching An Employee Turn Into a Leader
I couldn’t agree more! In this post on LinkedIn, Jeff Miller makes some excellent points. This post points out the benefits of aligning strategy, culture, and people capabilities. We see many companies who fail to consider their culture or people capabilities when developing their strategy. The result is failed implementation. A great strategy isn’t worth much if it isn’t implemented well or at all.
Are You Leading Like It’s 1980?
There recently was a great article from strategy + business entitled “Are You Leading Like It’s 1980“? It talks about changing our attitude and behavior toward performance reviews to become forward-looking and productive conversations vs. backward-looking narrow perspectives that equate to ‘what have you done for me lately’? There has been only one company I worked for where I actually looked forward to my performance appraisals. It was...
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Clear the Deck!
In a recent blog post, a colleague of mine, Al Watts, talks about “clearing the deck.” It’s a great read about how we as leaders need to take time to step back, look at the bigger picture, get rid of the clutter in order to get a clearer vision of not only the present, but the future. Al says: “Just as for naval commanders of old and present-day sailors,...
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‘Let Out Your Extraordinary’
One of our mentors recently had an article published in The Huffington Post entitled “Let Out Your Extraordinary”. Trudy Bourgeois is an accomplished professional who is the Founder and CEO of The Center for Workforce Excellence based in Carrollton, TX. She is an extraordinary mentor and we are honored to have her participating with us in our mentoring services. In this article she shares a very personal part of her history...
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Undermining the Boss
There are many lessons to be learned in sailing. First, I always learn something about myself when I’m sailing and secondly, I always learn something about those with whom I’m sailing – sometimes good, sometimes not so good, and sometimes just plain awful. You see the thing is, when you’re on a sailboat, any kind of pretense or falsehood goes out the window pretty quickly,...
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Where Are the Women?
I recently attended a session at my alma mater that focused on gender balance in finance, asking the question “Where are the Women”? I hate to say it, but at the end of the session, the question wasn’t answered. In addition, the panel was having the same discussion we were having 35 years ago. It was all quite disappointing. After all this time, why are...
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Storytelling and Mentoring
Storytelling can be a powerful tool. When used in a mentoring context, it can allow your mentee to put themselves in your shoes and gain a much better understanding of the point you are attempting to make. However, in telling stories, one must also be cognizant of whether or not the mentee will identify with the situation in your story. For example, if you’re telling...
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Who Benefits from Mentoring?
So who benefits the most from mentoring? The mentee? The mentor? The company? It’s rather difficult to quantify who benefits the most. One thing is certain: all constituents benefit. Mentees, if they take full advantage of their mentoring relationship and the program, will grow in ways they never imagined. For some, it’s a life altering experience. Like many things, you get out of it what you put into it. Today’s worker will most...
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