Mentors

Mentoring is a favourite topic for me under the leadership umbrella. This is going to be a series wherein I will talk about the mentors that I had, from whom I learnt a lot and being a mentor myself and my experience.

While I was in school, my tamil teacher often used to say that teachers are like ladders, they help you to go up but they remain where they are. This was etched in my mind. When I came into the corporate world, I found that a lot of people were there to help me to do my tasks, to help me understand things better, but there were very few people who understood me, who helped me to grow as a professional and more importantly as a person.

My first mentor was one of my earliest project managers. It was from him that I learnt Leadership by walking around (refer to post - Showing a lack of bias). Everyday morning, he would check his mails, allocate work and then would come around to every individual's seat to have a chat for 5 to 10 minutes depending on workload that day, people's mood etc. But this happened everyday. He was genuinely happy to spend this time with every one of us on an individual basis. And he never a missed a single day. This was the foundation - he always knew the actual status of the project, knew our interests, and built a wonderful rapport with us in due course. I loved his style, his easy going nature with people, readiness to accept people into his territory irrespective of the levels, their skills. He was and continues to be a big source of inspiration for me and from whom I learnt a lot.

My next mentor was a person whom I admired from a distance. My interactions with him were minimal, but I liked him for a single reason. For his knowledge & expertise on the subject, he was very  humble. I used to think at that time, if I ever reached that level of expertise, I probably would walk in the air (may be that's why I did not reach that expertise :) ). Over a couple of years, I had the opportunity to talk with him on several occasions, and my admiration only grew. I was surprised that someone with such expertise can be so humble. I learnt over the next few years that the key to his success was not just his expertise but also his humility.

There are times when I went in search of mentors. But on a few occasions, I was very fortunate to have my supervisors as my mentors. It is very rare in corporate world, for supervisors to be good mentors, because there will be times when the supervisor and the mentor roles will have a conflict of interest. Fortunately for me, these people never brought the conflict to the table and were always there to help me. I learnt several things from them - working with people, being calm under pressure, how to carry myself in a forum, logical thinking and so on. What I also learnt from them was the art of mentoring, which helped me in due course.

During a discussion, my mentor told me that as a mentor it is important that he identified the potential in me, that I was never sure or aware to help me be successful. That is what makes the mentor a success.

Despite all the mentoring, I did not learn something very important... and that is for next week. 

Have a good weekend.

ps: During a heated discussion, I told my mentor that I was happy to mentor my team and help them     and not too concerned about my growth. The sagely advice was "Raghu, unless and until you grow, it will be difficult for your team to grow". Mentors being mentors, are wise men.

Comments

  1. VyaghreshJune 8, 2013 at 5:59 AM

    Hi Raghu, Hope you are doing good! I have been following this blog for quite some time and find it interesting in every topic you picked up. This is really impressive and motivative.You are trying to leave your footprint on many of your peers by actually mentoring them and sharing your experiences. I have fortunate enough to be one of them. Keep up the good work.

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