November 2002 • Table
of Contents
Career Corner
The Benefits of Mentoring
The giver gets as much out of it as the recipient
by Joe Conklin
Way back in my
early career as a quality professional, about the same time as yuppies
became a big thing in the media, there was a good deal of buzz in the
business press about the importance of mentoring.
The concept didn't seem to receive widespread
acceptance--at least on my part. What I remember most is the lampooning
the mentoring buzz took after a while. The best example was the Doonesbury
comic strip in which Mike Doonesbury asks a company manager to be his
mentor, in the same spirit and style as if he were proposing marriage.
Back then it seemed as if mentoring required a long, involved and complicated
system.
The term has come to take on more importance
as people refer to me as "mister" more often and as new college
graduates describe the events of my childhood as "American history."
I have come to appreciate that good mentoring is easier with a system,
but it doesn't have to be long and complicated.
What mentoring is
What is mentoring, anyway? For me, mentoring
includes any special effort I make to share the benefits of my experience
or contribute to the development of my younger co-workers. When I think
of it this way, mentoring is something I can do a few minutes at a time
instead of for hours at a stretch.
Why should anybody think about mentoring?
I will grant you it may not be in your official job description. There
are the various idealistic and altruistic reasons to justify any general
attempt to be helpful, but to be honest, I find these motivating only
up to a point.
By far the biggest motivation for me is the
desire to remain relevant. At this point in my career, I am no longer
the hot graduate freshly minted in the latest technology. Although I pride
myself in serving my customers well, I have long since realized I am not
the only one in the office capable of successfully concluding a project.
While finishing a project is enjoyable, I have come to desire a little
something more in my professional life.
A sneak attack
All that said, the opportunities for mentoring
crept up behind me instead of leaping directly to mind. Over time I noticed
the younger people on the staff coming to me more frequently with questions
on this or that technique or formula.
In a recent job, my boss liked the big picture
stuff but was not quite as enthusiastic about the day-to-day details of
running the office. As my forte is more in this area, I stepped forward
to pick up some of the slack. Encouraging the development of the staff
was part of this package. Chances to mentor began to pop up all over.
Sometimes during meetings, for example, I
made younger staff members responsible for handling agendas, minutes and
group discussion. As notices of appropriate training opportunities crossed
my desk, I began sharing them and encouraging people to sign up for them.
In gathering information to update my boss
on the status of projects, I occasionally noticed someone struggling with
a computer program that had once puzzled me. I offered one or two tips
to help break the jam. Periodically I contributed comments to performance
reviews, often in conversation with my boss about the best place in the
department to leverage an individual's talents.
Although I am now in a different job, the
same types of opportunities are still around. I make a conscious effort
to see and act on them. Watching people grow and being a part of the process
are extremely fulfilling. The better each one does his or her own job,
the easier it is for all.
Good mentoring
I appreciate more and more with time what
good mentoring demands. It calls for constant cultivation of one's listening
skills. I have to be willing to learn another person's strengths and weaknesses
in addition to remaining aware of my own.
Mentoring means sometimes imagining a person
in a new role. Quite often the first guess about what someone needs to
know is wrong. Being willing to alter one's opinion becomes paramount.
Most important, mentors must be willing to take risks.
Mentoring is more process than role. Once
in a while people may ask for help. More often, however, they may not
know or be comfortable about asking. In that case, I make the first move
and leave the response to it up to them.
In performing the main part of my job, I
am firmly anchored in the present. In mentoring, I leave a part of myself
for that day when the anchor will be moved. Then I may leave in body but
for a time linger in spirit.
JOSEPH D. CONKLIN is a statistician
with the U.S. Census Bureau, analyzing the performance and quality of
Census 2000 operations. He is now evaluating the potential of automated
imaging technology to increase the speed and accuracy of processing census
forms. Conklin earned a master's degree in statistics from Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and holds the following ASQ certifications: quality engineer,
reliability engineer, quality auditor, quality manager and software quality
engineer.
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