Kimberly McCoyProject Manager| TekSystems - ContractorZanesville, Oh, United States
I wanted to reach out and start a discussion for all of you who mentor others in the Project Management area. I would like to know a few things:
-What is your most proud moment in mentoring?
-How do you prepare for a mentor sessions?
-Any documents you love to refer to when conducting mentoring sessions?
I am new to this, and volunteer my time to help others as they travel through their PM journeys, and would love to hear how others handle these.
1. My proudest moments are when someone I've mentored surpasses my accomplishments.
2. It really depends on the level of formality of the arrangement. Where there is a mentor-mentee contract in place, I will take more time to prepare than if it is an informal relationship. Regardless, if there are notes I've made or a follow-up message I've had with the mentee, I will review those prior to the session.
3. Not for mentoring, but for coaching I do like to keep various reminders to myself to avoid stepping prematurely out of a coaching stance as well as a list of powerful, open-ended questions to be used to help a coachee through the coaching arc.
Proud moments? When mentees achieve their objectives. It's about encouraging and supporting them in their efforts to succeed.
In general, I prepare by reviewing last known progress and next steps they've committed to.
When it makes sense, I ask mentees to document SMART goals, prioritize them against their daily activities, and determine where to focus. We could all use this, but not all mentees want it as part of the relationship. Saving Changes...
Kimberly,
My proudest moments have been when I handed off my role as an enterprise level SME to others who have continued to lead and mentor others in the knowledge area, in some cases for decades.
For mentoring sessions, it helps if you have a longer term plan. At one time, my employer had a formal, guided mentoring process where we co-developed goals for the mentee, and then a plan over time for how to get there. This was approved by both our managers to ensure we could spend the time for this valuable activity.
Then it's much like PM planning where you look at the overall development plan, and figure out what can be accomplished now, and what groundwork must be done to support future goals. Both our mentoring guide, and the agreed-upon plan become the reference documents as the relationship continues. Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
1. A moment I am proud of is when a mentee comes back and asks for another session. That tells me they have trust, and they feel heard and there is a value they see in our sessions. This happens with some after a year of silence and is totally OK for me.
2. I check my write-ups from previous sessions and our whatsapp chat history.
3. No, my mentoring is now totally paperless, but I have a note in which I write down key points discussed. 2 mentees prepare an email with talking points and send a summary afterwards.
I normally suggest skype sessions with video for the 1:1 session, and it takes one hour, once a month, maybe more often when there are situations, less if everything goes smoothly.
I mentor refugees, people I mentored at IBM, which I left 6 years ago, university students, volunteers. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
The problem with your approach is you can not mentor/coach (while both are totally different things) without context. So, in my personal experience along the years doing both, thinking in deliverables is a wrong thing. Mentor is like a psychologist, On the other side, Coach is about to facing "play situations" to unlearn those things that demostrate do not work and learn new ones. But in the two, you need the context. Proud moment? I do both things becuase both help me to learn and improve myself. So, my proud moment is when I see the problem is solved with the solution that the others and myself found. Saving Changes...
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten AssociatesNew Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Kimberly
Interesting Questions. I do lots of mentoring some as a volunteer and other through my career coaching business.
What motivates me most is seeing the people around me succeed. I prepare for the session based on the candidate needs and to do so, I request that they provide me with an agenda with what they would like to discuss a few days before the session.
My proudest moments have come from just observation of those I've worked with and seeing them implement some of the guidelines I've shared with them.
Sometimes I've used a strategic plan to mentor someone who was actually in the process of working on PMP certification. Other times, I've allowed the mentoring to be much more organic - answering questions, modeling behavior, asking questions as if I'm seeking that person's guidance, and so on. It's really situational; a PM who is not currently interested in getting certified will probably be more apt to adopt project management methodologies if it's not presented as a question to remember on a test. I think, as practioners, we have to remember than not many organizations have adopted formal Project Management and not all of the PMs are certified or will be interested in certification.
Documents to reference will, again, be situational. I would always defer to the organization's documentation requirements and, if the person is seeking certification, find a way to relate that documentation to something in the PMBOK so that it provides context to it's use and application. In the absence of formal documentation in the organization and assuming the project is known and supported by stakeholders, I (at minimum) refer to a project schedule as the foundation of understanding the expectations for a successful project. That can be some in-house format, MS Project, Excel, a calendar, whiteboard, or anything - just something that depicts what needs to be done and when, at bare minimum. I think things begin to fall into place after that. Saving Changes...
Viviane de PaulaProject Manager| GlobantSão Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Hello Kimberly, great questions -)
-What is your most proud moment in mentoring? A: Whenever a mentee reports a accomplishment that came out of our mentoring session. It makes me both proud and truly happy to be able to make a mark on other people´s lives.
-How do you prepare for a mentor sessions? A: I start by preparing (with the mentee) an assessment process in order to spot what are the core opportunities we will work throughout the mentoring program. -Any documents you love to refer to when conducting mentoring sessions? A: I prepare few but useful docs: meeting minutes, canva topic preparation, and I use Trello to manage the topics that we will discuss and report the progress.
Hope this helps, and please do keep in touch
Best regards Vivi Saving Changes...
Milena IlievaProgram Manager Global accounts| VMWareVienna, Austria
Hi Kimberly,
First of all, I would like to explain what is for me mentoring - it is about guiding a person/mentee in his/her journey in improving something, or achieving a certain goal. It is about helping them to ''open'' their eyes that there are so many other angles they can look at a certain situation, it is a matter of being open-minded and non-judgemental in order to see what best will take them to the desired outcome, while maintaining high degree of ethics and moral.
1. Now, to answer your first question - this is what would make me proud, seeing that my mentee has realised that the power is with him/her, and can deal with any situation as long as she/he maintain such kind of attitude and mind-set.
2. I would like to have some time to concentrate on our current meeting, look at minutes or notes from the previous meetings and discussions.
3. Depending on our expected discussion, I may prepare some documents as reference, but that depends on the upcoming meeting.
Regards,
Milena Saving Changes...
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