The ideal Mentee is:

High potential, commmited to their career, hungry to learn and disciplined enough to execute what they have learned.

In short, the ideal mentee is leadership material.

An ideal Mentor is:  

• Someone who has experience in field (they have been there before).
• Someone interested in developing others.
• Someone prepared to take another by the hand and guide them through the territory.
• Someone who asks questions that the mentee doesn’t ask themselves but ought to.
• Someone trustworthy who inspires confidence.
• Someone who will be there in time of need.

The Mentor needs to develop the following skills

1. Supporting
2. Listening
3. Validating growth and development (Cheer leading)
4. Questioning
5. Giving feedback to behaviours and skills
6. Guiding and offering perspective

At our mentor trainings we work on all these skills, but perhaps the most difficult is questioning. Questioning, because the art of mentoring is in the balance between guiding and self-discovery. In medicine, prescription without diagnosis is malpractice; it is therefore essential for the mentor to fully understand the mentee and their situation before offering advice. What worked for the mentor might not work for the mentee or their situation.

After asking questions the mentor can use his or her experience to point out ‘traps for young players’ such as misplaced priorities and pot holes that the mentee has not yet seen. An important role for the mentor is to help the mentee align their goals and values to those of the organization. Ultimately, the mentoring relationship can only be successful when the mentee takes their destiny in their own hands and takes action to achieve their goals.

The Principle of Mentoring

The principle of mentoring is to balance challenge with support. Too much challenge with not enough support and the mentee shuts down. Too much support and not enough challenge and the mentee just feels validated in their status quo.

If the mentor does too much for the mentee, they may actually compromise the mentees ability to reach their full potential. Ideally, when the correct frame of mind is identified the mentee will facilitate the mentee to integrate that and to take action.

Questioning

Here some ‘starter’ questions to use when mentoring.

• What do you want to get out of this session?
• What are your career objectives?
•  What is happening for you now?
• How do you know this?
• How do you feel about what is going on?
• What judgments are you making about people, the company or this situation?
• What have you learned from that?
• What do you most need from me right now?
• What questions does that raise?
• What result do you want?
• What options are open to you now?
• What is your biggest difficulty or problem?
• How can I help you move forwards on this issue?
• Can you think of three options for action?
• What are the pros and cons of each of these options?
• What first steps are you going to take before our next meeting?
• Whose responsibility is it to make this happen?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to do this action?

Mentoring is NOT telling someone what to do or just giving advice. When the Mentor asks questions they allow the Mentee to reflect and synthesise and prepares them to apply new behaviours.

Done well, mentoring is beneficial for the mentor, the mentee and the organisation in terms of engagement, sharing  of knowledge and most importantly developing future leaders.

Done badly, mentoring becomes a chore for senior managers and increases the cynicism of would be high potentials. For more on this read the post, ‘Does Singapore Lack Leadership Skills?’

A good resume cannot get you a job, but a bad resume will not get you an interview, and without an interview there is less chance of you getting the job.

A resume is usually the first impression that you make with a prospective employer. It gives you the opportunity to gain their interest and hold their attention by displaying your skills and experience before them.

Being in the recruitment business, we come across all kinds of resumes with fancy presentations, fonts, language, etc. A resume is a professional document and should be treated as such. Your qualifications should speak for you and not your degree of innovation in presentation.  Here are some guidelines on how to create a resume that works for you.

Cover letter

A cover letter is a very important part of your job application. While responding to a specific job advertisement, treat the cover letter as a value addition to your resume and not just any general letter of introduction. The letter should be concise with crisp sentences giving a brief introduction about yourself and your strengths.

Determine the objective of your job search

With a clear idea of what you want to achieve from your resume, the information that you want to include will flow easily. If you don’t have an objective to focus on, your resume will not be structured and easy to read.

Your resume is a marketing tool

Imagine yourself as a product and your prospective employers as customers. Use your resume to highlight your uniqueness.

Aim for an interview, not the job

A good resume should get you an interview. So you don’t need to go into great detail about each accomplishment. Save that for the interview. The objective of a resume is to create enough interest for the prospective employer to want to meet you.

A resume should always be reviewed at regular intervals. Alter the format of your resume if a particular job role demands certain skills to be highlighted. And finally, here are some tips to keep in mind.

Top 10 resume tips

1. Keep your audience in mind when you write your resume.
2. Use simple but effective language to convey your abilities.
3. Highlight achievements by using bulleted points. Avoid long sentences or paragraphs.
4. Use figures and statistics to quantify your achievements, especially if you are applying for a sales related role.
5. Highlight the positives. Don’t be shy about showing off your strengths.
6. Use relevant action buzzwords that will grab the attention of the reader.
7. Be honest about what you convey.  Never lie on your resume.
8. Have someone else review your resume for grammatical or typing errors.
9. Limit your resume’s length to not more than 2 – max 3 pages.

10.In case of emailing your resume, recheck how the file attachment will be received.  Use the most commonly used software programs for example a PDF or Word file.

Good luck in your job search!

At our self leadership programs we emphasise the importance of turning ideas into action or closing the ‘knowing-doing’ gap. Zurina is the embodiment of this principle and once again she has demonstrated her commitment to transform thoughts into reality.

Zurina loves taking photographs and one year ago decided that she would like to make her passion a career – not a new concept but the difference is how she executed this idea. In April 2009 she charged for her first professional shoot, today (12 months later) she is a busy photographer and is having her first gallery exhibition, ‘Shades of Pink’. The exhibition showcases 30 pieces of her work around a theme and for the benefit of the Breast Cancer Foundation;  plus, 150 people have bought tickets for tonight’s charity launch!

The exhibition was put together in 3 months during which time Zurina was also a mother of 2 toddlers and a director of Self Leadership International. When I asked Zurina to share with our blog readers her secret for being able to manifest so quickly, she answered that she uses many of the steps of the NLP Well Formed Outcome Pattern. Here are the steps she used:

1. Visualise the big picture – what will the end result look like.
2. Cover off the details such as; pick a realistic but ambitious date for the exhibition, locate a suitable venue, come up with a list of topics to photograph.
3. Identify the required resources such as; sponsors for the event, volunteers and subjects to be photographed.
4. Take action – start shooting and editing.
5. Make Adjustments – when things do not work out quite as planned make changes and then take action again.
6. Be consistent – do a bit or a lot every day.
7. Create excitement about the project – this translates into the marketing which resulted in paying customers whilst maintaining relationships.

There is of course a ‘secret’ ingredient that she believed it could be done. It is my experience that many a good idea never reaches frution because of a lack of self-belief, planning and action. Do you have a good idea locked inside you?

Would you be interested in getting to the top of your game in less time and before the competition?

The secret is to get past the plateau. With most simple tasks we reach our highest level of proficiency after about 50 hours of practice and then our performance skills become automated and we stop learning. This explains why a 20-year-veteran brain surgeon is not likely to be more skilled than a 5-year newbie by virtue of time on the job.

What makes the difference between those that reach the top in sport and business is two things:

1. Intentional Practice
2. Immediate feedback against predetermined standards

Intentional practice is perfect practice and perfect practice makes perfect. Intentional practice requires knowing “Why” you are doing what you are doing and complete “Attention” to the task. Usually it is only possible to maintain this high level of concentration for an hour and usually in the morning when our minds are fresh.

Getting feedback against a known standard coupled with intentional practice, accelerates learning. With feedback we can make minute adjustments to our behaviour that makes the difference between a silver and gold medal. If this feedback is also positive and encouraging it will also build self-confidence and therefore motivation to keep practicing.

So what would fast track your career?

Skills such as getting along with peers, motivating a team to improve performance, influencing you boss to make better decisions are key components of leadership development, yet most people don’t think of these as things to practice.  We might read a book, take a course, even an MBA but do we think about practicing and getting feedback from a coach?

If you are serious about wanting to fast track your career you need to identify which competencies are going to make the difference and then I advise start your intentional practice and get some feedback.

Remember PPP – Perfect Practice makes Perfect!

BTW The picture is of my son Nathan who is not yet 2. He is imitating me giving a speech which he has seen on video! The shot is taken by my wife Zurina who is a professional photographer.