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?’

2009 could be associated with many negative emotion; fear, anxiety, uncertainty, regret etc. This is not all bad because emotions have ‘motivational consequences’. If we view our emotions as a feedback system, we can use the information to change our behaviours or make better choices.

Positive Emotions

My opening paragraph is unlikely to be a surprise because there has been copious research into so called ‘negative’ emotions, in fact studies into negative emotions outnumbers those on positive emotions by 25 to 1!

What has been revealed is that negative emotions, narrow our focus and actions but feeling good broadens our interests and helps us build our capablilities. Positive emotions make us more curious and interested and therefore more likely to try new activities and develop new skills. Postive emotions have been shown to make people more creative and better problem solvers and therefore an essential ingredient for innovation.

Benefits of Positive Emotion

A 2005 article by Lyubomirsky, King and Diener in Psychological Bulletin listed the proven benefits of positive emotion. I have summarised them here for you to consider your outlook for 2010.

At Work

Being positive is associate with:

• Higher salaries
• Better supervisor evaluations
• Better customer evaluations
• Less absenteeism
• Less employee turnover
• Better organizational behavior
• Better relationship with colleagues

Health and Social

• Positive people are less likely than negative people to develop a cold, and when they did the symptoms were far less severe.
• Positivity linked to less pain, physical symptoms, fewer hospital visits.
• Good relationships associated with better health and mental health.
• Happiest 10% are more sociable, have stronger friendships, and romantic relationships.
• Positive people volunteer more and are more willing to help others.
• Positive people are more extroverted and are less selfish.

The list speaks for itself and I know having had a few days off at Christmas, spending time with family and exercising has increased my positivity. Speaking to friends and colleagues all have mentioned a more positive and optimistic outlook for 2010 and so I for one will be making ‘being more positive’ a goal for next year – how about you?

It is more than a year ago that I walked through the door of the Self Leadership International office for the first time. I was a young graduate of psychology, coming all the way from Romania to learn about training and leadership development in Singapore; with very little idea of what my internship will bring about.

Now, one year later, I can whole heartedly say that it was the greatest learning experience of my life.

Not only did I learn tremendously in the area of leadership development, but even more importantly I developed myself imensely on a personal level. I can’t possibly name all the things I learnt, as it would be a post too long for anyone to read…but I do want to share with you three of the most important ones:

1. The importance of open and honest communication

A lot of companies actually have this somewhere in their guidelines, but in the Self Leadership office this was indeed a ground rule. And it was great to realize how saying things openly and directly can make so much of a difference in my working relationships, in the way I related to my colleagues and in the overall atmosphere in the office.

It also leads to no politics, as everybody knows pretty much everything and there is no need to hide anything. Plus, the most powerful breakthrough for me was to start saying what I thought, even if I was afraid. I especially refer to giving negative feedback or to stating opinions contrary to the others.

During the 2-days training, using video feedback, the participants were transformed from nervous to confident and from unstructured to persuasive presenters.

Personal Brand

A key message that I shared was that each of us have a personal brand and that our ability to communicate and present effectively is essential to the building of that brand.

A couple of truths that I have observed in my work with multi-national organisations are:

1. It is not the most competent individual that gets promoted but the individual with competence and visibility.
2. The more senior we get, the less we are paid for what we do and more for what we influence others to do.

Feel free to watch the video of my introduction on presentation skills to these young professionals.

“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt. ”
- William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, Act 1 scene 4

Self Confidence is a critical skill for success and as an executive coach I often encounter people who sabotage their success by lack of confidence.

I think it is helpful to realise that confidence is not the belief that everything will turn out well; confidence is an acceptance of the consequences of any situation no matter whether they are good or bad and the belief that you can deal with them.

The self confident individual does not dwell on negative consequences because they don’t fear failure but see it as feedback for further improvement.

With self confidence as part of your self leadership you will not worry what others think of you but focus on the adjustment you need to make to your communication or behaviour to achieve your outcomes.

Using feedback to improve performance is likely to create positive results which in turn reinforce self confidence creating the belief that you will succeed again.

Self confidence should not be mistaken for over confidence or arrogance; such people do not have the self awareness to learn from feedback and have no concern for the input of others or how their actions affect others.

So the frames of mind that create self confidence are:

• Belief in your ability to learn
• There is no failure only feedback and feedback is just information for improvement
• Flexibility to do or say it in a different way
• Resilience to set-backs
• Persistence to see it through

Do you need to increase your self confidence today?

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.

As I write this blog post I am aware of the pain in my wrist from playing tennis. I have only just started to play tennis; I used to play squash and so I am used to flicking my wrist to get the shot. Flicking your wrist in tennis is not the correct technique and doesn’t deliver the required result; in fact, the result is pain. Now I can focus on the pain or I can focus on the message it is giving me – “correct your grip.”

Life is like a game of tennis (not a box of chocolates, sorry Forest Gump), if you don’t have the right technique you will get various forms of feedback (pain being the most obvious). Our current financial crisis is extremely painful, because we did not head the warning signs of incorrect technique in the use of credit. The thing about pain is that you can ignore it for a while and even mask it with painkillers but eventually if you don’t change the way you do things – the pain comes back and worse.

The self leadership principle of responding to feedback applies in every aspect of our lives. We have a choice, notice and respond or live for a while in denial and pay the price later. Here are some examples:

•    The remaining balance on your credit card is going up each month – get another credit card or adjust spending?
•    Your weight is going up and your clothes don’t fit – buy new clothes or adjust your exercise and eating?
•    You argue with your partner, followed by long silences – get a new partner or sit down and openly discuss issues?
•    Your job seems to be taking you nowhere – bitch and moan or examine your skills and contribution to the business?

Now these examples may seem rather obvious but I chose them to illustrate the principle – our actions have reactions and if we notice these reactions (feedback) we can adjust our actions to move more effectively towards our goals.

As a coach I often find myself facilitating my clients to notice feedback that they have previously been blind to. The coaching question to ask yourself is, “Are my actions getting the results I want?” and if the answer is No, then, “What actions do I need to get the results I want?”

My personal mantra is, “Blessed are the flexible for they shall not get bent out of shape!” Yes feedback can be painful but if you have the flexibility to make changes you will improve.

Anyone for tennis?