My takeaways from One year of Mentorship
I had the opportunity to be part of a Women in Tech group within my organization where there was a mentorship program. I was paired up with a mentor and started having regular meetings with him.
We had an introduction call, he was from a different domain altogether. We agreed to meet once every two weeks. I was very eager to attend those meetings. In a period of one full year, hardly there were few meetings which was missed. Unfortunately our sessions came to end since my mentor moved to a different organization. I am writing this article to share my learnings from that one year and also as a dedication to my Mentor — Kevin Hess.
To give a context to my learnings, I was leading an Operations team with 20+ members. It was the beginning of Pandemic and we had just started Work from Home. As a people manager and Operations lead, it was a challenging time. My most interactions revolved around issues that I faced and we openly discussed what I can do better to solve them.
Make sure your team understand the “WHY”
Most common problem we will encounter with Operations is delivering things on time. How do you ensure your team understand the importance of the items which they are supposed to deliver? Two things which helped me.
- When you give tasks show the team how tasks are related to each other
- Make them understand the big picture
Remember, If team doesn’t do it on time, it means you didn’t make them understand why it’s important.
Don't throw the plan at the team, build it with the team
Good operations need good planning. A plan is good only if its executed well. Of course this became an issue as team size grew and pressure increased with pandemic related economic issues.
“If leaders come with dates and push it down, there is no ownership from team. They will throw the problem back saying you didn’t consider these issues”
I found this tip really helpful. As I started requesting the team to come up with the planned dates and started building it together there was a significant improvement in success of those plans.
Build a Self- Sufficient Team
As manager, Am I responsible for people’s learning curve? Should we put learning plan for everyone or just focus on getting the task done? When we are trying to deliver projects on time, we will come across different type of people and problems with planning career progression for the team. Some tips which helped me on this.
- We want team to be self-sufficient. If not they will always come to you for solving issues.
- When someone comes with the problem. Ask what they did to solve the problem
- Ask what do you think is the first thing you should try to solve this problem
- Make recommendation on what they could try. So that they will start building list of to do things when something goes wrong. Eventually they will become independent.
- You wont be able to progress if there are people always asking me doubts.
- Ask questions in such a way that people will learn on their own.
- If they go in wrong direction, correct them and ask have you considered “x” or “y” Or else they will not move forward in their career
- If you help them with problems then you am not helping them, you are hurting them. Teach team to solve problem on their own.
- Apply this where its appropriate. Some situations will need you to solve it directly.
- Don’t take it too far that they never come to you for any help. Find balance.
- Don’t just ask people tell me where you need training because they wont be able to tell what they don’t know.
Prioritize and Execute
At one point of time in the year, I was overwhelmed with a big list of things to do and not being able to manage them properly. My first step towards solving it was taking a note book and listing everything I had to do and then solve them one at time by prioritizing them. “Prioritize and Execute” became my Mantra. Another point which was helpful was to ensure we train our team for Critical thinking and not compliance.
“Resist the urge to take control and instead give control and that will be your biggest challenge and your most enduring and powerful success”- David Marquet
Finally on our last conversation, we discussed what I can work on consistently long term
Build Relationship
Take ownership of issues
Control your emotions
Make People Better
Make things happen
There was a lot more learning from those sessions than I could put here. I am very grateful for the opportunity I had. I believe one of the key reasons his suggestions felt real was because he was from a different domain. That put him outside the circle and let him give a clear suggestions to my problems. It left me with much more clarity than I started with. Some guidelines which helped me come out of stressful situations and made me into a better employee, better manager and better person. Thank you Kevin!
