I love teaching. I take great pride in my role as a mentor and technical leader at work and have done for many years. I’m always happy to help out colleagues and friends when I can. The knowledge and skills I have are the result of many amazing influences I’ve enjoyed over my career and it brings me great joy to think I could be one of those people for others.
Bridging the gap
One of the keys to effect mentoring is to be able to reframe something for every individual.
Some people respond better to metaphors, others to analogies, and yet more to pushing past the big picture and focusing on the details. Some people need to be led step by step, others just need a hint to get them going. Determining what type of audience you have is one of the most important parts of communication and it’s something I’ve always been pretty good at.
This applies equally when communicating up the hierarchy so it’s served my career very well over the years. The top piece of advice I would give anyone just starting out is to learn how to communicate everything to everyone. Your own ideas, other people’s ideas, to colleagues, managers, and board members. The more accessible you can make what you’re working on the more people will be able to appreciate what you’re doing.