How to make mentoring part of your leadership culture
Tom Peters is often quoted: “Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.” But that doesn’t occur by happenstance. Much like business strategy, digital transformation, and cost optimization, creating leadersrequires diligence and forethought.
When I started my career, I had a difficult time finding an experienced technologist who would help me grow my career. (Luckily, years later, I would have great mentors such as Jay Ferro.) But early on, I had many questions and few people willing to help me find the answers.
[ For more wisdom from CIO Jason James, read also: 3 ways to adapt talent strategies as job hopping and ghosting grow. ]
Many of the technology leaders I knew were seemingly unapproachable and showed little desire to teach or mentor. I went to my first mentor and non-technologist, my now late father, and asked his input. His sage advice was to look for people I respected, regardless of their career choice, and learn from them.
That proved incredibly valuable, but I was still disappointed that many technologists were not mentoring. I vowed that I would be different, given the opportunity. I would remain approachable and help anyone within my IT organization who wanted to grow their career.
When I was appointed CIO of Optima Healthcare Solutions, I made sure there was an opportunity for anyone in the IT department to have an option for mentoring. We had technical training programs that focused on technologies and methodologies such as cloud, containerization, and agile. This new program would focus on practical and pragmatic advice for career development, with a heavy focus on soft skills.
I introduced Mentorship Mondays: I dedicate two hours of my schedule every Monday afternoon to provide mentoring to anyone within our IT organization who requests it.
Let me stress – they must request it. I am not a fan of assigning someone a mentor. I have been in larger organizations where I was assigned a mentor. In every case, it felt forced. This program has dedicated hours, similar to a professor’s posted office hours. Meetings are one-on-one and last around 10-15 minutes.
