How to Become a Successful Mentor

“Mentoring” and “being mentored” are just fancy terms for teaching and learning. In general, your most valuable lessons from work came from a boss or a colleague.

One of the main drivers in every human being is this: when people take an interest in us we thrive. The mentoring manager takes an interest in his or her people.

Mentoring taps on energy, ideas, motivation and productivity.

Nobody excels without a coach or a mentor – for example, you might become a good athlete but to become an Olympic athlete you have to be mentored by a coach.

An excellent Manager is not only a Manager that brings knowledge and experience but also a person who Manages his people, mentors them.  After all, business is still about people.

How to become a Mentoring Manager?

• Teach people the 80/20 principle.
• Be available for open communication. Mentoring is a 80/20 activity because it has a big positive impact & provides great results compared to the effort put into it.  Mentoring is not a time consuming activity it is rather a non-planned effort of open communication.
• Get everyone under your supervision to mentor their people –  it will bring exponential results in performance.  Rate their performance based on the performance of the people that work under them.
• Believe it or not praising an employee’s good performance is a form of mentoring – always recognize the positives of your employees.  On the other hand, always offer positive advice on how to eliminate negative performance by providing positive advice (mentoring) – positive being here the key word.
• Mentoring is not a chore or part of a checklist, it’s about caring. The way to great mentoring is to care about your people.
• Pick up on the signals people send out when they need your advice, care and guidance.  Mentoring is about communicating the right things at the right time.  Go for quality over quantity.
• Listen and listen carefully.  The best mentors are those who listen.

Mentoring and being mentored is one of the most satisfying and rewarding activities.

How to Use Liberation to Increase Employee Engagement

A Liberating Manager must be utterly honest with his people – supportive and friendly yet very demanding.

Liberation requires total honesty and openness from both the manager and the people. In some cases, this philosophy is not for everyone and it is not even possible to practice in some organizations.

A Liberating Manager creates friendship, honesty and trust. You will be more successful if you rule by trust instead of fear.

A fear based culture is all about money, so people are willing to negate themselves. Many organizations have been based on power, fear and tight supervision which negates liberation. It worked well in traditional, predictable and slow-changing industries, but does not in today’s knowledge based industries.

Liberation makes people behave exactly as who they are and not as who they are expected to be – it makes people more engaged, positive, creative and productive.

As a Manager you need to liberate them to achieve their full potential, which means, identifying their outstanding personal attributes; then, encourage them to deploy these skills in ways that will benefit the team and the company. However, it is important that a Liberating Manager insists that their team works hard, not in terms of time or incessantly, but in imagination and determination. 

In essence, a Liberating Manager builds a culture (business culture) of trust and opens the door for creativeness.

How to Find Meaning As a Manager

Nothing is more important than achieving meaning in your life.

Meaning derives from achievement, from creating something or performing a task or deed that comes from your own self and talent.

Money and entertainment are only substitutes; and as much as we might think it creates happiness, it doesn’t.  Happiness is a by-product of leading a life with meaning.

Anything you are good at contributes to happiness.

As a Manager, in order to give meaning to your life you have to make the most of your inner potential – your contribution to the organization is what will provide you with meaning within that organization.

In today’s business world, Businesses require Managers who make the most of what is unique within them. It requires Managers who seek meaning in their work. It’s only when you “do your own thing” in a disciplined and creative way that meaning becomes reality.

The 80/20 principle relates to Meaning in the sense that a small minority are the ones who possess a higher individual imagination, creativity, personality and unique skills. One particularly talented executive can have hundreds of times more impact than another.

Everything in business is a commodity:  money, hard work, loyalty, degrees, etc. Everything in general is a commodity except individual inspiration and innovation.

In order to find meaning as a Manager:

• The field in which you work must turn you on
• The job must give you new and rewarding knowledge
• The job must allow you to perform you true potential
• The firm must inspire you rather than rule you
• Mutual like of your colleagues and bosses
• The firm must be going places