Guest Blog - Three reasons why you should volunteer to be a mentor by Katya Veleva
I have been fortunate enough to be involved with mentoring since 2009, and I have loved every minute of it. As a mentor there are three main reasons why I continue to put my spare time into this endeavour:
1. It’s a professional life and passion’s a tonic!
Whether you are mentoring someone in a purely professional capacity, or you have connected because of a cause you both support alongside your professional life, mentoring can be a truly invigorating experience. You can safely assume that people who are looking to be mentored are full of motivation and drive; you are probably as well, or at least you were, but often the more experience you have to share, the more you may have become jaded about what is going on around you. What better way to remind yourself of what inspires you, than an aspirational mentee?
I was invited to take part in a discussion about a Diversity group at an institution that very much sounded like it wanted to silence existing specific minority groups. This may not have been the case, but I was generally starting to distance myself from the institution anyway and I was busy, so I simply ignored the email.
Soon after, I met a new mentee who was very keen on establishing an LGBT+ group in their practice, and that’s what they needed my help and advice with. The mentee shared so much with me, about their personal journey, about why this is important to them, and about how difficult it is sometimes to verbalise these things in a professional setting. I was ready, I had been there, I had done that, and I had the advice they needed. You can often feel that you know exactly what someone should do but if they are not asking you for help, no matter how much gold your advice is clad in, it will not achieve anything. Well, this was exactly the opposite, it was like wildfire. She didn’t stop taking notes, every suggestion that I made, she digested and embraced with brilliant enthusiasm.
For me, it was like a total reboot of the system. I went back to the office and attended the hell out of that meeting! I participated with my experience and my mentee’s energy and fresh enthusiasm. Even though that was the last meeting like that that I was part of at this institution, I had people come up to me and thank me for being there to say the things they couldn’t fully express - I wouldn’t have been half as effective, had it not been for that mentee meeting.
2. We all need more motivated and fulfilled people around us, and this is a way to bring them forward.
You are very much looking out for your own future here. You will likely be involved with a mentee that is within your industry, and for construction specifically, we all know how desperate we are for talent. All those people who have the desire to develop enough to seek mentoring - these are the people you want to help develop so that they become the workforce you want to be a part of. This may sound a little more conceptual than I mean it to be - it really is about making sure that the people that keep coming through your door get the support they need to be the best that they can be in their job, and that takes some one-on-one dedicated attention.
I am yet to employ people I have mentored however, I have definitely used the skills I have gained from mentoring to influence the teams I have been working with. And this is not at all a way to make everyone be or work like me, not at all - diversity is a vital part of an adaptable workplace. It has become a way to spread a common language and values at work; it is a way to spread an under-lying message about your industry that you believe in.
3. It’s a moment to reflect.
Mentoring works best when it is a 50-50 process - 50% mentor input - 50% mentee input. About half of the time you are sharing your experience and that is a moment to actually observe your own career, be objective about it and try to convey the lessons learned. Reflection is something that we should all do SO much more of!
I was speaking to a mentee once, and we were discussing the difference between BIM implementation in different sectors of construction and I was praising healthcare, education and transport as sectors that have embraced it more than others. The mentee asked me what I was currently working on. I was working on a residential project at the time. “Oh, and how is residential for BIM then?” they asked. I paused. “Not nearly as much fun” I replied. So I don’t work on residential projects at the moment. Moments for reflection in a busy life can be few and far between, so if you can make more of them happen - DO!
Why am I sharing this with you? After being involved in various mentoring programmes, including FLUID with Built By Us, I was inspired to lead the creation of one for my specific niche in the construction industry - The Women in BIM Mentor Programme is launching on the 19th February at our first networking event of the year! Women in BIM is an international organisation that has spent years supporting the development and exposure of women in the industry, and one of our biggest goals has been to make sure that we bring women on to the stage at industry conferences and panels. It feels only natural to provide a support system that can make women more comfortable to take up that space. For more information, please visit our website www.womeninbim.org and follow us on social media.
