Creating tomorrow’s Leaders
We are so excited to start our WISE mentoring program next month. The program intends to provide professional members and students with a significant industry leadership edge and aims to harness the wisdom contained in our Membership to provide support for emerging and existing leaders; and importantly it provides a platform for a successful future for our Industry.
So, what is mentoring? ....
Mentoring is intended to be a one-to-one relationship by means of which the mentor invests their time, knowledge and efforts to help the Mentee reach all their potential as a person and as a professional in their behaviours, knowledge and skills. Mentoring is a very old formula of human development whose origins lie in the Stone Age, when the artists who painted on cave-walls, the stone carvers, the medicasters who used medicinal herbs to heal sickness and others instructed the youths of their clan, in order to transmit their knowledge, thereby contributing to the evolution of civilization.
Mentoring owes its name to Greek Mythology. Mentor was Ulysses’ close friend, the protagonist of Homer’s Odyessy. Before setting off to Troy, Ulysses bade Mentor to take care of his son Telemachus and to prepare him to succeed him as the king of Ithaca. Mentor had to be like a father, a master, a model and reliable counsellor and challenge-stimulating instructor, so that Telemachus could become a wise, truthful and prudent king.
Mentoring is becoming very common in Australia. It has gone through a process of transformation as a consequence of the changes that the business world has undergone from the industrial age to the age of knowledge.
In the industrial age, the mentoring model was orientated towards the achievement of higher position in the hierarchical scale; in the age of knowledge, this orientation is turning towards the development of the individual's inner power, which originates in mental ability, persuasion, vision, creativity, capacity to solve problems, passion for the results of business activity, capacity to create teams, which turns high potential professionals into managers who contribute effectively to the growth of the business. The majority of companies in every economic sector have got flatter and leaner structures. Organisations are demanding continuously growing profits, higher quality products and services, capacity to compete in a more open and globalised market, capacity for creation and innovation in a technology changing environment, etc. Therefore, leaders and managers must perform more broad and versatile roles like the creation of new vision, the development of strategies, the direct involvement in operational issues, team building and leadership etc.... We believe this Mentor Program is an enabler in that process.
Mentoring that builds Leadership
Great leadership requires great influence. Great leaders are not born with a genetic code that dictates great leadership, nor are they self-made into great leaders. A study of any honourable effective leader will show that along the way of their development, they received many influences from relationships and events that they experienced. Emerging leaders use great influence to help them become great leaders.
The current leaders within our membership are considered as a source of great influence. Mentoring is a vehicle that taps into this great influence to build and support the current and future generation of leaders in our industry. Mentoring that builds leadership however, must be based upon an understanding of how leadership development takes place.
Studies of great leaders have shown 3 common experiences from which these great leaders learned how to lead:
- Trial & Error
- Observation of Others
- Education
These 3 leadership learning experiences suggest 3 services that mentors can provide for the development of emerging leaders!
I am looking forward to sharing more with you about our upcoming mentoring program, watch this space!
Frances Eaton
Executive Officer
Subsea Energy Australia
SEA's Executive Officer, Frances Eaton, joined SEA three months ago. She brings with her a wealth of experience around coaching executives, managers and cross-functional groups, her passion is about developing the leadership qualities of those around her. Connect with her via LinkedIn
