Learning organization

  The lessons learnt out of a teacher and a student relationship goes beyond the level of textbook or any business manuals, for both involved. Learning is a two way process and in the corporate context many of us must have donned both hats that is of a mentor and a mentee. Let us see how a mentor and mentee can help in creating learning organizations of tomorrow.           
   Organizations and teams are built on faith and trust. A true balance of trust, human understanding and symbiotic working between different hierarchies in a team is the fundamental premise for successful teams. I always believed the greatest virtue of a mentor is not only to be superior in knowledge, but also display patience to enable learning and wisdom. People feel like they have too much to do and not enough time and lack of time is blamed for everything from not getting enough exercise, unachieved goals, bad relationships and so on. Through a mentor, you will learn ways to compartmentalize time and work and even hone the art of multi-tasking.

   A mentor will help you transform your career from a mere follower to a leader. He would demonstrate the mentoring skills in shaping you up as a good leader. He will teach you ways to handle people, give feedback and maintain work life balance in a very demanding job that we are in today. A good mentor will always step in and help you learn & understand ways to handle high pressure situations while still respecting people.

    A mentor will help you understand that once performance levels of people are established; don’t delay telling people where they stand. In case performance isn’t meeting expectations, they may need you to ensure they know this before hand. Further establishing a relationship with people beyond what they do at work and remember the small things about them will also help in building healthy organizational environment. 

Tomorow

Mentoring is done with a view to create a successful career on one hand and to sow the seeds of mentoring on the other. The greatest of the challenges in mentoring is the resistance to change and willingness to unlearn certain preconceived positions of understanding and decision making. Also, I am not sure how and when the mentor takes over from being a mere superior in terms of administrative hierarchy. In the process of mentoring, he develops an ability to absorb the experiences of his mentees which they have acquired through their course of life. It is learnt that every person’s problem is a case study by itself; through them, you can enrich your learnings.

Understanding the view of your mentee is sometimes difficult for which one need to step into their shoes to understand the problem before guiding them to the right pointers. Also, mentors gain from a mentee’s experience. Hence, look out for opportunities for improvement on both sides, both mentee and mentor.

I think the strongest lesson I have learnt while mentoring is that you have to let people go and make their own mistakes. Don’t give solutions as much as ask questions that help them to take the decision for themselves.