Mentoring Teaching How to Think

Most of us will take a new job, and we depend on people to teach us. They become our mentors. Then comes the day we have to teach the newbie. We are their mentors.

So how do you train someone well? First remember some failures of other people to orient you before. Hours, breaks, bathrooms, and general rules of the office are helpful along with introducing coworkers.

The story of a new hire on a manual zinc die cast machine comes to mind. He just had to pull the lever to close the door, then push the lever open to get the part. New guy works through break, then thru lunch. Finally his manager asks him how he is doing? Sweating profusely the new guys says, “How do you stop this machine?” When told just don’t close the door. He picks up his things and walks out the door quitting on the spot. Training failure.

You need to show someone more than what steps to do. You need to teach them how to think. The steps are okay if everything goes right. What do you do if something is wrong? Mentors must teach how to think. How to handle unsatisfied customers. Who to call for problems. Safety rules and processes. Warning signs looking out for potential problems.

Here is a list of mentoring steps by a curmudgeon:

·   Read the draft manual & procedures.

·   Complete my required training.

·   Giddily using a red pencil to redline the hell out of my engineering drawings.

·   Go leave the comfort of our cubicle area to go to the labs and to walk the production line.

·   Forced me to talk with the mechanics and technicians.

·   No clue what to say, so he would politely say something in just the right way for me to rephrase it and ask it myself.

·   Stories shared from his 30+ years with the company on mistakes made & how they were fixed, successes achieved.

·   Important things to remember when running this test or that analysis.

·   Knowing how the organization works and who the key players are.

·   Why it's important to understand things from our customer's perspective.

·   The significance of integration & handoffs between engineering groups and our products.

·   Appreciation of the precision and detail required to generate computer equivalent engineering drawings by hand.

This woman’s career was been forever shaped by the time and effort this man put into her to learn about the craft of engineering.

Mentors are not done unless the trainee also has life skills to go do the job.  The soft skills of working with people have to be taught everyone. 

Especially the transition from schooling to working. Working with 2 interns they thought there would be no issue sitting down and talking with the CEO. My question was don’t you think he has other responsibilities to be working on? Most CEOs are the chief salesperson making decisions daily, that affect many employees. Part of our job is to protect their time so the CEO can focus. However if you have great ideas and necessary information, you need to bring it to the CEO.

Here are some soft skills were taught by my mentors:

·   Encouraged become a problem solver, to take initiative, and to meet deadlines.

·   Stressed 'problem solving'.

·   That things will go wrong, and to focus on prevention as well as recovery.

·   Asking good questions.

·   Help me develop perspective, and to take logical risks.

·   Humility - serious about my work and not so serious about myself. Life is easier.

·   Speak up and overcome my shyness.

·   Engineering should also be interesting and fun (and not to lose that)

Successful in my career and life because many people took their time to teach me life lessons, work skills, computer programs, problem solving, handling people on bad days, and maintain perspective in crisis’s. Am eternally grateful, and passing my learning on.

Who mentored you? Honor them by teaching others.