Experiences From My Mentoring Journey

In the early days of 2021, I expressed my interest in the Mentorship Program which was announced by Philip Morris International’s Life Sciences Employee Action Groups (EAG). The program kicked off in April 2021, just after the matching between mentees and mentors are completed. I was one of the 223 mentee applicants and I matched with a colleague who has more than 20 years of work experience.

Getting Prepared to the Journey

Firstly, mentoring team (iGrow³) invited us to the first mentoring event: How to rock the mentor role: Mentees and Mentors perspectives. In this event Norma Drew, our VP Global Marketing, Michael Kunst, senior VP Commercial Transformation, Ana Borges, Sr Scientist AQP, and Michel Blanc, Lead Analytical, shared pieces of advice, and experiences for a successful Mentee-Mentor journey. One of my key learnings from this event was that development involves finding a passion as much as learning for career advancement, and this brings the necessity of investing in yourself and owning your growth.

Moreover, a special MS Teams group is created where we reach great content to make our mentoring program more beneficial. What I find most beneficial from these contents was a resource from the PMI IT mentoring program on Fuse (PMI’s e-learning portal) and it clearly states that in order to build an effective mentoring relationship, you must establish what you and your mentor would like to get out of the relationship, build trust with your mentee, define an Action Plan, and then meet consistently. I applied this recommendation within my Mentee Journey to unlock my potential and receive maximum benefit through this program.

In my opinion, this guidance is crucial for effective mentorship so that participants get the most out of the experience.

Let’s Get Down to Business: Journey Kicks-Off

Starting from May 2021, I organized monthly meetings with my mentor (based on the availability of our calendars). As it was recommended, spending time at the beginning of the relationship for clarifying what each party can legitimately expect to give and get through mentoring is essential. Therefore, we first discussed and agreed upon our expectations.

Then our first meeting continued with sharing my career goals, successes, and failures, and receiving initial feedback and advice. When we finalize our first meeting, we agreed that I am responsible for my development journey with several initiatives, and mentoring is one of them and best result of this learning experience can be obtained from our meetings, my mentor’s advice, and my actions accordingly.

Since all mentoring conversations are kept confidential as a fundamental component of ethical behaviour, I cannot provide details about the content of the meeting and action plans, but I can say that this mentoring program functioned properly as we set the expectation from the very beginning and applied the rules recommended for a successful journey.

My Key Take Aways from the Mentoring Journey

So far, we have completed 3 meetings and nowadays I am working on my to-do’s before our fourth meeting. Let me share with you my key take-aways from our Mentorship Program:

A clear sense of purpose in the mentorship program between mentor and mentee opens the way for momentum to solidify the relationship. Without setting the purpose, mentorship can become a nice friendship that you share and talk routinely but will not help you reach your objectives. Figuring out what you want is probably the hardest part of career discovery so firstly focus on setting your targets and then work on them.

Every mentoring meeting is the forum to share progress towards your objectives. As a mentee, you should set and check-in on targets within each meeting and ask your mentors feedback on your achievements. Also embrace your mistakes and where you got stuck openly so that you can learn more about what to do next to unlock collaboration and track progress.

Your buy-in before launching your mentoring program is essential. Buy-in from the senior leadership team is also important because they are the ones cascading it down and holding other senior leaders to account, but the real differentiator approach comes from you as a mentee or mentor, and you need to hold yourself responsible for this program in order to benefit as much as possible.

Mentorship brings touchpoints and connections with people while working remotely and it brings an opportunity to talk deeply about how you are doing and feel part of the big organization especially in the time of pandemic which we lack human connection. Mentoring solves this disconnect issue. The connection and meaning mentoring can bring through rapport and clarity of purpose is critical to supporting people through turmoil, and it can strengthen relationships across one’s organization.

Final Words

Taking place in a mentoring journey is getting out of your comfort zone to grow both personally and professionally. We all have goals and aspirations, and no matter the level the mentee has reached, we often find ourselves needing some external words of wisdom to help us navigate our way through. A supportive mentor can make all the difference to a mentee in our challenging environment.

Great mentors can elicit energy and commitment from the mentees by asking the right questions and listening with empathy. Gently challenging perceptions by providing a different perspective helps mentees grow. On the other hand, a mentee should be driven and clear about what he/she wants to achieve, setting deliberate goals with the help of his/her mentor at the very beginning.

Working on specific development area, discussing the next actions with my mentor, then evaluating the concrete steps within our meeting and finding out new action points make me learn and earn within this program. Mentoring journey is to turn yourself into the best version of yourself, so enjoy the journey responsibly.