CIM GLR

Andrew Whalley

A good mentor can make a great difference in someone’s life. A good mentor helps, guides, shares knowledge, and enjoys doing it. Mentoring, when done right, benefits both the mentor and the mentee. If you have the chance to mentor someone, congratulations, and read on to see how you can mentor effectively. So states one website I looked at when I was deciding to become a CIM mentor, nothing like a little pressure then! Little did I know I’d then be asked to write about it too!

Where to start? A question that hits all of us who ever sit down to write anything. You’d have thought that having had a career in marketing, especially one that covered a lot of public relations, advertising copy writing, product reviews, and the odd few books that sitting down to write a blog would be easy. Not a bit of it, is it the subject – being a mentor? Maybe, or is it that for the first time I have to write from a personal perspective – much more likely. I’m writing this blog for the Institute to record my thoughts, feelings and experiences on being a mentor for members of the CIM who feel the need. With the fragmentation of media and markets, the globalisation of value chains and the politicisation of the business environment, especially in public services in the UK, it is no surprise to me that marketers feel the need to seek help and advice from those like myself who’ve been at the sharp end themselves. Indeed it surprises me is that many professions don’t actually insist on this as a rite of passage for the newly qualified.

From the above you might well be able to guess at my motivations for agreeing to be a mentor;

• I wanted to help share skills, knowledge and expertise – given I’m a Teaching Fellow in Marketing that’s perhaps not surprising. 
•  I wanted to be able to be a positive role model by demonstrating my firm belief that a positive attitude goes a long way towards success
• I wanted to be a sounding board, to provide considered advice, to be able to help evaluate alternative options for my mentee 
•  I wanted to able to provide constructive, career building guidance, form an impartial but informed perspective
• I wanted to be enthusiastic about helping and to try and instil my belief that learning is a lifelong commitment – especially within marketing.

In short I wanted to give something back into a profession that been good to me, by helping it be good for others, it’s the same reason I chose to go into teaching, nothing compares to the look on a student’s face when the light goes on inside their head and you know you’ve helped make a difference for them and for everyone who’ll ever associate with them.

I had lots of good reasons to become a member, so I made a start. At a first meeting I was pretty sure we would spend most of the time talking and getting comfortable with each other and so it was. I met my mentee for the first time, inviting her along to my university – a nice safe public venue for a first meeting. I think both of us were a little nervous but after initial introductions I felt we got on quite well. As a first meeting this was very much about establishing rapport, so I took the initial lead and basically went through my career history what I’d done with whom. How I’d changed career to go full time into Higher Education teaching and how much I enjoyed it. My mentee reciprocated – we both added detail and anecdotes about where we’d worked and this served as a very basis for a more general discussion on the challenges she’s facing with the NHS which are not inconsiderable. We chatted for a good 90 minutes over coffee and getting blinded by the sun in the process. At the end I think we had both found a good level of rapport and were more than comfortable to progress onto deeper issues. After a further thirty minutes of discussion my mentee had to leave to go back to work, but I think we’ve established a very good basis to continue the relationship.

I’m looking forward to seeing my mentee again, perhaps this time I’ll go and see her; it’ll be a first to venture into a hospital in rude health for me!

To see another side of Andrew’s work, have a look at one of his latest articles.