CEO and founder Annette Gray has extensive experience in designing coaching programs for leaders and mentoring programs for many sectors, in particular construction and infrastructure. She chats to us about the importance of mentorship.
Engineers Australia’s College of Leadership and Management, Women in Engineering, Migrant Engineers and Young Engineers Australia groups in Sydney have teamed up with Annette to bring Engineers Australia members an event designed for both leaders and mentors.
This is an opportunity for anyone interested in growing and developing others to learn practical approaches to mentoring. You’ll learn about defining the mentor’s role, directive versus non-directive approaches, key interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence and relationship building.
Annette says mentorship is important in any profession and due to the often-technical nature of engineering we need mentors and mentorship now more than ever.
“I think we all need help navigating our professions, particularly now in these turbulent times of transition and the impact of AI,” she says.
“We need people who are further down the path than us to help us through and be a support and guide. Having a neutral sounding board gives people more confidence and in turn, be more effective at their work. Knowing how to ask questions rather than downloading all your wisdom is key to being an effective mentor,” Annette explains.
Annette’s top three tips for being a good mentor:
- Your role is to help your mentee to grow and learn. If you want to keep talented people working for you or attract the best people, they want to continually learn and be a lifelong learner.
- Don't assume that your mentee hasn’t had an experience with what they're asking for help with already. They've probably attempted to navigate the situation before. Ask them how they did that, what seemed to work.
- Listen more than you speak and be open and curious by withholding judgement. Listen 70 per cent of the time and ask questions 30 per cent of the time.
Want to find out more?
Register now for the ‘Mentoring across generations: empowering leadership together’ event, which will be held in Sydney on Wednesday 30 October.