Tips for mentors
27 January 2021
Veerle Seymus
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Mentor Bart Briers happily shares his lessons learned
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- Be truly interested in your mentee and his/her case
- Refrain from selling yourself: if you are trying to sell someone you are not, you'll fail to help the mentee
- Come prepared and be extremely flexible timewise in every session.
- Take the time to get to know the mentee, to learn the context. Don't do this in between meetings, but best at the end of the working day, so you have a big enough window to go into depth
- Ask a lot of open questions
- Dare to voice your opinion: the mentee deserves and expects your advice
- Be truly interested in your mentee and his/her case
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Other mentors tips to follow
Struggles of a manager
Managers are
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- lack self-confidence
- don’t know how to go from being a colleague to being a boss
- need to loosen up on the command & control leadership style
- must let go of the (technical) expert status
- cannot give or accept constructive feedback
- feel pressure to perform as manager
- have difficulty building relationships
- want to be liked by everyone or want to be the ‘bad boss’
- play the hero
- …
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- stay too involved in operations
- have trouble prioritizing
- cannot delegate
- fear conflict situations
- disconnect from the team
- deal with flawed strategic thinking
- do not relate to higher management
- lack clear communication skills
- remain not self-aware
- avoid difficult conversations
- miss political antennas
- ...
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- need mental preparation as successor
- need to be able to lead big changes ahead
- need to learn to be emotionally resilient and in control
- need to learn to make big decisions fast without all the information
- must become persuasive presenters
- need to learn how to cultivate their own personal brand
- need to learn how to lead by example
- manage by trust, not by fear
- need to overly develop empathy
- ...
