Why become a mentor

Last year Emma Causer put out a call for mentors to join her Plan B mentoring programme and I responded to volunteer my time. Mentoring is something I’ve done for around 15 years, first for Business Sheffield and then for Hallam and Sheffield Universities & the Wosskow Brown Foundation. More recently I’ve been approached directly by people looking for some ongoing advice on their start-up businesses.

I enjoy it, it takes you out of your day-to-day life and gets your brain ticking around other people's conundrums, concerns and strategic decisions. I’ve never finished a session with a mentee and thought ‘that was a waste of an hour' because after you’ve met with them you invariably reflect on your own business, profile and direction.

Plan B has been a very different experience for me and to some degree much more rewarding. The Mentees are women in senior positions in large organisations with an emphasis on diversity. Plan B’s mission is pretty straightforward; to help more women get onto boards. The process itself kicked off with a Zoom call with 5 mentees and 5 mentors doing 15 minute chats with each other, we then wrote down the names in order of who we thought we could provide the most support to, and they in turn did the same for us based on our backgrounds and general chemistry.

A week or so later we were lined up with our mentees, and I had been paired with Tribeni Chougule, who is Head of Change Management at Visa. I’ll admit at this point that it took us a good couple of months to book in our first session, Christmas, the second lock-down and work pressures at my end meant we didn’t start talking until February.

We’ve now completed quite a few sessions together and honestly, it's been so satisfying. Tribeni is absolutely amazing, we come from completely different backgrounds; culturally, educationally, our professional careers could simply not be more different. But every few weeks we jump on a call and chat about where she is up to. A bachelors in Engineering and now completing her MBA at Warwick Business School. Tribeni is a mentor herself and contributes towards a bursary to help young women to get through university. She has aspirations to build a portfolio career and is planning her steps towards that vision. From the short time I’ve spent with her, I’ve no doubt that she’ll achieve her goals.

I think where I help Tribeni (without hopefully sounding too corny) is my experience as an entrepreneur. I’m commercially minded and a natural problem solver; I’m always looking for an opportunity rather than focusing on potential blocks.

I don’t think it matters too much how much experience you have, to mentor someone is very rewarding and helps your personal professional development.

I know that Plan B are always on the look-out for new mentors, get in touch to be involved: planbmentoring.com