Five of the 28 new SEED participants have already submitted their
Mentor Wish Lists. All are due Monday, 10 April. Tanya has prepared
the participants’ personal web pages and they are now sending her pictures
and personalizing them. These web pages will be their first introduction
to potential mentors considering a match.
I am hearing the usual complaints and frustrations on how hard it is to
prepare a Mentor Wish List. Potential Mentors should be included on the
list primarily because of their accomplishments, experience, personality, capabilities, or skills. Each participant needs
to make two hard decisions:
- What they want to learn
- Who has already accomplished the kind of things they want to do
(that is, who is already down the path that they see themselves walking)
The SEED Engineering mentoring program takes a long-term view and
does not have a preference for one kind of learning over another. That is,
the learning does not have to have anything to do with the participant’s
current job. Some people want to learn to be better
technical managers, others want to know how to get their ideas to customers
faster. Many want to improve their soft skills: public presentation/speaking,
negotiating, conflict management, and coaching. Some want to improve their
work and family balance and still have a great career. It takes time
and mature consideration to work through all of this. Creating the
“Mentor Wish List” is probably the hardest part of the SEED program.
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