Women in Business: Make Mentoring Work for You

Juliane Nandra, Nicole Kidd, Linda Cleary, Caroline Raynaud

SAP Labs warmly hosted its first GABA Women in Business event on how mentoring helps a woman’s career on November 9^th, 2010, together with SAP’s Business Women’s Network and sponsored by Cisco.

Featuring stories from both corporate and entrepreneurial backgrounds, Karen Colligan (Principal, PeopleThink) lead an inspiring discussion together with Rosie Cofre (Inclusion and Diversity Manager, Cisco), Katharina Rock (SVP Strategic Projects, SAP), Kim Wise (President, Mentor Resources) and Lesley Young (VP North American Sales, Huddle), who each shared their experiences from the perspective of both a mentor, and as a mentee. 

Participants discussed the differences between coaching and mentoring, how to find a mentor, and how to be a mentor.

Key points included: 

• When looking for a mentor in your work environment, determine first what your expectations are. For example, are you looking for direction in something that a particular person is good at?  Or is there a timeline within which you would like to have a mentor help you acquire certain skills or insight?

•       Try to avoid “the M-word” (mentoring): build your inquiry around what you’re trying to achieve, rather than ask a person if they would be willing to mentor you. Mentoring could refer to expectations to acquire certain skills or involved a time commitment that can scare people away.    

•       Although the focus of mentoring is often to strengthen your weaknesses, be sure to also keep your strengths in mind, and that your mentor could advise you on how to leverage those in your career. 

•         It’s okay to realize that a mentoring relationship is limited in time; one mentor cannot fulfill all the needs of the mentee, and it’s time to move on to a different mentor when you know that the current mentor-mentee relationship has fulfilled its purpose.

• ·       Mentors should ask many questions before making any assumptions about a challenging situation that the mentee might inquire about, as there are many unknowns and subjective descriptions when it’s first presented.

•       Chemistry plays a role: the best mentoring relationships occur when the mentor and mentee have good chemistry together.      

•         Importance of roles: two levels up between job-grades is the highest one should go for a mentoring relationship. It’s also recommended to find someone who is outside of your immediate work-circle, in order to get a different perspective and also to avoid potential jealousy or perception of threat.

If you are a woman in business, what’s YOUR story about mentoring?  Continue the conversation on our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/GABAWIB or in our email discussion group http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/GABA_WIB/ .Be sure to also check out the photo gallery.

GABA Women in Business is a community of international, business-minded women in the Bay Area. Our goal is to provide a forum for women where we can build long-lasting relationships, get inspired and share our experiences.

For more information on GABA Women in Business, visit www.gaba-network.org/womeninbusiness.

By Linda K. Cleary, Chair, GABA Women in Business