I dropped off the radar for a day, as I was in IBM Warbrook for a personal development course entitled Mentoring for IBM.
Supporting / helping / mentoring / coaching others is something that I’m drawn to do naturally, so over the past few years I’ve developed mentoring relationships with several people. They have seemed to work well – although obviously that’s only my perspective! Yesterday’s course was a good way of learning what tools and techniques I can use to improve the effectiveness of those relationships in the future. It also gave me the opportunity to learn from others, what has worked well for them.
It was a great day, and I’m glad that I had the opportunity to take a day off-site to go and do something different, and (hopefully!) improve my skills. As a bonus, I got to meet a great group of people, coming from all areas of our business – it served as a reminder of how diverse IBM is as an organisation. Not only that, but part of the learning experience was to practice and be practiced on, so I got some excellent advice on different issues that have been in my mind lately. One other thing that it reminded me was that I probably need to spend more time as a mentee, sometimes – there is so much that I can learn from others.
