The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Invisible Mentor’

I get contacted all the time by people asking if they can write guests posts for The Invisible Mentor Blog, but I say no, not because I do not want to introduce new thought to my readers, but because what they are pitching is inappropriate. You can tell that they do not even know what kind of information is on the blog, and they do not care, all they care about is pushing their content.

But a few weeks ago, Craig Murray asked if I would publish an infographic guest blog post, and you could tell that he had actually gone to the blog and read what was there. We started the dialog, and he produced a mentoring infographic. I suggested a minor change and he made it, no questions asked.

When you approach someone for help, do you make sure that they are the appropriate person? Do you take the time to do your homework? If they are the right person to approach, are you ready to have the conversation? And are you flexible enough to be open to suggestions?

Here is Craig Murray’s (http://www.phoenix-training.co.uk) guest post. I thought it was an interesting infographic on mentoring.

Mentoring at a Glance

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Related articles

• Create Your Board of Mentors – January is National Mentoring Month (theinvisiblementor.com)
• Adventures in Learning: DIY Mentoring Program, Episode Two (theinvisiblementor.com)

Invisible Mentor: Maggie Berry

Company Name: Women in Technology

Website: http://www.womenintechnology.co.uk/ 

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Maggie Berry: I run an organization called Women in Technology based inLondon and our strategic aim is to increase the number of women who are working and achieving in the UK’s technology profession.

Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Maggie Berry: I keep them quite separate. I spend a lot of time on work, but I keep my connections separate. But some of the ladies I’ve met, and have grown to know over the last few years are beginning to become more like friends, and it’s just a fantastic feeling. 

Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it? 

Maggie Berry: With my boyfriend, with my friends, with my family. I like traveling, going away at weekends and I like history. I read the BBC History Magazine and I love it. I read it cover to cover every month. I read a lot of historical novels – I like imagining how we lived, understanding all the things that got us to where we are now in society.

Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

Maggie Berry:

1. Network, network, network.
2. Have a mentor.
3. When offered a job, negotiate the salary. Men negotiate and I don’t believe that it comes as naturally to women.
4. Life is short and time runs away with you so make time for friends and family.
5. You spend a lot of time at work so you have to do work that you enjoy and that gives you satisfaction. If the role you’re in doesn’t offer enough scope for that, get involved in other things – volunteer on committees and charities and find satisfaction from other things if your job isn’t able to offer that. Not every job can give you satisfaction on a day-to-day basis but there are other ways to get a sense of getting involved and giving back.

Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Maggie Berry: I get ideas from everything that comes at me. I read a lot and if I see things that look good, I wonder how we might be able to replicate them. I share ideas, get ideas from the team, from other activities that are going on all over the place and I jot them down and email them to myself and then we work out how we might be able to develop them into something – something more concrete.

Avil Beckford: What’s your favourite quotation and why?

Maggie Berry: One I hear a lot that I like is Madeline Albright’s quote that “there is a special place in hell reserved for women who don’t help other women.”

Avil Beckford: How do you define success? And in your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Maggie Berry: Success is different for everyone. There is so much discussion now about increasing the number of women on boards and in senior roles, which is brilliant but the fact is, only a very small percentage of anyone (men and women) are going to reach board level because there just aren’t that many board level positions available generally. So I believe that we need to make sure we’re providing for the women who are working at all levels – we need to provide resources and support for everyone because success is different for everyone.

For me personally, success is taking pride in the brand we have developed at Women in Technology and the activities that we deliver and making sure that everything that we do is of really good quality. So when people come along to our events, even if they’re free, it’s important to give great value to them.

Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Maggie Berry: I have worked for the same organization since 2000 – it’s a really great firm and when they offered me the Women in Technology project, I grabbed that opportunity with both hands. I also always try to approach work as positively as possible to make sure that I get as much from it personally as the business gets from it. I acted on the opportunity to manage Women in Technology – a few years ago when this was quite young, this was a huge opportunity and I still think this is a huge opportunity. We still have so much more to do and I’m looking forward to that because it’s exciting!

Avil Beckford: What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

Maggie Berry: Accept that there is a lot to learn all of the time. There are people sitting around you who will have a lot of skills and experience that you can learn from. Get involved so, for example, if you work in a large organization and they’ve got a women’s network, get involved, check it out, see if it will work for you. If you get the opportunity to move forward with different projects, be nominated for an award or speak at an event, don’t play things down, go for it and take advantage of all the opportunities that come up.

And remember that the career you’re in at 21, won’t necessarily be the job that you’re doing when you are 31 or 41. We have accept that we’re probably going to be working until our mid to late sixties so I potentially have another 30 years to work, and I can do loads of things during that time. So just remember that none of the decisions that you make are binding and everything can be changed.

Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

Maggie Berry:

1. Queen Elizabeth I: I would like to get an understanding of how she operated in that very male Tudor environment and how it was to be one of the first female leaders whose reign lasted a very long time. We’d had a female queen before her but Elizabeth had an amazing reign and I would like to know what her tips for success were.
2. Marie Antoinette: From her childhood inAustria to coming into the French court and just what it must have been like to have lived atVersailles. What was her life really like? I’d be interested to know if she had any insight into what was coming with the French Revolution.
3. Mary Queen of Scots: I’d love to know what she was thinking. She is an interesting character because she was going to be the Queen of France but then the Dauphin died unexpectedly and the whole life that she’d been groomed for changed and she was just a teenager.
4. Catherine of Aragon: I would like to find out if she did actually consummate her relationship with Prince Arthur as that was the whole question that precipitated the creation of the Church of England and the breakup from the Catholic Church which was a huge schism in English society. I’m sure she wouldn’t tell me because she wouldn’t tell anyone but it would be amazing to know whether that happened or not because obviously it had a huge impact on British life.
5. Queen Victoria:

I am interested in strong women in history. These women were doing amazing things. These women were famous during their time but there were also loads of other normal women doing amazing things as well.

Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Maggie Berry: I have read lots of historical novels because they are so interesting to me – it relates back to my love of history and understanding how we live. I loved Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray and I happened to read a very old copy of it which was about 100 years old. It was very small with very thin pages and I’d just moved to London and the book is set in London at the time of the Napoleonic War and here was me, in 21^st centuryLondon, reading aboutLondon in 1815, and learning about all the things that happened on the streets where I was, and I absolutely devoured it. It was amazing and I really enjoyed it. I honestly don’t have one favourite book, but that would be among my Top 10.

Avil Beckford: You are one of the 10 finalists on the reality show, So, How Would You Spend Your Time? Each finalist is placed on separate deserted islands for two years. You have a basic hut on the island and all the tools for survival; you just have to be imaginative and inventive when using them. You are allowed to take five books, one movie and one music CD, and whatever else you take has to fit in one suitcase and a travel on case. What would you take with you and how would you spend the two years? T he prize is worth your while and at this stage in the game there really aren’t any losers among the 10 finalists, since each are guaranteed at least $2 million? 

Maggie Berry:

Five Books

1. The Bible
2. War and Peace (Oxford World’s Classics)
3. In Search of Lost Time: Proust 6-pack (Proust Complete)
   (only because it’s one of the longest books written so that would take up some)
4. Note book for writing in
5. Scrap book that I can keep anything interesting in.

Film: My favourite film when I was young was Pretty in Pink with Molly Ringwald so I’d probably take that as I can’t think of anything else!

Pretty In Pink (1986) – Trailer

If you cannot view the video, click here.

Music CD: I’d probably choose something that’s rousing that I could play at full volume to give me a bit of a buzz.

How I’d Spend My Two Years: In my suitcase, I’d have a laptop, electricity generator and some thing that could give me access to WIFI and I’d spend the time looking up ‘stuff’ that’s interesting to me – so probably about the history of peoples all around the world.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Maggie Berry: All the possibilities, thinking about all the stuff that we don’t even know yet and meeting people.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Maggie Berry: Friends and family, keeping grounded.

Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?

Maggie Berry: I’d like to remove war from the world. There are many wars between religions and I’d like religions to live happily together. We can have our own beliefs, one belief isn’t better than another, and consequently there’d be no “you don’t believe what I believe so I’m going to kill you”. The death and destruction of war is awful.

Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..

Maggie Berry: When I’m at home chilling out and relaxing. I’m happy when I’m at the end of an event that we delivered that was great. I’m happy when I’m with friends and family. And I’m happy when I’m beside the seaside.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Video Credit: Uploaded by OldSchoolTrailers on Nov 6, 2010

Image via Wikipedia

This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: All Fall Down by Megan Hart, Abraham Lincoln, 16th President, Led America through the Civil War and 21 Quotes to Inspire you in 2012.

Adventures in Learning

After I read All Fall Down by Megan Hart, which I will talk about tomorrow on Booked for Mentoring, while I was having a delayed reaction to the book, living fully seeped into my consciousness, and it seemed appropriate that that’s what I should be focusing on for 2012. I knew without a doubt that living fully is my guiding light for 2012. I often hold myself back and play it safe, and now is the time to step out in a very big way.

Living Fully is my Mantra for 2012

Booked for Mentoring

Sometimes when we resist things in life, we need to probe further, to see if it’s time to step out of our comfort zone. All Fall Down by Megan Hart is a novel about the Family of Superior Bliss, which is a cult, led by the charismatic zealot, John Second. Originally, the basic belief of Family of Superior Bliss was to take care of the earth and our bodies, which they call “vessels”. They did this through taking care of the environment and not consuming toxins. Along the way, the message got twisted and they lost their focus.

Booked for Mentoring – Book Review: All Fall Down by Megan Hart 

Wisdom of Life

Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky in the early 19th century during the time when much of America was still wilderness. Lincoln attended school for less than a year where he learned the basics in reading, writing and arithmetic – he received most of his education by reading books. Lincoln got his first look at slavery when he made flatboat trips with James Gentry’s (He owned a store which became a trading centre) son in 1828 and 1831 when they took produce down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans.

Wisdom of Life: Abraham Lincoln, 16th President, Led America through the Civil War 

Interviews for Mentoring

Next week we’ll return to the regular schedule with The Invisible Mentor interviews. Enjoy

12 Blog Posts People are Reading on The Invisible Mentor and 21 Quotes to Inspire you in 2012.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Over the past month, I have been paying close attention to the analytics for The Invisible Mentor blog, and I am sometimes amazed by what landed readers on the site. Today, I want to highlight some of the posts that landed people on the site from search engines. Next week we’ll return to the regular schedule: Adventures in Learning, Booked for Mentoring, Wisdom of Life and the Invisible Mentor Interviews.

Cover of The Prophet

1. Einstein Distraction Index: A Method of Deep Focus
2. Review: The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, Translated by Edward Fitzgerald
3. Summary of A Technique for Producing Great Ideas by James Webb Young
4. 2011 Interviews for Mentoring
5. 2011 Books for Mentoring
6. How to Analyze Information
7. How to Master a Subject
8. What Did Napoleon Hill Omit? Invisible Counselors vs. Invisible Mentors
9. Wisdom Wednesday: Charles Babbage, Father of the Computer
10. Review of The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
11. Enchiridion By Epictetus: A Book Review
12. Review of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

In 2012, I will work harder at integrating ancient and modern wisdom to serve you better. The ancient wisdom will be in the people I profile and some of the books I review, and the modern wisdom will be in the people I interview and some of the books I review. If you have other suggestions, please let me know. Please write your thoughts in the comments section below.

Amazon Affiliate Links

The Prophet, The Prince, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: The Five Authorized Versions (Classics Club).

Big Breaks + Mentoring + Hard Work = Success?

I am reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success and it got me thinking about interviews that I have conducted, so I decided to explore an idea. I have only read a third of the book so far, but when you ask most people about Outliers, they’ll mention 10,000 hours to become an expert at a craft. But from what I have read so far, hard work doesn’t equal success, you also need opportunities and talent.

I have taken five of The Invisible Mentor interviews that I have published on the blog, and extracted the responses to big breaks, mentor influence, and steps to success. As you read the responses, what ideas and thoughts come to mind? Are there ways you can create your own opportunities if you haven’t had your big break as yet?

Name: Patty DeDominic

Big Break: Thirty years ago, one of our neighbours in business brought us a request for proposal to do business with the local government and they said they were not going to bid on the small contract, and asked us we would like to bid on it, that was a big break for us. That got us started with government contracting and opened up a new world of a certain type of customer, which over the years I did many millions of dollars worth of business with the government – the city, county, state, national government.

Mentor Influence: y father being a very successful business person, and my mother being a wonderful homemaker, and active community volunteer. They mentored me, and taught me the value in volunteer work, always trying to line your head and your heart and making sure that your values are not compromised by making a living. I had other business mentors, from early bosses and friends who helped and advised me on buying real estate. When I married my husband 25 years ago, he was more experienced than I in different kinds of businesses so he helped to mentor me in regard to some of the systems he used when he worked for multinational corporations so I’ve been very fortunate to receive many coaching opportunities and mentors along the way.

Steps to Success: There were many: I had to study, I had mentors, I had to believe that I could do it, I had to experiment and practice, make mistakes and learn. So those are the steps – it’s conceive, believe, receive, and achieve. Being grateful is an important part of being successful. I think you must be grateful for the things you have that you have been given.

Name: Kamel Hothi

Big Break: I would say my biggest break was from my line manager going back three lines ago, a gentleman by the name of Arif Mushtaq. He was parachuted in from another company into Lloyds Bank. I encountered him when I was setting up the effort for the Ethnic Minority Network, and he was the one who sponsored the event. It was great to meet Arif. When we started discussing the event and he heard some of my views and ideas he really encouraged me to take a risk. He had faith, he saw something in me that I suppose other people didn’t see, so that encouraged me to take a risk from the position. Yes I could have lost my job. He gave me a blank sheet of paper and said he would support me, and to be honest, that empowerment was the best gift I have ever had. It increased my confidence and since then I have never looked back, so I’m really grateful to Arif.

Mentor’s Influence: I have had a number of mentors I would say, and some were good and some were bad. Most were not what you call formal mentors in the beginning, but certainly people who you admire who you see can add value in different ways. My mother was a huge mentor to me, she helped me to shape my personal life, helped me to focus on the core things to look at, how to overcome when things are not quite going right. And at work, Arif Mushraq was a huge mentor to me, he helped me, and he understood what other people thought were weaknesses, were strengths and he had a real influence on my career.

Steps to Success: For me, it was really understanding the psyche of what’s in it for me. That’s very cynical, selfish thinking, but that’s how people tend to live in the corporate world. It’s using that thinking and putting it into my strategy. When we were building the Asian strategy, it was very much what’s in it for them, what’s the business case, what would they achieve, would they pay attention? So once you can show them what the case looks like and get their juices flowing, then it’s mapping that out and how it can be realized. That’s what I would say is what I have done in my field.

Name: Runa Magnusdottir

Big Break: I’ve had so many! I’ve been so fortunate to have so many big breaks. There has always been a woman who stood behind me, who helped me. If I go back in time, when I was about 20 years old, the private secretary for the Minister of Culture and Education in Iceland who was a woman, gave me a huge break. She appointed me to help out with computerizing the ministry. That was a huge break. Another huge break was when my mother asked me to join her company which I later bought. And that was definitely a huge break in my life. And I can name so many that have come to me and it has always been women who gave it to me.

Mentor’s Influence: The idea behind mentors in Iceland is a fairly new thing so I had to think outside the box when it came to mentors. I would say overall in my life my biggest mentors were my parents. In my adulthood, and how they did it was feeding me with information, and talking openly about life and that the thing I think mentors in my mind has influenced me is to be open and to listen to other people’s views that has been my biggest learning point from mentors.

Steps to Success: The steps I took to succeed in my field were to do a lot of personal development, and find out what was important to me. I think it’s important for everyone to find their purpose.

Name: Nadja Piatka

Big Break: My first big break was getting the account for McDonald’s, and that was selling my low fat muffins to them. And I got to be good friends with the CEO and he grew to be a really great mentor to me. But it was starting as someone coming to them in a regional office with my idea, my low fat muffins, and finally getting to head office. It was a process, but it was through believing and having the best product out there and not thinking that what I was doing was impossible. Though later, the CEO of McDonald’s said that generally it’s a slam door policy and I had a better chance of winning the lottery.

Mentor’s Influence: I really believe in mentors, whether you are a mentor or mentoree. We grow and we really need to have other people’s experiences. I have always belonged to a group of women called the Equinox, and it’s just a cluster of women that we formed in Calgary. We are businesswomen who meet once a month, have dinner and share our challenges, our successes, anything that we can talk about freely and confidentially amongst ourselves. That was such a beneficial experience that when I moved to the United States, to western New York, I formed a group of women. We call ourselves the Equinox and continue to meet once a month for dinner and just share our experiences, our businesses, personal, whatever there is to talk about. We take turns to tell everyone how we are doing and it’s a great thing to do because sometimes when you are an entrepreneur it can be a solitary occupation. The mentors I have gathered around me or mentor to, have been really great. Also, I find in my consulting business it allows me to mentor, and again I feel there is so much for you to learn from everyone around you.

Steps to Success: Because I didn’t have the resources to go the easier route, the first step was to start small in my kitchen. I would get up in the morning at 4 o’clock and start baking and I would sell to little coffee shops in the city I lived in.

After I was on the Oprah show people contacted me because they had this product, this idea, and they would give it to friends and family for free and everybody loved it. But when you are giving things away for free you don’t have a neutral or unbiased focus group. You have to test the market with your product, and have people who are willing to buy it, and buying it more than once, then you have a product that the market will sustain.

If you’re just depending on friends and family, if they like it, it really isn’t a true sense of what the market will do in this very competitive business that we’re in. And every business has to have the ability to rise above everyone else’s, so what I did was tested it in the field with smaller shops, and then grew from there. That is one of the ways that I would recommend to people is to find out if the market will sustain their products.

A lot of people have an idea, they have a product that they want to get out to the market and they spend an awful amount of money on the packaging. By the time you have something that you haven’t even sold, I see people have put hundreds of thousand of dollars into a product before they have even sold one dollar of it. There are ways to do that without such a huge investment with your product and I try to advise people that there are ways to do that. There are many steps to be successful in your field and one of the biggest steps is controlling and having a handle on how much money you’re spending. I’ve seen people run out of money before they made one sale.

Name: Annemie Ress

Big Break: I have never really planned anything and things usually just happen, but the biggest opportunity I had was being asked if I wanted to work in Switzerland by a professor I was studying with, and saying, “Yes, that would be great,” not thinking for one second that I’d get the job. He obviously had more confidence in me than I did in myself and the next thing I knew I was on a plane and working in Switzerland. That’s my biggest break, having someone have faith in me. I had no international experience, I was South African, and had never worked abroad, but had someone believe in me and that has opened doors for me to work globally.

Mentor’s Influence: My mentors have taught me the amazing power of powerful questions, and how you don’t necessarily need to guide by telling, but that wonderful things can happen if you’re open to asking questions and always thinking that you don’t have all the answers but that by asking powerful questions in a given circumstance you can unlock many possibilities.

Steps to Success: Relationships and sponsorships and being authentic. It’s about building meaningful relationships with key opinion makers and stakeholders at all levels in your organizations. It could be with the person who brings you your coffee in the mornings, if you work in that type of environment. Or it could be with the security guard who is at the entrance when you come in to work, or the president of the corporation. But it’s not just about the relationships, it’s also about celebrating the uniqueness in the other person and really connecting with them authentically. In my environment that’s the one thing I’ve tried consistently to do because it builds trust, integrity and respect and that stands you well in both good and bad times.

From what you have  read, does Big Breaks + Mentoring + Hard Work = Success? Tomorrow we will look at five men.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Further Reading

Patty DeDominic Interview (Part I), (Part II)

Kamel Hothi Interview (Part I), (Part II)

Runa Magnusdottir Interview (Part I), (Part II)

Nadja Piatka Interview (Part I), (Part II)

Annemie Ress Interview (Part I) (Part II)