The Invisible Mentor

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Reading broadly is a great conversation starter

Famous aviator Amelia Earhart is thought to have crash landed on Nikumaroro Island when she disappeared in 1937. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Have you ever been at a cocktail party and didn’t have much to contribute to the conversation? If you read broadly, and not only just books, you will always have something to talk about and contribute to the conversation.

Many of you who read this blog regularly know that I’m an introvert, and I’m also shy. I do better in one-to-one conversations than in groups. A few months ago, I was at a cocktail party that a friend hosted. A gentleman came up to me and started talking, so I asked him what he does for a living, and he replied that he builds aircrafts. I was able to engage and have a meaningful conversation because I had researched and written about the Wright Brothers who are credited with inventing the airplane.

I have also written about Amelia Earhart whose aircraft was lost and have never been found. I wrote about Charles Lindbergh who made the first non-stop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris. One of the ways you can learn a little about a lot of people is to read the profiles of wisdom that are featured each Wednesday on The Invisible Mentor blog.

Reading books are also important because you can discuss the big ideas, new ways of doing things, you can honestly recommend books for others to read and the list goes on and on. For instance, one of the books that will likely be popular this summer is Divergent by Veronica Roth. If you enjoyed The Hunger Games, you’ll be blown away by Divergent, which is Part One of the trilogy. Stay tuned for my review. Part Two, Insurgent (Divergent) will be out in May 2012.

Do you agree or disagree that reading broadly is a great conversation starter? Why? Why not? 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.

Book links are affiliate links.

Self-Mentoring – an Idea for the Twenty-First Century

Numerous survey results tout the benefits of having a mentor. However, many of us will never be a part of a traditional mentoring relationship. So what do you do? Simple, you mentor yourself.

Self-mentoring is not a new concept, and according to Dr. Marsha L. Carr from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, “Self-mentoring occurs when the achiever (mentee) is willing to take the initiative while accepting responsibility for his/her own development by devoting time to navigate within the culture of his/her environment in order to make the most of opportunity to strengthen competencies needed to enhance job performance and career progression.”

That means that you are responsible for your own professional development.

Mary Kay Ash (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Becoming a Self-Mentor

To mentor yourself, you have to know yourself, it’s a journey in self-awareness. You have to know your strengths, weaknesses, needs, values, limitations, passions, how you respond in various situations, and what’s really important to you. A good place to start is to conduct a Personal SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) Analysis, and do the mentoring needs assessment from the DIY Mentoring Program, Episode One.

After you have identified your needs, you have to go out there and identify ways to fill those needs. That’s not easy to do, and that’s why it requires commitment on your part. Self-mentoring is an important concept, and the Invisible Mentor is designed to help you mentor yourself, but it requires action on your part. You have to take the information and use it for your professional development.

Self-Mentoring on The Invisible Mentor Blog

To get the most from The Invisible Mentor Interviews, while you are reading them, answer the following questions:

1. Are their similarities between the interviewee and yourself?
2. In what ways can you use the information?
3. In what ways would you respond differently from the interviewee?
4. What are your five takeaways from the interview?
5. After reading the interview, what is one concrete action you can take?
6. What are five things you have learned that you can use in your job?

To get the most from The Invisible Mentor Profiles, while you are reading them, answer the following questions:

1. Are their similarities between the person profiled and yourself?
2. What are your five takeaways from the profile?
3. When you think of the person profiled, what thoughts immediately come to mind?
4. In what ways can you use the information in your work and life?
5. Look at the process you use to get your job done, think of ways to improve the process and make it more efficient. Is there a way to eliminate a step or combine steps? Also, is there a way to do your work in a more cost-efficient manner?
6. After reading the profile, what is one concrete action you can take?

To get the most from this SummaReview, after you have read it, answer the following questions:

1. Is this a book you’d like to read for yourself? Why? Why not?
2. What has made an impression on you?
3. Were there any kernels of wisdom?
4. Is there a framework that you can use in your life and work?
5. What are five takeaways from the SummaReview?
6. What is one action that you can take as a result of reading this SummaReview?

Self-Mentoring in Action

The most successful people have systems in place which helped them to become successful. Both Madam C J Walker and Mary Kay Ash – who we have profiled on The Invisible Mentor Profile in Wisdom Series – had systems in place in their businesses. What systems can you introduce to aid your success at work? In addition, the Wright Brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, who are credited with inventing the airplane, outlined their path to success in The Early History of the Airplane. In that book is a methodology for approaching projects. Laurel Touby in her interview shared with us how she started her membership site mediabistro, which she sold for over $20 million.

In addition to the content on The Invisible Mentor, there are many available resources available to aid you on your self-mentoring journey, but before you begin, you have to understand what your needs are so that you can meet them.

Saundra McGuire on Self-Mentoring

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Cannot view video? Click here. Uploaded by DowChemicalCompany on Mar 10, 2011

Further Reading

Madam C J Walker, Operated the Largest Black-Owned Business in the Early Twentieth Century

Mentor Yourself: Profile of Mary Kay Ash, Founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics

Wright Brothers, Inventors of the Airplane

The Early History of the Airplane by Orville and Wilbur Wright

mediabistro Founder Laurel Touby Shares Her Experience Building One of the Hottest Online Communities

Laurel Touby Shares Her Experience Building One of the Hottest Online Communities Part Two

The Invisible Teacher: A Self-Mentoring Sustainability Model, Dr. Marsha L. Carr 

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.

This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: The Early History of the Airplane by Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright, Wisdom of Life Profile: Ayn Rand, Philosopher, Author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, and Senior Account Executive, National Speakers Bureau, Jeanne-Marie Robillard.

Adventures in Learning

An assortment of blog posts with information to help you in a variety of ways.

Adventures in Learning: Learning Tools and Resources to Help You Succeed in Today’s Fast-Paced World 

Booked for Mentoring

The Early History of the Airplane by Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright is a great book for mentoring because it teaches us to question everything, and not accept things as fact.

Booked for Mentoring: The Early History of the Airplane by Orville and Wilbur Wright 

Wisdom of Life Profile

Before the Russian Revolution, Rand and her family traveled across Europe – Austria Switzerland, England. She was a voracious reader, taught herself to read at age six, and was influenced by The Mysterious Valleyby French writer Maurice Champagne, and the writings of Victor Hugo and Walter Scott.

Image via Wikipedia

Wisdom of Life: Ayn Rand, Philosopher, Author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead 

Interviews for Mentoring

This week we featured senior account executive for National Speakers Bureau, Jeanne-Marie Robillard. After her first year at university, while Robillard was working at a summer job, she attended a party and saw Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau standing by himself. She approached him and introduced herself. Read the interview to find out what happened. Here are Part One and Part Two of Jeanne-Marie Robillard’s interview.

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.

Book links are affiliate links.

Image via Wikipedia

The Early History of the Airplane by Orville and Wilbur Wright is a great book for mentoring because it teaches us to question everything, and not accept things as fact.

“Late in the autumn of 1878 our father came into the house late one evening with some object partly concealed in his hands, and before we could see what it was, he tossed it into the air. Instead of falling to the floor, as we expected, it flew across the room, till it struck the ceiling, where it fluttered awhile, and finally sank to the floor.”

The toy the Wright Brothers were referring to was a helicopter!

Orville and Wilbur Wright are qualified to write about The Early History of the Airplane because they are credited with inventing it. For many years, they dabbled in aviation. However, they became serious after the death of the King of Glider, Otto Lilienthal in 1896. To study the subject of flying, Orville and Wilbur Wright studied the work of others:

• Octave Chanute’s Progress in Flying Machines
• Samuel Pierpont Langley’s Experiments in Aerodynamics
• Aeronautical Annuals of 1905, 1906, and 1907
• Several pamphlets published by the Smithsonian Institution – especially articles by Otto Lilienthal and extracts from Louis Pierre Mouillard’s Empire of the Air.

After reading what was written, the Wright Brothers understood the problems with flying, and decided to follow the path of soaring flight, which Lilienthal, Mouillard, and Chanute followed, instead of power flight, which Professor Langley and Sir Hiram Maxim followed. The Wright Brothers first designed their machine to be flown as a kite, with a man on board. After relentless testing, they were ready to build a power-flyer.

After using information from the work of others in their experimentation in flight, the Wright Brothers had to acknowledge that a lot of the information was incorrect. They were discouraged, but didn’t give up, and instead decided to rely on their own experimentations. They couldn’t distinguish between what was true and what was false. However, they agreed that the two years were not wasted because now they had a thorough knowledge of the subject of aviation.

As the Wright Brothers take you along their journey to inventing the airplane, you get to see that it was not an easy path. There were many setbacks along the way, but they kept at it. The brothers were one of a few folks who were contracted by the US Government to build a flyer capable of carrying two men and sufficient fuel supplies for a flight of 125 miles, with a speed of 40 miles an hour, and the only contractors to deliver a working product.

What makes The Early History of the Airplane by Orville and Wilbur Wright such a great book, and one that is an excellent mentor, is not so much what is in the book. The content is important, but the book teaches the reader how to think, how to solve a problem, and the process to manage a project from start to finish. In life, we will never have all the information we need to make a decision, solve a problem, or move ahead, however, we have to step up and make intelligent assumptions based on what we already know. Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright were very good at that.

The Wright Brothers documented the actions they took while building the flyer, so they were always able to go back and review their work. They were open to suggestions, and would question things. Building an aircraft was important to them, even if it meant that they had to build parts themselves. In life, we have many different skills and experiences, and at some point our lives come together. The Wright Brothers depended on reading books or other information to understand the field of aviation, but their background in building bicycles, was helpful to them when building the aircraft.

Pearls of Wisdom from the Wright Brothers

• Study and build on the work of others.
• Do not be afraid to try something different.
• Never give up, and do not listen to naysayers. After initial spectacular failures, the public believed that flight was beyond man.
• View failure as lessons learned.
• Break down large projects into manageable stages and test each stage to ensure that it works. The Wright Brothers first designed their machine to be flown as a kite, with a man on board. Then later they added the engine.
• The road to success is paved with many failures.
• Learn by experimentation.

I recommend that you read The Early History of the Airplane by Orville and Wilbur Wright, but when you are reading the book, focus more on the process, than on the content, and you will get far more from the book. You can download a copy of The Early History of the Airplane by Orville and Wilbur Wright from Gutenberg.org.

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.

“Suddenly, the whole machine lifted from the rail. For 12 long seconds, the Flyer wobbled and snaked 10 feet above the dunes, landing 100 feet away. [John] Daniels had snapped the shutter, freezing in an instant what mankind had sought for millennia,” Michael Patrick of Popular Mechanics, December 17, 1903, when Wilbur Wright successfully flew their Flyer 1 aircraft.

The Wright Brothers are credited for inventing the airplane, but many had paved the way for them. They knew about Otto Lilienthal’s stellar work, but it wasn’t until his death in 1896 that they became interested in his glider flight experiments. At the time of Lilienthal’s death, the Wright Brothers had owned and operated a cycle shop for four years where they also manufactured bicycles. This gave them solid experience in practical mechanics.

This profile contains videos that I found on YouTube and Videopedia for those who prefer to watch the videos than read the profile. I did not make the videos.

Image via Wikipedia

Name: Orville Wright

Birth Date: August 1871 – January 1948

Name: Wilbur Wright

Birth Date: April 1867 – May 1912

Job Functions: Entrepreneur, Aviator

Fields: Aviation

Known For: Inventing the Airplane

In 1892, the Wright Brothers opened the Wright Cycle Shop inDayton,Ohio. At that time in history, the bicycle was an exciting mechanical device, and in 1895 they started to manufacture bicycles. They knew about Otto Lilienthal from 1891, but it was after his death in 1896 that the Wright Brothers took notice of the body of work that Lilienthal left behind. Lilienthal inspired the brothers, and they became interested in glider experiments.

The Wright Brothers entered the aviation field at the right time because some of the theories of aerodynamics were already known, and a body of experimental data was available. There was also a recent development in internal combustion, which would make powered manned flight possible.

Wright Brothers Biography

The Wright Brothers started the process the way most successful inventors and innovators would.

• Gathered all the information they could find on the topic and read them through until they thoroughly understood the subject matter.
• They didn’t just read the data they collected, but also carefully analyzed it. The Wright Brothers determined that they would have to master the principles of flight observation by using gliders, after which they would combine an engine with the wing structure. They looked at the failed attempts with heavier-than-air machines.
• Designed and tested their own models and gliders.
• Built their own engine.
• When the experimental data they had gathered was inadequate or wrong, they conducted more thorough experiments.

By going through the process above, the Wright Brothers concluded that earlier attempts at flying failed because plans for the early plane required the pilot to manoeuvre his body to control the plane. They decided that it would be better to control the plane by the twisting of the wing tips so the flight could be adjusted to changing air patterns without requiring the pilot to shift his weight.

Armed with this newfound knowledge, the Wright Brothers flew double-winged kites and gliders to gain experience and test the data they had. They needed the perfect place to do that. After checking with the US Weather Bureau, they found an area of sand dunes, Kill Devil Hills, close to Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. In 1900, they set-up a camp in Kill Devil Hills. Their first device failed to fly because it was unable to develop sufficient lift. As they tested their devices, they kept accurate records of both their successes and failures. Their own test data proved that previous tables of information they had gathered were inaccurate.

They returned to Dayton in 1901 to build the first wind tunnel in the US so they could test their devices in a more controlled environment. They tested over 200 models of wing surfaces to measure lift and drag factors to identify the most suitable design. “They also discovered that although screw propellers have been used on ships for more than half a century, there was no reliable body of data on the subject and no theory that would allow them to design proper propellers for their airship. They would have to work the problem out for themselves mathematically.”

The brothers built a third glider and incorporated all the new information from their experiments. They returned to Kitty Hawk, made over 1,000 gliding flights, confirmed their previous data and demonstrated that they could control the three axes of motion of the glider. The Wright Brothers were now ready to add power to their machine. They soon discovered that no manufacturer would build the engine to their specification, so they had to build it themselves. The engine had four cylinders with 12 horsepower.

In December 1903, they made the first manned, powered flight in heavier-than-air craft. First, Orville’s plane flew 120 feet and the flight lasted 12 seconds. On the fourth flight, with Wilbur at the controls, the plane traveled 852 feet and stayed in the air for 59 seconds. Unfortunately a gust of wind severely damaged their aircraft. They returned toDaytondetermined to build another aircraft.

In 1905, the Wright Brothers decided to focus on aviation, and in 1906 they received a patent for a flying machine. In 1907, Army Signal Corps (the US government) tendered a $25,000 bid for an airplane built to their requirements, and three of the 22 bids were accepted. The Wright Brothers were the only ones to complete the contract.

In September 1908 while Wilbur was inFrance, Orville successfully demonstrated their contract airplane, which was accepted by the government.

The Wright Brothers’ Steps to Success

• Their father Bishop Wright gave his children a toy helicopter, which ignited Orville’s and Wilbur’s early interest in aviation.
• As children, they assisted their father in editing the journal, Religious Telescope. As young adults they produced their own paper, Westside News on a printing press that they created.
• Wilbur and Orville’s skills complemented each other. Wilbur was meticulous, detailed oriented, had business savvy, mechanical skills and a disciplined mind, and finished the projects he started, while Orville was impetuous, an idea generator, full of enthusiasm and spontaneity.
• They didn’t know much about flying, but had a deep interest in it so they looked at the body of work that was available and started from there.
• Mastered the body of information on aeronautical science and added to it.
• Viewed problems as opportunities: When they couldn’t find anyone to build an engine to their specification, they built one themselves.
• Were curious and inventive.
• Tested, tested and tested until they got it right.
• Used their failures as feedback.
• They became expert pilots as a result of all the glider flights they made.

Why the Wright Brothers Contribution Matters

The Wright Brothers came into the game after a considerable amount of work was done, and they did the smart thing by looking at what had been done before instead of reinventing the wheel. They immersed themselves in the topic of aviation until they really understood it then they started testing the accuracy of the data they had uncovered. They found a lot of inaccuracies and they ran their own tests to gather new information. They conducted the same tests over and over to make sure the experiments were repeatable. When there was no data on a certain aspect of aviation, they did tests to accumulate the body of knowledge. When they couldn’t find anyone to build an engine to their specifications they built it themselves. They were undaunted by the many obstacles they faced. The aviation industry followed the path of The Wright Brothers and not of Samuel Pierpont Langley – it accepted the Wright Brothers’ method of aerodynamic control.

Pearls of Wisdom

• Objectively evaluate what’s been done before and decide which path you are going to take. Many times you have to blaze your own trail, don’t get caught up in circular thinking.
• Because you start out late in a field doesn’t mean that you cannot finish ahead.

Why Orville and Wilbur Wright Would Make Excellent Invisible Mentors

Their lives are living proof of what hard work and determination can accomplish.

Life Wisdom from the Wright Brothers

• Know and understand the fundamentals of your field.
• Build on your basic knowledge to become a master.
• Fail fast, fail often, and fail forward to success.
• Look at what’s being done in other industries for inspiration.
• Find ways to experiment in your job to perform better, and keep careful notes for evaluation later.

For More Information on the Wright Brothers

The Wright Brothers At Kitty Hawk (Scholastic Biography)
The Wright Brothers: A Biography (Dover Transportation)
Sterling Biographies: The Wright Brothers: First in Flight

Works Referenced/Cited

Science and its Times, Volume 6

Encyclopedia of World Biography

UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography

American Decades

Business Leader Profiles for Students

Europe 1789 – 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of Industry and Empire

Bowling, Beatniks and Bell Bottoms: Pop Culture of 20^th Century America

YouTube Video Credit: Uploaded by NatureLover987 on Feb 6, 2009

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