#87-3/10/09-Finding a Mentor and Coach
Finding a Mentor and Coach
“How to find the right mentor and coach”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Hello everyone!
This week I was interviewed by Dice (the IT job portal) for an upcoming on-line resource they are preparing to assist young IT professionals in advancing their careers. I was asked what my three top suggestions were for IT professionals who wanted to advance their IT career. We ended the interview on the topic of what makes a good coach or mentor.
The interview got me thinking about how to select a really good mentor and/or coach, whether inside your organization or outside.
I know my own coaches and mentors were extremely instrumental in helping me with my career. So I thought I would share with you some of my thoughts on what are the important qualities to look for when selecting a mentor or coach.
“Mentoring and Coaching IS What You Think!!”
There is a lot of discussion about the importance of mentoring and of coaching for engineers regarding their careers. Many want mentors and coaches to tell them “what to do”. It seems our world is filled with people who want to know “what to do” in order to be successful.
As engineers and technical managers, we often believe that if we just know what to do, we can do it and we will therefore be successful. Knowing what to do seems to be the key.
And yet… the world is filled with people who know a great deal about what to do and yet things don’t change.
Here are some examples.
How many people want to change something in their lives? How many want to exercise regularly, loose weight, stop smoking, save money… the list is almost endless.
And for those who want to know what to do in order to exercise regularly, loose weight, stop smoking, or save money, there are more books and more courses than one can read or attend in a life-time (primarily because there are more and more coming onto the market every day.)
But gaining knowledge about “what to do” does not seem to change behavior in many situations. People read books and attend workshops and nothing seems to change. They diet endlessly. They exercise for a while then keep paying their gym memberships but never attend. They stop smoking and then start again. They save, paying themselves first, while running up their credit cards.
In the final analysis, it seems that changing behavior is not just about “knowing what to do”. There seems to be more than one variable to this equation.
How do we change behavior?
The question then is how do we change behavior and how do we move our behavior toward that of a successful long-term engineering career or toward successful engineering management?
What are the important characteristics in a mentor or coach? And how does this relate to your career?
The answer to these questions is embedded in the “way you think”, or more precisely, the way you and your coach or mentor think.
Another way to say it is that it is in your way of “being”. And let me be clear, the way you think and the way of being are not the same as attitude. Attitude is the by-product of the way you think and your way of being. So someone telling you to change your attitude is putting the cart before the horse.
Think of it this way
Your way of being … leads to and produces ...
what you do … which leads to and produces ...
what you have.
Summarized it becomes: Being --> Doing --> Having
Most people focus on having. They think they want to have, have, have.
Some, especially we engineers and technical managers, think that knowing what to do is the key. But alas, doing is not the key either.
So what’s up?
The first step in the process is the most important step. And that step is accessing a state of Being that will produce the doing. It is the state of being that drives what we will do and the doing, in turn, leads us to what we will have.
If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine at: Steven’s March 10, 2009 Ezine And once you are there look for the heading: So What’s Up? to pick up where you left off.
Be well,
Steven Cerri
P.S. By the way. If you’d like to leave a comment, and I’d sure be interested if you did, I’ve changed the comments software. Only your comment and your name will show up at the end of the comment. I have modified the software so that your email address will not show up anywhere.
“What would it be like to be as successful with people as you are with your technology?” Steven trains, coaches, and facilitates engineers and technical managers to BE the answer to that question. More information can be found at the:http://stevencerri.com/index.php/Home/index/
Copyright©2009 STCerri International and Steven Cerri. You are free to pass this information on to others and to reproduce it. If you reproduce it in whole or part please give attribution to Steven Cerri. Thank you.
Posted by Steven Cerri on 03/10 at 06:06 PM (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
#86-3/2/09-It’s Easy To Become a Technical Manager
It’s Easy To Become A Technical Manager
“You are worth gold!”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, March 2, 2009
Hello everyone!
Two or three weeks ago I received this comment to one of my blog postings that read, in part, as follows:
“My question is how do I get back to a position of manager vs IC? (Individual Contributor)
When new managers came into play - change happened and because I had the safety of a paycheck I became and now am an IC.
However I am unhappy and I would like a suggestion on how I can get back to a manager position (title not important) but leading people is. Because I let the paycheck manage my career I am now working for an organization that is all I and no WE.
Your assistance and coaching is appreciated.”
J
I truly understand everything J is asking and experiencing. So I’m going to answer his question(s).
“It’s Easy To Become A Technical Managers--Honest It Is!”
Over the last several weeks I’ve been writing in my Ezines and blogs that young people are restless and they often want the world much sooner than many would think they deserve.
Often when I coach young engineers I give them advice as well as some sense of how much patience they ought to exercise.
What I often don’t say quite this way, is: Becoming a technical manger is probably one of the easiest things to do.
Now notice I didn’t say becoming a successful technical manger is one of the easiest things to do. I said becoming one is.
You are rare indeed!
Finding an engineer who can successfully manage and lead people is very difficult. It’s a very difficult combination to find in one person. And therefore, most organizations are so eager to find someone who can, that they are constantly trying to entice engineers to make the transition.
Unfortunately, most organizations don’t understand what is needed for the successful transition, so they just grab someone who is a decent engineer and who “seems” to have some aptitude for management and presto, he or she is a manager, or sort of.
I recently was published in Mechanical Engineering, the flagship magazine of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). The article was titled “The 5 Myths” and lists the five myths that many organizations use to justify the selection of engineers to be managers.
Often the selection and transition process fails because the myths are just that, myths and they are false.
Companies and organizations are constantly trying to fit engineers into the management role before they are ready, and this often leads to problems.
All of this leads to the situation in which we often find ourselves, and that is, good technical managers are difficult to find.
So what does this have to do with J?
If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine at: Steven’s March 2, 2009 Ezine
Be well,
Steven Cerri
P.S. By the way. If you’d like to leave a comment, and I’d sure be interested if you did, I’ve changed the comments software. Only your comment and your name will show up at the end of the comment. I have modified the software so that your email address will not show up anywhere.
“What would it be like to be as successful with people as you are with your technology?” Steven trains, coaches, and facilitates engineers and technical managers to BE the answer to that question. More information can be found at the:http://stevencerri.com/index.php/Home/index/
Copyright©2009 STCerri International and Steven Cerri. You are free to pass this information on to others and to reproduce it. If you reproduce it in whole or part please give attribution to Steven Cerri. Thank you.
Posted by Steven Cerri on 03/10 at 09:59 AM (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
#85-2/23/09-Engineers Are Natural Leaders
Engineers Are Natural Leaders
“Engineers Are Natural Leaders--Say What?”
Posted by Steven Cerri on Monday, February 23, 2009
Hello everyone!
Engineers Are Natural Leaders… Say What?
I know this week’s blog may cause some controversy but I’ve got to put this out there because by being silent, I believe it’s only making the situation worse.
You see, recently I had dinner with a friend of mine. During the conversation he made a comment that nearly required that someone administer the Heimlich maneuver to me.
I was chewing on some delicious French bread when he said; “You know, a lot of people I work with think that engineers are natural leaders”. That’s when I nearly choked on my bread.
Fortunately I recovered quickly and asked, “You said what?”
He repeated his statement and this time, without food in my mouth, I laughed out loud.
Then I responded, “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?” He responded, “No, I’m not.”
“Engineers Are Natural Leaders...”
I’ll begin this discussion at the beginning. And as a beginning I will state that no one is a “natural leader”. No one is a “born leader”.
I listen, often with great frustration, to people who make proclamations about leadership. They might say that “so-and-so is just a born leader”. Or how someone “is a natural leader”. Or how “everyone can be a leader”.
Well, which is it? Are leaders born? Are they natural? Can everyone be a leader?
The bottom line is that most people who talk about leadership don’t understand the term or the concept and are merely repeating some old phrase that others have spoken. They often make statements like:
“Leaders inspire and managers perspire"… or…
“Leaders know what to do and managers know how to do it.”
Actually, these are generally useless phrases.
I wouldn’t mind in the least if someone wanted to tell me who was a born leader or a natural leader if they spent time up front defining leadership. But most don’t. They assume that everyone has the same definition and understanding of leadership.
And all I have to do is discuss leadership and leaders with these people for a while and I can quickly determine that we don’t all have the same definition of leadership.
My definition of leadership
Therefore, I’ll begin here with my definition of leadership… and it’s not a simple definition.
Leadership, in my book, is a multi-faceted term that has a complex definition. The definition of leadership has multiple parts (six to be exact) and if any part is missing it’s not leadership.
However, for this Ezine and this discussion, there are only two components of the definition that are necessary.
The first component is that leadership is about the relationship between the leader and the context. This may well be the most powerful component of leadership. The leader and the environment must be in a mutually supportive relationship. If the environment doesn’t “need” or “want” the leader, the leaders seems “out of touch with reality”. If the leader is exactly what the environment “needs”, the leaders seems to magically appear, as if out of thin air. They seem to be “born” for the job.
In reality, they’ve always had these traits and now the environment has shifted and their traits are perfectly matched to the occasion. (There are those situations where the leader can “morph” to match what the situation needs as well, and this kind of leader has become more common in the last 40 years or so.)
Therefore, what looks like “magic”, what looks like a leader born to the job of leadership, is actually an individual living their life, waiting in the wings, off stage, until the stage is set for them to step forth fully formed or nearly so.
As long as the environment is aligned with what the leader can provide, then the leader will flourish. However, when the environment shifts, the leader will often vanish or be significantly diminished in stature.
There are many examples of this “match-up”, and then a lack of it, throughout history. They include many military leaders, such as Napoleon, General George Patten, and many political leaders such as Boris Yeltsin, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush just after 9/11. We must wait to see how the leader-environment match-up plays out for President Barack Obama of the United States as well as President Nicolas Sarkosy of France. Both were elected in environments that were making a major transition.
This leader-environmental match-up is is exactly why successful “serial entrepreneurship” is so difficult to achieve.
How many times can a match-up occur between an entrepreneur and the environment? Apparently not very often. It is the rare entrepreneur, indeed, who can start-up several successful companies.
Only the leader who can morph to match the environment can be a leader in a variety of situations. General, and later president, Dwight Eisenhower is an example of a leader who was able to cross contextual boundaries. And Elon Musk is an example of a successful serial entrepreneur.
All one has to do is look out in the world and it becomes clear that there aren’t any born leaders or natural leaders. The phrase, “He (or she) is the leader of their time” is a truly accurate statement. Leadership is about the leader and their “time” being in alignment.
If you want to read more about this topic, you can get it in my Ezine at: Steven’s February 23, 2009 Ezine
Be well,
Steven Cerri
P.S. By the way. If you’d like to leave a comment, and I’d sure be interested if you did, I’ve changed the comments software. Only your comment and your name will show up at the end of the comment. I have modified the software so that your email address will not show up anywhere.
“What would it be like to be as successful with people as you are with your technology?” Steven trains, coaches, and facilitates engineers and technical managers to BE the answer to that question. More information can be found at the:http://stevencerri.com/index.php/Home/index/
Copyright©2009 STCerri International and Steven Cerri. You are free to pass this information on to others and to reproduce it. If you reproduce it in whole or part please give attribution to Steven Cerri. Thank you.
Posted by Steven Cerri on 03/05 at 11:13 PM (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
