Women in Climate (WiC) network
Women in Climate (WiC) network
Posted by Nina Raoult
26 June 2023We had a mentoring focused session organized by Jenn Brooke in a joint session between Women in Climate and the Met Office Mentoring Community. We were joined by a panel of speakers who shared their experiences of mentoring, developing mentoring relationships and the personal growth and career development that can develop through mentoring.
Alex Volcansek is the Mentoring Lead at the Met Office. Alex is a Business Psychologist and Senior Organisational Development Partner at the Met Office. She has initiated and led the Mentoring Community at the Met Office, including providing mentoring training. Alex is passionate about applying psychological insights to enable people to learn and develop in accordance with their values, interests and unique personalities.
Andrea Hodges is Employment Schemes Manager at the University of Exeter, and has extensive experience delivering training programmes involving coaching young people. Andrea currently overseas the employability schemes at the University of Exeter focusing on internships, graduate schemes, and career mentoring, and is also part of Exeter City Council’s ‘Empowering Girls’ programme.
Dr Sophie Cowie is an Academic Mentor / Lecturer in Computer Science, University of Exeter. Sophie started out as a research meteorologist and moved into Data Science in 2016. Sophie also trained as a counsellor and began working part-time in the NHS. She now combines these skills and experience to support Degree Apprenticeship students on the Research Scientist/ MSc Data Science as an Academic Mentor/Lecturer.
A key principle of mentoring is helping each other, and over the course of the meeting we discussed how this can work both ways!
We talked about the following definitions of mentoring, starting with this one from the Chartered Management Institute:
A form of employee development whereby a trusted and respected person – the mentor – uses their experience to offer guidance, encouragement and support to another person – the mentee.
This definition is from the European Mentoring and Coaching Council:
Mentoring is a learning relationship, involving the sharing of skills, knowledge and expertise between a mentor and mentee through developmental conversations, experience sharing and role modelling. The relationship may cover a wide variety of contexts and is an inclusive two-way partnership for mutual learning that values differences.
There are also useful guidelines such as Schein’s 10 principles of helpful relationships that might help, or thinking about Schein’s different types of mentors.
Key principle: It is the mentee who owns the problem and/or opportunity and the solution.
When in doubt, share the problem (or interest, solution, opportunities etc!)
You can think about different typical stages in a mentee career journey (derived from the Hawkins model) – are you experimenting, accomplishing, and accumulating, making a difference, or providing stewardship in your role?
Who is your dream mentor? But also consider that mentors who do something very different to you can offer unique insights into how you can succeed or help with transferable skills.
Andrea Hodges talked about the University of Exeter mentoring scheme, which is one of the largest in the UK, and has been going for 15 years! There are 2 schemes per year for 6 months, starting in June and December, with mentor and mentee meeting 1 hour per month or more, to give general help with CV/job applications or other general mentoring as appropriate. Each scheme starts with a networking event at the beginning.
This scheme is a great way to get experience to progress to management. The scheme is always looking for more STEM mentors, so they are keen for our members to apply. You need to have 3 years post graduate experience. There will be recruitment in August for next December to May scheme.
We also talked about: