Mentoring a Mentee and Myself

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to be selected as a mentor for three junior talents within my company. Two of them were from different workplaces whereas the last one was still studying and hence I did not meet him. I met the other two once in the past few months, and it was an interesting chance to hear what they think and to answer their questions. Before I left, I would reassure them that despite the official requirements stating to meet up once every six months, I told them that I am open to meeting them anytime they required.

I am happy that I met one of my mentees again today. It is off the official schedule, and he had some concerns regarding his career plans. We also exchanged some ideas on outsourcing. He came prepared with many questions, and I enjoyed answering them.

Halfway throughout the session, I told him that his questions gave me a chance to think about certain matters, and the more I shared stories of my experience, the more I realised I was guiding myself. I was reassuring him about the organisation's plans for him, and we discussed about the differences between being in a technical track, and a generalist one. I was reflecting as I gave my answer.

I recalled five years ago, I was at a crossroads. There I was having spent many years building up my leadership and managerial skillsets. I was good at organising people, getting external stakeholders to come together for a common mission etc, but I was not that technically strong in maintenance sciences. I was worried about not having a strong technical fundamental, and wanted to look for a posting that would hone it.

I eventually pivoted to cybersecurity. It was very technical - and technically challenging. You need to know your stuff in order to contribute well. But after some years, I got promoted into a management role. I found that my strategic thinking muscle weakened over the years, and I needed to readapt to get it back. Now, I'm performing significantly lesser technical work, and I spend most of my time accounting for the work of my people and weighing trade offs.

I got back to where I was five years ago.

But this time, I understood. My technical background helped me to understand better, but to be an effective manager or leader, I do not need to dive overly deep into technicals. As long as I can use my technical knowledge to question, challenge and improve my team's thinking or considerations, then I have contributed well and that is my value. At this point in time, I am ready to be a generalist again, to re-hone the other part of skills that I had not exercised for the past five years.

And it is ok. For now I get to spend time learning about other things, and as Steve Jobs said, we connect the dots backwards and it will be useful one day.