For the past few months, I have been mentoring with the Organisation: Oneuponedown. This group enables female peer mentorship and is currently based in Australia/New Zealand. I first heard about this organisation through @PsodaRhona and I applied to be a mentor. This was an entirely volunteer position and I received no remuneration for my activities.

Who are Oneuponedown?

Based on their website, Oneuponedown has the mission: “To facilitate meaningful connections and make great advice more accessible“. This really spoke to me as a Mentor but also as a female leader and I was really excited to be able to add my own value to the organisation. Through the near-peer mentoring, they match the Mentor/Mentee so that the Mentor has 3-5 years more experience or is a few life stages ahead of them.

As a Mentor, you’re given the opportunity to have resources, blogs and webinars available to you to be able to support your role and give you more information to help your Mentee. This is a really valuable addition to the mentoring journey.

Why Mentoring?

I started Mentoring with the PMI through the #AskTheExpert series at their Global conferences. I was often approached for sessions by project professionals who were looking for career advice or looking for support in a particular situation or issue they were facing. Often, through emails and calls after the conference, I continued to connect and support other project management professionals along their career journey.

One reason that I feel that Mentoring is such a valuable skill is to be able to support another individual through their own journey and experience of being a valuable professional. I will not discuss the content of the personal mentoring but will instead focus on the skills and insight that I have gained for myself. I would strongly recommend that you consider mentoring if you need advice about a specific topic or would like some outside advice from an experienced professional who may have an experience that is similar to yours.

My take aways from Mentoring:

• Being able to analyse and look at things from another perspective
• Supporting another individual through a career change and helping them understand not only where their skills lie but also what they are able to achieve
• Ability to analyse my own reaction and attitude towards a circumstance or situation
• A great opportunity to network with other peers in similar roles/situations
• The value of my own experience and the value that this has to another person

The feedback that I have received after these short mentoring sessions has also given me the confidence to continue mentoring and branching out into a mentoring not only Project Managers but also other Leaders.