Pondering Mentorship

Today is day 50 on the the dream job. Purse snatching notwithstanding, I love this job. This morning I held my first official advisory council meeting. I was feeling a bit nervous about this as I hope to change how the council operates and was uncertain how my ideas would be received. The chair of my advisory council, who is terrific, has spent about 6 hours with me over the past week helping me refine my meeting plan and presentation.

I am so incredibly blessed with people willing to mentor and coach me. It’s funny, I used to be one of those people who was utterly and completely determined to go it alone. I did not understand group work. I wanted to do everything myself. I’d have been insulted if someone suggested that I needed a mentor. I had not realized how much I’d changed in my thinking until my Dean sent me an email earlier this week with the contact information for an amazing woman in the community with the idea that this person could help mentor and coach me in specific areas. My first and only thought was "great, thank you!" Three years ago I’d have been insulted that she thought I needed the help. Now, "oh, you want to help, thank you."

Thus my post-meeting conversation with my advisory council chair left me with the same feeling. Overall, he thought it went very well and was very good. He was trying to be nice and said he’d give it an A. I rebutted with "hey, ‘very good’ is not an A." This created the opening for him to say, well, we could work on your presentation style. I already knew that this is an area where I need improvement. But I now have a person committed to helping me work on and improve that area. Thank you.