Episode-63; The Importance of Mentorship

Video Version

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In this episode, in addition to the (ab)normal hosts JP and Mule, Don “the beer man” Burshnick is able to join in real life. JP starts with a lamentation from having to be on a project earlier than he is used to and shares some words of wisdom; folks shouldn’t need to wake-up early except for huntin’ and fishin’.

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But soon enough, the conversation moves on to it’s main theme; mentorship.

JP shares a story about a person who is in a leadership role at the project he is working on and how that person is probably in over his head, even if his heart is in the right place. What makes matters worse is that the senior leadership feels he is failing and instead of helping, they are abandoning him. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; they believe he will fail so they don’t offer any help, and he fails. Seeing this, JP took him under his wing and gave him some coping skills and leadership training; making sure to be available when needed and checking in on him on a daily basis.

Mule and Don share their experiences in mentoring and being mentored along their life’s journeys; in particular, Mule with high-school robotics teams and Don with Karate.

Andy who is outstandingly mediocre joins from the UK where the discussion is gravitates towards the difference between mentorship and coaching; with the purest form of mentorship being times when the mentor doesn’t know they are being a mentor.

Doug joins us from “Joyzee” and is on the “back nine” shares his insights with recent mentoring opportunities; one with career advice and another where he offered his mentorship to a group of young people and was disappointed that so few accepted the opportunity (for reasons he is still pondering).

Finally, Esther joins us from Sweden and shares her experiences being a mentor. She expresses her concerns about the use of AI in the candidate selection process and the possibility (probability) of filtering the best candidates in favor of those who know how to game the system and tailor their submittals to meet the job description.