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Mentoring intranet folks


From : https://flic.kr/p/inW8ZS
I ran a team of application developers at a New Zealand University for over a year.
One of the aspects of that role which I really enjoyed was working with each team member on their personal development.

With the people I was working with we found that individual mentoring was very effective.

Traditionally organisations have training budgets. The training budget is often used to send technical folks on a one, two or more day training course. In some cases the money is used to send people to a vendor or practitioner focused conference.

In my experience the training courses are given by either the technically gifted or those new to the field. Neither tend to be good trainers or teachers.

In my own experience and from the results I saw within my team there is a better way. We agreed as a group that where possible we would forgo the poor quality training and the questionable conferences and use the money to get a specialist / consultant in for a day or half day a month to work over the course of six months or more with a person.

The goals for each day's visit had to be defined prior to the specialist / consultant turning up so that they I could see we were getting value from the visit, so the specialist / consultant could prepare and so that the staff member being visited had concrete value they could demonstrate to the wider team.

Generally each visit consisted of some time having hard to solve problems talked through and possible solutions outlined. The other part of the visit would involve project / professional development activities. The professional development was directed so that it was of value to our organisation.

This arrangement was very well received by my team. From my perspective I got difficult issues resolved rather than left behind as well as up skilling my team. Other benefits were that my team found out about other ways of working from the visiting specialist / consultant, and discovered other organisations and individuals who do what they do. Often the peer relationships provided free advice and help when times were tight.

For intranet folks in New Zealand, and I believe around the world this mentoring model is a great solution to the problem of working a field which is relatively new, has little or no training, and few obvious career development opportunities.

So my challenge to you is . . . . 

Comment below and let me know things you taught your fellow intranet folks that they thought were SUPER AWESOME. They can be in your organisation, working across the road or somewhere else around the world.
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