This issue of The Professional Edge looks at the role of mentoring in the professions, a topic that is near to my heart.
Providing guidance to a young professional can take many forms. Role models, mentors and sponsors are all people that professionals need in their lives and careers but there are distinct differences among these roles.
Role model: Someone you may not know personally but with whom you identify and whose positive behaviours you seek to emulate.
Mentor: Anyone in a position with experience who can offer advice and support. Mentors support their mentees through formal or informal discussions about how to build skills, qualities and confidence for career advancement.
Sponsor: Someone in a senior position invested in the protégé’s career success. Sponsors promote directly, using their influence and networks to connect the young professional to high-profile assignments, people and promotions.
In my case, as with many other people, my number-one sponsor was my father, William Hodges, P.Eng., who was also an engineer. He believed in me and told me I could do anything. The value of this type of support from a father to a daughter cannot be overestimated. It was my Dad who gave me a design project to lay out interlocking paving bricks that led me to decide to pursue engineering. It was my Dad who brought me along to his business meetings and luncheons to introduce me to people in the profession and business world as a young twenty-something.
My mother, Dr. Alice Goodfellow, MD., also played a key role as a mentor for me. One evening after I finished a phone call with a male engineer colleague, I needed advice because it was the first time I truly felt patronized by another person. I remember my mother’s advice was to stay true to my convictions and stand for what I believed.
Most importantly, (and this is where the mentorship came in to play) she shared examples she experienced of being taken for granted and downplayed by other doctors she had worked with. She told me that I was not alone in what I felt and that there would be another day to fight and arrive at a positive outcome.
There are innumerable ways that someone can serve as a mentor or sponsor – encouraging a young student, sharing advice over a glass of wine, taking a chance on someone through a promotion, drawing a young professional into a discussion and many other ways. For all those men and women who filled those roles in my life, I thank you.