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How to be an effective engineering mentor

Professional Engineering

'It needs to be a dialogue – and that means we have to increase our listening skills' (Credit: Shutterstock)
'It needs to be a dialogue – and that means we have to increase our listening skills' (Credit: Shutterstock)

Effective and inspiring mentoring can transform a satisfactory engineering career into a richly rewarding one with boundless potential.

If you are a manager or experienced engineer working with mentees or professional registration applicants, an upcoming IMechE training course could help you develop your skills and make the most of your experience.  

The course has previously been taught by facilitator, trainer and consultant Sarah Thompson. Here, she gives four tips to start becoming a more effective engineering mentor.

Understand what it involves

It’s important to give people context about what mentoring is. How does it differ from coaching? How does it differ from a training course? Getting that clarity is probably one of the biggest things that people take away from the programme.

Everybody in their life will have a mentor, whether you call them that or not. Maybe it's your mother or your father, maybe it's an old boss, maybe it's a trusted friend. They are somebody that has walked in your shoes, that can share that experience and that history and knowledge with you, saying “I know what that's like. I've been there and I've done that. I'm going to take you with me and I'm going to introduce you to some people, and show you what I do.”

Tune in to how your mentee learns

We all learn differently. If you can tune in to the ways that the person you're mentoring prefers to learn, you can really speed up that learning process for them.

There's a model that we use, which defines four different styles of learning: an activist, who likes to jump in and get their hands dirty; a pragmatist, who is very practical but needs to understand the ‘whys and wherefores’ before they have a go; a reflector, who wants to sit back and observe, and then come back and have a go; and a theorist, who wants to really get into the ‘why’ of something. Understanding those different kinds of approaches can really give you an edge.

Build the relationship

Finding common ground with somebody is a great way to develop rapport – people like people like them. Whether that’s asking about something like football, or what university they went to and what engineering degree they did, you can start to connect with somebody.

Rather than simply having chats, as your mentoring relationship develops you should move into more focused, structured and purpose-driven conversations.

Listen up

There's a tendency to want to tell somebody what they should do and how they should be better. It's about learning how to make that switch to more challenging conversations, rather than telling somebody what to do and in what order. It needs to be a dialogue – and that means we have to increase our listening skills.

How can we really tune into that, so that we give people wholly and solely what they need? We listen holistically, not just to the words but to the body language, the tone of voice. People sometimes say ‘I think that's a great idea’, but their body language and their facial expression tell you something different. Really listen in to that kind of thing, and then ask the right questions to help explore issues deeper.

IMechE’s Mentoring Skills course runs online on 8 May, in Manchester on 11 September and in London on 10 December. Find out more and book on the IMechE training page.


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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

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