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More on Mentoring
by Frank A. Iddings*
| Because mentoring is so important to me, I have gathered some additional information from other authors for this article. I would like to call it research, but I remember Tom Lehrer's admonition: "So remember why the good Lord made your eyes, and don't shade your eyes, but plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize - but always call it research." Enjoy. Frank Iddings Tutorial Projects Editor |
As I wrote this article, it was January 2003, which also happened to be National Mentoring Month. If you did not begin or increase your mentoring efforts then, it is not too late to do so now. Your effect on the future can be incredible! Mentoring is an important part of NDT and ASNT activities. Hopefully, the two 2002 Mentoring Awards recognizing Joseph Dewton and Fred J. Padilla will help you remember that mentoring is considered to be very important by ASNT.I wrote a few words on the subject of mentoring in this column in a previous issue (Iddings, 2000). We have all had teachers of various sorts, whether in the formal classroom or simply through our families while growing up or on the job as adults. I suspect that most NDT professionals have also had mentors. A teacher can be a mentor, but a mentor is more than just someone who instructs you in a particular type of knowledge. A mentor is concerned not only with your intellectual growth in a particular area of study but with your growth as a person as well.
A recent article by H. James Harrington describes how mentoring can be an important part of the performance appraisal process (Harrington, 2002). Harrington is a recently retired executive from an Internet software company, with 45 years of experience as a quality professional, and is the author of 20 books. His article is the second in a series discussing the performance appraisal process and follows his examination of how to prepare an employee performance plan. Once the plan is prepared, Harrington says that the mentoring part of the process can begin. How important is the mentoring? "Ideally, mentoring is the most beneficial aspect of the total performance appraisal process. It's when the manager provides constructive advice and encouragement to the employee."
Mentoring is an important part of NDT and ASNT activities.
Harrington also remarked that "Mentoring is usually the most difficult part of the performance appraisal process, and most managers fail to meet this obligation." I know that, in the light of Harrington's comments, I failed in that area of my duties as a manager, having learned from some really bad ones. Fortunately, there were some very good managers who taught me or I would have been even worse. Harrington also tells us that "A manager can indeed come up with many excuses why he or she can't do a good job at mentoring, but that's just what they are - excuses. These have to be addressed and overcome."
Harrington's article discusses how to go about being a good mentor. Another recent article deals with how successful good mentoring can be. In "The Helping Hand," Wallace Terry tells of the struggle of Ruth Simmons from the time of her childhood as one of three children in a sharecropper's family to her becoming the first African-American to head an Ivy League university (Terry, 2002). Simmons comments on the period of time following her mother's death, when the influence of her mentors was vital: "if it hadn't been for teachers, my God, I don't know what would have happened to me. They knew the odds out there, and they wanted me to overcome them." Simmons describes her first teacher in this way: "if am here today, it's because Ida Mae Henderson started me believing I could do anything."
Her drama teacher, Vernell Lillie, took Simmons to concerts and plays. Lillie became a surrogate mother to Simmons after her mother's death. She pushed Simmons toward college and helped her get a scholarship to Dillard University. Simmons's journalism teacher, Marie Farnsworth, actually took clothes out of her own closet for Simmons to wear to college. Other teachers encouraged Simmons along the way until she received a PhD in romance languages and literature from Harvard.
Simmons has been an administrator at the University of New Orleans and Princeton University, served as president of Smith University and is now president of Brown University. Her guiding mantra is summed up in her comment, "every single child who achieves needs to have an avenue to success." Simmons is a shining example of what people can accomplish by becoming mentors and going that extra mile to help somebody accomplish what they may not otherwise have.
I began this article by saying that I suspect that most NDT professionals have had mentors. One of the problems we in NDT have faced throughout the years is insufficient support for our field in the classroom: NDT is simply not taught in sufficient detail to enough students. So how did we become involved in this field? For many of us, I believe the answer is that we had a mentor who showed us that there was important work to be done in NDT - interesting and meaningful work which helps to create a safer world.
In my earlier article on mentoring, I declared that mentors inspire us to be "more and better than we would have been without them." That is enough reason for any of us to try to be a mentor. It is truly worthwhile.
References
Harrington, H. James, "How Mentoring Pays Off," Quality Digest, November 2002, p. 12.Iddings, Frank, "Mentoring," Materials Evaluation, Vol. 58, October 2000, pp. 1197-1198.
Terry, Wallace, "The Helping Hand," Parade Magazine, 22 December 2002, pp. 4-5.
* 1635 Rob Roy Lane, San Antonio, TX 78251; (210) 647-7717; e-mail <profiddings@satx.rr.com>.
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