National Mentoring Day 2020 - Defence Infrastructure Organisation

Today marks the UK's National Mentoring Day. National Mentoring day was launched to celebrate mentoring with a key focus on recognising excellence and raising awareness on the significant benefits of mentoring to encourage more people to get involved in mentoring. Everyone from individuals, companies, schools, communities, universities and governments are encouraged to share their own mentoring success stories and case studies and to use the day to participate in raising awareness about mentoring.

To participate here at Defence Infrastructure Organisation we have asked one mentee and two mentors to share quotes around the positive benefits that mentoring has brought them.

Kirsty Adams, DIO Army Basing Programme employee on being a Mentee

“My mentor encouraged me to take part in career opportunities and this gave me the confidence to apply for opportunities and develop skills in different areas.

“I also successfully completed a level 7 Chartered Management Institute course in leadership and my mentor has really helped to push me out my comfort zone. DIO actively encourages and provides opportunities for career development.”

Yusuf Bham, DIO Delivery Support Team employee on being a mentor on the mutual mentoring scheme

 

“As a mentor, I’ve broadened my own understanding of leadership, whilst influencing my Mentee's own leadership style.

“I was able to have open and honest conversations and I found that our engagement was both captivating and interesting. I was able to fine tune my listening skills, whilst learning to influence discussions to ensure we covered diversity and inclusion issues.

“It isn’t every day you get to talk to a senior leader, hold their interest whilst also exercising your communication skills through Skype. I found we were able to make effective use of technology, and COVID-19 did not disrupt this at all.”

Nick Wilkinson, DIO’s Commercial Director on mutual mentoring

“Mutual mentoring has been an extremely positive experience for me. It’s my firm belief that everyone should seek feedback and advice constantly and from a variety of sources.

“This has been the real power of mutual mentoring; offering me perspectives and insights I probably wouldn’t normally get. Some of the simplest questions my mentor has asked have proved to be the most powerful. Although my mentor is from a different team, they have really helped ground and connect me, challenging my thinking about how things lands with my teams in different locations.”