What Good is a PM Mentor?

A mentor's advice can impact your career and help protect your projects from crash-and-burn.

by Neal Whitten, PMP, Contributing Editor

PROJECT MANAGEMENT MENTORS are, by far, the best way to develop effective project managers. Mentors must be seasoned project managers who have "been there, done that, messed up and lived to learn from the experience." Mentors must be accessible to work with project managers while the project managers perform their basic tasks such as planning, tracking and problem management. Mentors especially must be available during crises.
For those of you with years of project management experience, think back on how much a project management mentor—the right mentor under the right circumstances—would have helped you accelerate your learning of both hard and soft project management skills, avoid some hefty mistakes and, as a side benefit, might have moved your career ahead sooner.
The project manager, in the position of being the most influential person on a project, can have a profound impact on the outcome of the project. With projects commonly costing or impacting many thousands, even millions, of dollars, doesn’t it make good business sense for a project manager to be provided mentoring help in the quest for success, both of the project manager and of the project?
Here is a short list of example guidelines that a mentor follows to help the mentee develop his or her potential:
Helps Enhance Performance. A strong measure of the mentor’s effectiveness can be seen through the success of the mentee and of his or her project. However, it is important to note that the mentor’s objective is not promotions for the mentee—any expectations in that direction can interfere with the great learning opportunity. Focus must be on performance and achieving results—although promotions might be a byproduct for the mentee who consistently exceeds expectations.
Provides a Penalty-Free Relationship and Never Betrays Confidences. To be most effective, trust must be developed between mentor and mentee. Discussions need to be relaxed and candid on both sides. The mentee must be encouraged to be inquisitive, without concern for asking dumb questions or confiding about mistakes made. The dialog between the two must be held in confidence and should not be used in performance evaluations. For this reason, the mentee’s manager—or any manager in the mentee’s chain of command—usually is not the best mentoring choice.
Helps Identify and Develop Strengths, Interests and Specific Skill Areas for Improvement. The mentor needs to help the mentee to recognize his or her strengths, interests and areas for improvement. The mentor will recommend classes, conferences, workshops, books, articles and even other experts to help the mentee’s personal growth.
Assists in the Creation of a Development Plan. The mentee has the responsibility to create an individualized development plan that includes, with help from the mentor, the identification of knowledge, skills and experiences needed and a plan to acquire or achieve them. The development plan should complement any related aid offered by the mentee’s company.
Meets at Least Monthly. The mentor needs to be accessible to the mentee during crucial periods such as the development of new plans, establishing a project tracking process, re-planning exercises, and crises. In most cases, face-to-face contact of one to three days per month should be adequate as long as telephone access is available within 24 hours.

I HOPE THIS SHORT LIST of guidelines is long enough to spark your interest in seeking a mentor (if you don’t already have one). The time and cost invested in acquiring a mentor is small compared to the benefits that can be gained.
The most effective project managers are developed day-to-day, not year-to-year or project mistake-to-project mistake. Mistakes will happen, even with the best of mentoring. However, project managers with strong mentors should find their effectiveness continually improving. The company and everyone connected with the project will share in those gains.

Neal Whitten, PMP, president of The Neal Whitten Group (www.nealwhittengroup.com), is a speaker, trainer, consultant, mentor, and author in project management and employee development. His books include The EnterPrize Organization: Organizing Software Projects for Accountability and Success and Managing Software Development Projects: Formula for Success.

This material is reprinted from PM Network magazine (April 1999) with permission of the Project Management Institute Headquarters, Four Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, PA 19073-2399 USA. Phone: (610) 356-4600. Fax: (610) 356-4647. Project Management Institute (PMI) is the world’s leading project management association with over 50,000 members worldwide. For further information, contact PMI Headquarters at (610) 356-4600 or visit the web site at www.pmi.org. "PMI" and "PM Network" are trademarks of the Project Management Institute, Inc. © 2000 Project Management Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.

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