One of the most enjoyable roles I’ve undertaken in my recent career has been that of a mentor.  A number of years ago I inadvertently took on the role of a mentor to a younger colleague, developing skills necessary to be a good mentor – at the time without even knowing it.  So it was with enthusiasm that I officially became a mentor, to our (now newly qualified) Marketing Apprentice.

Yan started at Appletree last May, having made the decision to take on the Apprenticeship as a necessary route to get into Marketing.  Young and keen, but not straight out of school, it was obvious that Yan was taking his Apprenticeship very seriously, and would be dedicated to completing the course.  I, in turn needed to be as committed to the role of mentor to ensure that it added real value.

It helped from the start that Yan and I get on really well.  We also established early on what we both thought the role of the mentor should be – helping apply real-world understanding to the theoretical basis learnt through the college work.  It also helped that Yan knew from the start what his biggest challenge would be – writing.  An excellent verbal communicator, he just didn’t have the confidence to put pen to paper and convey what he wanted to say in a more formal, structured way.

So we knew that we’d need to work together closely for the writing assignments.  We took each essay question at a time, and worked on how he turned his spoken words into text, instead of writing as he spoke.  This we did, and over the course of the year, I believe Yan really did get to grips with how to write what he wanted to say.  At the risk of generalising, I do think it’s a generational thing – he writes as he speaks because the only writing he’s been used to over the past 5 years or so has been mainly across social media.  Formal writing is redundant here, the use of grammar and punctuation needless.  So we had to do some back to basics training.

The other main aspect of the mentoring was to help Yan understand why the fundamentals of marketing need to be known, and how they relate to the work we do for our clients.  As an apprentice you are working full time in a normal work environment, so doing the client work to a high level is as important as the college work.  This Yan was excelling in.  His understanding of social media and SEO in particular was adding real value to the work we delivered for our clients, and I was learning from him in these areas too.  I just needed to help guide his understanding of why the basic principles of marketing matter (the 4 Ps is still the basis to all marketing in my opinion), and to bring key business issues to life.

As you are working full time, it’s easy to let slip the college work as client work is prioritised.  To avoid a backlog of assignments we created a schedule over the year, allocating a month per unit.  This helped Yan stay on course and take head-on the inevitable essay writing.  A bit of motivation to stick to the schedule was needed now and again.  There was only one occasion where it all got a bit too much and Yan questioned whether it was all worth it.  But it didn’t take long to realise that the hard work and low wage wouldn’t last forever, and was an investment that would only serve as good for the future.

At times, with mentoring there is an element of parenting, with the drive to help teach a child to be successful (though I sincerely hope I didn’t ‘mother’ too much!)  It’s not just coaching and counselling, it’s more about helping to deal with frustration and giving constructive criticism.  Overall, I found mentoring Yan very rewarding and I know I’ve probably developed my own personal and professional skills as a result, so it’s very much a win-win situation.

As Yan recently handed in his completed folder, I looked on proudly from a distance, happy that we’d both enjoyed the experience.  Although my role as official mentor has come to an end, I hope that I’ll still be able to offer my experience and knowledge and I’m sure we’ll continue to learn from each other, and I will prove that there’s a writer in Yan yet.