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    A Year of Mentoring Minutes
    A Year of Mentoring Minutes
    A Year of Mentoring Minutes
    Ebook166 pages2 hours

    A Year of Mentoring Minutes

    By Kip Brailey

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    About this ebook

    Many organizations have mentoring programs or weekly updates between boss and employees. The times are often wasted. The mentee bitches about their boss or the workplace, the employee runs through the mundane list of work. The sessions are often canceled or truncated by the pressure of time.

    Everyone loses because of this. As a manager I found these sessions were my most important sessions of the week with my employees. In them we built a relationship, and I was able to impart my philosophy and intent, which increasingly allowed them to operate independently.

    When I served on a panel for a class training first line managers at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and described my one-on-ones with my direct report managers (supervisors I supervised) my colleagues on the panel would wistfully comment they wished they had the time for such meetings. I never went back at them (maybe I should have?) with the question "what (the hell) do you have time for?"

    These were the most important meetings of my career land I treated them that way. The success I achieved was directly related to it. By the time I left government service I had ten such meetings a week. I participated in the mentoring program at Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), and I was the only senior manager to consistently participate. None of my mentees would ever stop meeting with me.

    In the course of these meetings, I started to develop the themes in the chapters of this book. When you meet with ten people over the course of a week you sometimes develop an agenda as the week goes on. This book is the result.

    My goal is for you to avoid the blank page that wastes time in many mentoring and supervisory sessions and get to issues that matter. My other goal is to have you more quickly make the connections that make these meetings useful. When people get beyond the superficial and begin to take on second and third dimensions, the work can begin.

    The rest of this book consists of easily digested stories to start your sessions. I have provided 52 of them to get you through a year. After about 17 hours together you should develop a "community" together. Perhaps by the year mark you won't need me. If you do need me, let me know and I will write another 52!

    I recommend that you read the "lessons" before your session so you can ruminate a little on them. But they can work if you both spend a couple minutes with them at the beginning of your hour together. I do not think it matters whether you agree or disagree with my lessons. Indeed, if you both disagree you might launch a great discussion. Do, however, apply them to your own workplace. Mentors—be open to learning from your mentees. Mentees—your mentor holds the secrets to accelerating your career progression, whether they know it or not.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateAug 25, 2024
    ISBN9798350967746
    A Year of Mentoring Minutes
    Author

    Kip Brailey

    Kip Brailey worked at the Central Intelligence Agency, The State Department, The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Department of the Treasury. Over half of his 32-year career was spent as a manager and senior manager. His units were instrumental in combatting terror finance, analyzing global energy and economics, and identifying money launderers. Brailey won numerous awards including a meritorious unit citation for his leadership during the global financial crisis. He views his most lasting contribution, however, to be the mentoring he did over his career.

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      Book preview

      A Year of Mentoring Minutes - Kip Brailey

      Forward

      Let’s face it. The post-Covid workplace is a mess. Employees are disengaged, disillusioned, disconnected, as the workplace has disintegrated.

      The best tool I had in my 30 years of government service—face-to-face meetings with bosses, employees, mentors and mentees/have become increasingly rare, if not considered obsolete. Communication on Zoom and other such platforms has become the norm. Organizations are reaping a windfall as they no longer need office space.

      Yet much is being lost. The best way to form the connections and engagement necessary to be an effective organization is face-to-face contact. The best way to grow a relationship with a counterpart is on the fringes of a meeting, before and after. As a Foreign Service officer, I found my contacts would answer my calls only after we had met and connected a couple of times, but responded poorly to cold calls.

      This book bucks the tide of distance supervision, distance colleagueship, and most directly distance mentorship. As someone once told me, it’s a contact sport. This book gives you conversation starters to build those relationships. It will work best face-to-face. Less well over Zoom. And less well over the phone. But it will work.

      When I was visiting the US Embassy in Sweden, I found that the Ambassador to Sweden Michael Wood, a close friend of George W. Bush, had instituted a weekly meeting called the One Big Thing meeting. To his mind, the problem with all organizations is that they spread themselves too thin and focus on too many things. In Stockholm, every part of the Embassy was instructed to focus on the primary focus of the mission, the one big thing, in this case, alternative energy. I think all organizations would do well to do the same, and I would argue that in developing yourself and your employees, the one big thing is mentoring. Later in my career I was in a focus group where a colleague stated that his biggest problem was that mentoring had been important to him, but that now all his mentors were retired, dead, or he was working for them. I suppose that the explosion of executive coaching programs is meant to solve this problem.

      Many organizations have mentoring programs or weekly updates between boss and employees. The times are often wasted. The mentee bitches about their boss or the workplace, the employee runs through the mundane list of work. The sessions are often cancelled or truncated by the pressure of time.

      Everyone loses because of this. As a manager I found these sessions were my most important sessions of the week with my employees. In them we built a relationship, and I was able to impart my philosophy and intent, which increasingly allowed them to operate independently.

      When I served on a panel for a class training first line managers at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and described my one-on-ones with my direct report managers (supervisors I supervised) my colleagues on the panel would wistfully comment they wished they had the time for such meetings. I never went back at them (maybe I should have?) with the question what (the hell) do you have time for?

      These were the most important meetings of my career land I treated them that way. The success I achieved was directly related to it. By the time I left government service I had ten such meetings a week. I participated in the mentoring program at Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), and I was the only senior manager to consistently participate. None of my mentees would ever stop meeting with me.

      In the course of these meetings, I started to develop the themes in the chapters of this book. When you meet with ten people over the course of a week you sometimes develop an agenda as the week goes on. This book is the result.

      My goal is for you to avoid the blank page that wastes time in many mentoring and supervisory sessions and get to issues that matter. My other goal is to have you more quickly make the connections that make these meetings useful. When people get beyond the superficial and begin to take on second and third dimensions, the work can begin.

      The rest of this book consists of easily digested stories to start your sessions. I have provided 52 of them to get you through a year. After about 17 hours together you should develop a community together. Perhaps by the year mark you won’t need me. If you do need me, let me know and I will write another 52!

      I recommend that you read the lessons before your session so you can ruminate a little on them. But they can work if you both spend a couple minutes with them at the beginning of your hour together. I do not think it matters whether you agree or disagree with my lessons. Indeed, if you both disagree you might launch a great discussion. Do, however, apply them to your own workplace. Mentors—be open to learning from your mentees. Mentees—your mentor holds the secrets to accelerating your career progression, whether they know it or not.

      1

      Fictional Characters as Role Models

      Who are your fictional mentors?

      I believe that most of us find our most useful mentors in movies, television, and books, and not necessarily in the people who have been our coaches, teachers, and bosses.

      My all-time favorite series of books are the Hornblower novels by CS Forester. In his day, Forester was an important and accomplished writer. Modern audiences who are not familiar with Hornblower (which became a movie starring Gregory Peck) will recognize The African Queen (with Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn) and perhaps Sink the Bismarck, or more recently Greyhound (based on his book The Good Shepherd). The modern day Hornblower series is the very successful Aubrey/Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brien, brought to screen in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

      I can still remember reading one of my first books by CS. Forester about Captain Horatio Hornblower. My brother had moved out and taken a very crummy apartment downtown in Niantic, Connecticut. I worked for my brother doing gardening and landscaping and somehow, I was elected to sit at the apartment and wait for the workman to come and fix the heating. It was very cold. I have no idea what month it was, but I can tell you that it flew by, my breath visible, my hands frozen, but my mind totally wrapped up in the world of one of our greatest storytellers.

      An aside: Years later I discovered that Forester had written a short story that I had never read, I was faced with a conundrum because I found a copy of the book that included the story on Amazon for several thousand dollars. How much would you pay for a short story by your favorite, dead author? I knew my budget would not justify the purchase and ultimately, I found it on the internet and printed it for free.

      What I love about Hornblower is that he is incredible at his occupation—naval captain—but filled with the same insecurities and personal issues we all face. Early in the novels he is beached on Half pay and survives by playing whist for money in London clubs. Hornblower is not wealthy, but he is a card counter and does well. Hornblower’s first marriage is a loveless one and somehow Forester makes us empathize with Hornblower when he takes up with Duke of Wellington’s sister. Of course, Forester loosely fashioned Hornblower on Lord Nelson so it is not surprising that he too had his Lady Hamilton.

      In the last book of the series Hornblower has finally made it to Admiral but in a much-reduced post-war Navy. Instead of commanding a massive 100-gun three-decked ship he has a small band of much smaller ships to take care of pirates in the West Indies. The underlying story of the final book is a plot by French soldiers to free Napoleon from his St Helena exile and return him to the throne of France. Hornblower foils the plot by lying to the conspirators, telling them that Napoleon has died. In depths of despair after making this choice which would have ruined his social standing and reputation, he learns that Napoleon actually has died. A typical Forester ending, utterly unpredictable.

      Would you lie to save the world from the return of its leading despot?

      Hopefully none of us will face such a moral dilemma but we all face dilemmas like that, every day. Do you tell an employee that they will never be promoted again risking their motivational crash, or do you continue to lead them on with false encouragement?

      In fiction and movies, we see these choices laid out far better than in the self-serving biographies of the titans of industry. So, when your boss catches you watching Netflix in your cubicle at work, tell him you are simply doing leadership research!

      Who are your leadership models?

      Ask your colleagues who their models are. Ask your boss. You will learn a lot.

      2

      In Defense of Leading

      Are managers valued in your organization?

      I have always felt very lucky to have had the opportunity to manage and lead. From the day I walked in the door as a civil servant I wanted to lead. As a Head Resident in college managing 6-8 Resident Assistants I had been lauded for my leadership abilities, my team-building talent, and my ability to handle a crisis. Like today’s Millennials I felt ready to lead right out of the gate. Of course, my organization did not see it quite that way. Well, I remember a senior manager, Lance, who somehow saw right through me and told me I needed to be patient. It took me a little less than ten years to be in a leadership position. It seemed like eternity.

      Curiously, the interest that I felt in managing was not universally felt. Indeed, the conventional wisdom was—and is—that managing is pain in the ass. But it did pay better. Which was a problem. When I started as a CIA analyst, analyst pay was largely capped at the GS 14 level. GS 15 of SIS analysts were rare, and typically had managed and earned their grade prior to returning to the analytic ranks. John McLaughlin as Deputy Director of Intelligence changed that, creating an analyst track to GS 15 and that not only helped create better experts, but also created fewer managers who were solely in it for the higher grade.

      When George Tenet referred to John McLaughlin as the smartest man in Washington, he was truth telling. At CIA when a senior official leaves, they often give employees an opportunity to say farewell. A picture is taken which ultimately ends up on your brag wall. I was not a brag wall guy. But I said farewell to John, had my picture taken with him, and was surprised that he wrote a personal note on it. My brag wall at home consists of that picture. It’s more than enough.

      I also have always felt lucky because I have enjoyed the things about managing that others have not. For example, I enjoy personnel issues. In a new management job, a high priority for me has been to get to know the Human Resources staff. They can be a huge assist, or a terrible impediment to what you are trying to do. I have also always liked the people side of things. Building a team, developing newer officers, was always fun and challenging and rewarding. Certainly, the substance and mission are important, but the game of getting the most out of a group of individuals or creating a team has always been my favorite thing.

      After several years as a first line manager, I made the jump to the next level and was working with a boss who prided himself on creativity and risk taking. As a result, he bit on two initiatives that we proposed. One was for those of us at the deputy level to create a group that would pursue our development. Second was a term I coined

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