Mike's musings

Mentoring

(backposting) So, this evening I had a mentoring session with my boss. It's the first such session that I've had for, say, 9 years, which is pretty scary. He asked me when my last performance review was: that was about the same length of time ago (he was horrified!). We started work on a skills matrix - management, rather than the technical kind. Quite a lot of focus on people's perception of me, and how to be more aware of that. It's not the first time, won't be the last: one of the prime issues, I think, is that I tend to default to a position of expecting _other_ people's preferred mode of interaction to be the same as mine. And that tends to be fast engagement, rattling back and forth, a style which many see as aggressive, arrogant and also as not paying attention to other people's views. I think the danger is that I don't give people who aren't happy with that style the _chance_ to express their views enough. And just polling them for their views later in the conversation doesn't cut it.

Labels: work