Jordan Hardy

What Makes a Manager a Mentor

Posted on: October 14, 2009 by Jordan Hardy

In my opinion trust, confidence, extensive experience, and training are necessary for a manager to become a mentor. In my working career (which started before high school and really got moving after graduating college) I’ve worked for companies the least being one and most being nine years.

Trust and Confidence

I’ve always had the perspective to trust that a direct report would not be able to take my position. If they did, I was confident that it would help me move to a better position there or at another company. Still today, after managing more than a hundred team members in my career, I haven’t ever had someone have the ability to replace my position while I was there.  My generous team working attitude has helped me consistently work on growing my experience while also focusing on growing team members as much as possible. With that, and helping team members to grow, I’ve found people go home at the end of the day or weekend content and with hope. And then they bring more enthusiasm to their next work day. Having strong trust between the employee and manager is essential.

Experience

Experience I had after college vs now is very different. When a person is a manager and has managed many other people in the past, they can know well how to deal with situations that again arise. They can easily improvise if needed. The learning curve grows so a manager has enthusiasm in quickly learning new things. Most importantly, the manager needs the experience to be an expert in everything they manage so that their team has someone who can manage what they do, have realistic expectations, and do everything as well if needed.

Training

I believe in offering not only training and mentoring, but also support in the way of possible career advancement and salary increase opportunities for performance. I would think most people like to look forward to good things. If someone can go through their work day knowing they not only have the training they need, but that they can grow from there, that can make their attitude for the day that much better.