Mentoring Stories

Ed Lefley

Ed's Mentoring Story

Key mentors in my career journey include:

1. A former Head of Service (my manager’s manager)
2. The many coach educators
3. My current manager

The first one in my list was actually the manager who recruited me into the youth service; at that time he had been working in that area for over 20 years, and knew it was a passion job for many people. He’d push you, and he’d support you, and as long you had the passion about what you were doing then he’d back you 100%. He was the kind of manager who would push and push, but knew when to stop – even if it did bring you to tears in the process (a memorable supervision meeting that time – I wear my heart on my sleeve when something is important to me). At that point he knew you invested 100% in the job, and that was what mattered to him. Importantly he also taught you about working with volunteers (we were a full time team of 7, but had over 125 volunteer staff), and working in a very transparent and accountable organisation; underpinning this was the need to engage all key stakeholders from the young people who we worked with, to the 125 volunteers who supported and ran many of the programmes we delivered. The ability to negotiate and work with these key people to get things to happen was crucial to delivering a successful programme – and you had to learn how everybody worked.

Within my career journey the coach educators have been mentors throughout my outdoor activity career; much like the previous example, this are all experienced practitioners who have walked the walk, and will challenge your own perception of what you can do, but also importantly give you the tools to do that. Working in challenging environments is only possible (and easy) when you are equipped with appropriate tools and knowledge, and at that point it becomes easier. The attention to detail that these educators instilled in you – the understanding of how the very basics were the building blocks that translate through to successful outcomes in the long term is fundamental to so many aspects, be it research or teaching in higher education; if you don’t recognise that the basics aren’t known, then of course as you progress you won’t get it right – the difference is you get a fail instead of a swim in a cold Welsh river in the winter!

My current manager, in many ways is much like my first example; driven by a passion to make a difference, this underpins much of the work that is done at a company level. Attention to detail, looking at all those causal factors again comes in, and being critically aware of what you are looking at are all aspects that are encouraged and valued in this work role. The ability to work autonomously on a project, and scope out where that project may go is also important.