Finding a Mentor
Written By: Ian Clayton
Edited By: Merielle Donaldson
A mentor is critical to have early on in a career regardless of the field. When beginning a new job or career there will an overwhelming amount of new information and situations that you have no idea how to handle; a good mentor will assist you in navigating these things and will help you become better at your job, career, and life. But finding one can be tricky.
As I mentioned in my last post, a good shop should be setting you up with a helpful mentor. This is going to be someone who you work with on a daily basis and who will guide you through aspects of the job such as diagnosis, repairs, and tricks for getting a task done more quickly. A quality shop and shop manager will know who this person is and will gladly match them up with you. After all, making this match will not only help you become a better technician, but it will also benefit the business in the end and you will be in a position to pass that wisdom on to the next generation of technicians someday.
What to look for in a good mentor:
1) Attitude: We all know that guy who’s been around forever; he hasn’t stopped chain smoking since the day he punched in at his first shop back in the 70’s, he knows how to do every job there is to do, and moreover he can do it with a hangover, a screwdriver, and an adjustable wrench. But he’s the most miserable person in the shop and likely the surrounding 3-mile radius… He knows what he’s doing, but he’s not your mentor. You need a mentor who is approachable, who has a pleasant attitude and a positive outlook, and who actually enjoys the trade. The reason I list this first is because it is the most important - if you are learning from someone who is pessimistic and does not enjoy the trade, you will quickly find yourself likewise adopting that outlook and attitude.
a. A big part of this positive attitude is respect - for you, your employer, and the industry as a whole. You don’t want someone who criticizes you harshly when a mistake is made, but rather someone who takes that time to teach you. You don’t want someone who constantly criticizes your employer, but rather someone who believes in the employer’s mission statement and looks to further improve the team.
b. Another part of this positive attitude is an eagerness to share the wisdom, tips, and tricks that they have gained through their experience, and a willingness to invest time in teaching and training new technicians.
2) Experience: This is important because this person needs to have diagnosed and properly repaired many of the things that you will be coming across. An experienced technician will have encountered a wide range of problems multiple times, will be well-versed in how to diagnose and repair these problems, and will be able to instruct you on how to do the same. This can often be correlated to the length of time that the person has been in the trade but is not tied to this metric. Focused experience can be just as important for mentoring a new technician as time spent in the trade overall. In fact, finding a mentor who is just a few years ahead of you may be just as beneficial as someone who has decades more experience.
3) Quality: A good mentor is not just someone who can diagnose and repair but someone who can do those things while also focusing on quality. If you are learning from someone who is just going to slap something back together to get the vehicle out the door then you will quickly take on the same mentality and reflecting this in your own work. All repairs should be quality repairs and should aim to get the vehicle back to factory form. Quality repairs are important to becoming a superior technician and helping to grow the business you work. The right mentor will help you with this by setting the example in their work product and in their instruction.
How to be a good mentee:
1) Listen: Don’t just wait for your turn to talk. The stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” You don’t need to prove how much you know, and if you just listen to what your mentor has to say you will know even more in one to five minutes. Then put that advice into action. I am guilty of failing to abide by my own guidance here; I cannot tell you how many times I have received advice and then tried to do it my own way, the way I had been trying for twenty minutes already with no results. And guess what? It didn’t work. Then I tried it the way I was instructed to, and guess what? It worked.
2) Gratitude: Thank them for their time and advice. When you try that trick they showed you and it works like a charm, tell them. Something as simple as saying, “Hey, I tried that method you showed me and it worked,” will show your mentor that you value their help. It is important to demonstrate to a mentor that they are not wasting their time trying to make you a better technician and that their knowledge and wisdom is being transferred to the next generation of technicians.
3) Be Open: This is the time to be vulnerable as a person and a technician. Be open to asking questions and admitting to another individual – and to yourself - that you don’t have all of the answers. Be open to receiving feedback; this is how you learn. Being open with yourself and with your mentor will allow you to learn so much more and become a masterful technician that much faster.
The mentor to mentee relationship is an essential one to this industry and needs to be embraced by the industry far more than it currently is. As I stated in my last post, a question to be asking your potential employers is “will I be given a mentor?” This is someone who you will have daily interaction with and who will be able to guide you through those tougher situations and is someone who will have all of the qualities that I mentioned above. It took me two and a half years and three shops before I found my mentor and now that I have my skills have improved greatly and I am becoming a much better technician on daily basis.