Five questions to answer before seeking a project management mentor

Whether it is in one of LinkedIn’s project management discussion groups or in PMI’s Projectmanagement.com community, one of the more frequent requests made by members is for mentoring. Sometimes the mentee has done a good job of articulating their needs which will increase their odds of finding a suitable mentor but this is the exception, not the rule.

Project management mentors are usually senior practitioners who tend to be quite busy, hence providing limited information almost guarantees that the request won’t be fulfilled in a timely fashion.

So before you post a request for a mentor, take the time to answer these five questions:

What are my objectives for the mentoring relationship?

This is a good case of where the S.M.A.R.T. test for objectives should be used – are they specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound?

This question will help you answer the next one.

Is the mentoring relationship I’m seeking short or long term?

This will help prospective mentors decide whether they are willing to commit for a longer period of time and will serve as a good sanity check on the achievability of your objectives.

The answers to these two questions might help you answer the next question.

Will I be better served with a mentor whom I can meet in person?

Depending on your objectives, you might find that geographic or temporal distance will significantly reduce the mentor’s ability to help you succeed such as intimate knowledge of the local business environment. Thankfully many PMI chapters have well established mentoring programs which might help you to connect with a local practitioner.

How much effort will my mentor need to commit to help me achieve my objectives?

You might think that you have found the perfect practitioner from a personality and experience perspective but if they are too busy to effectively support you, you may need to connect with someone that has more time but less experience or you might need to adjust your expectations of the mentor’s time commitment.

Finally, while many mentors provide their services on a voluntary basis, others might treat it as billable work.

Am I willing to pay for mentoring support, and if so, what is my budget?

If you don’t know what you want to get out of a mentoring relationship, no mentor can help you achieve your goals.

(If you liked this article, why not read my book Easy in Theory, Difficult in Practice which contains 100 other lessons on project leadership? It’s available on Amazon.com and on Amazon.ca as well as a number of other online book stores).

“What certification should I get after the PMP?”

The reason the title of this post is in quotes is that this is a frequently asked question in both the projectmanagement.com discussion groups and PMI’s LinkedIn Project, Program, and Portfolio Management group. I, along with a number of other contributors, have seen and responded to it sufficient times that I felt it would be worth sharing my thoughts with my readership.

The PMP credential is the project management designation which most recruiters and hiring managers are aware of. Savvy folks will know that it provides no guarantee of competence but does at least demonstrate that a practitioner has some basic understanding of nomenclature, tools and techniques.

While possessing it was a differentiator in the first decade or so after it was introduced, at this point it is less so, but in specific industries and geographic regions, not having it might result in a job application being rejected by the initial filtering process.

But once a practitioner has attained their PMP credential, what next? Professional development should be a life (or at least career) long pursuit, and certifications provide tangible evidence of an individual investing in their development, so it would seem to be a reasonable question.

Before asking this question, the individual should have identified a specific career or development goal. In some cases, this might be simple such as if a particular credential is required as part of the company’s prerequisites for advancement.

But this is rarely the case, and that’s what makes things more difficult.

The companies which develop and administer credentials will all state with confidence that their products will help you advance your career. Any why not? For every person who buys into this justification, the credential company will usually earn a healthy one-time and ongoing revenue stream.

But unless a particular role you aspire to requires that you have a specific credential, in most cases, all it will prove is that you have learned something and have passed a test. You may have done so with no hand-on practice in that domain.

Now if you have already gained experience within a domain and then wish to have visible evidence of your having acquired certain knowledge, then a credential is one way to do so. But if you want to learn a skill, you’d be better of self-study or taking a non-certification course and following that up with actual hands-on work supported by a seasoned practitioner.

So the only correct responses to the titular question is “What are your development goals?” or “Why are you seeking another certification?”

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there” – Lewis Carroll

(If you liked this article, why not pick up my book Easy in Theory, Difficult in Practice which contains 100 other lessons on project leadership? It’s available on Amazon.com and on Amazon.ca as well as a number of other online book stores)

Don’t let project management turn you into a loner!

Aside from occasionally feeling like the Rodney Dangerfields of the business world, project managers can also suffer from a sense of isolation.

On larger projects, there are likely to be multiple team members from the same department working on deliverables within the scope of one project whereas it is rare to have multiple project managers working on the same project concurrently.  In companies that have PMOs there might be some opportunities for birds-of-a-feather interaction, but it can get even more lonely in functional organizations where project managers are scattered across multiple departments or even worse where there may only be one or two project managers in the entire company.

As we know from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, human beings need to feel a sense of belonging within a social group once their physiological and safety needs have been met.  While each project team is a social group, the project manager may not find the peer-level support and interaction that they crave.  Over a prolonged period of time, this can result in reduced job satisfaction and even the potential for an individual to question whether they have picked the right career path.

To combat this situation, here are a few ideas.

If you are in an organization that has multiple project managers, meet with other project managers to discuss the idea of a project “buddy system” whereby each project manager will commit to spending an hour or two a week with another project manager, understanding the current state and challenges on their project and providing guidance, advice and support.  This approach is easier to implement within an established PMO, but a virtual community of practice can also be created in companies where a PMO does not exist.

Join the local chapter of your project management association (and join a project management association if you haven’t done so yet!) and participate in their regular events.  Not only is this a good way to network and continue your professional development, but it might provide you with the opportunity to mentor (or be mentored) a fellow project manager.  Venting about organizational project management maturity issues can be cathartic (so long as it doesn’t become chronic) and you will likely find a more understanding audience in such circles than in your company.

You could take this involvement one step further and actively volunteer with the chapter – you would be applying your project management skills to a worthy cause and I’m willing to be that you would most likely get more recognition and appreciation for your efforts than you might receive in your normal job.

Actively participate in project management online discussion forums – LinkedIn and PMI are a couple of good options.  While you may feel that you have nothing to contribute, once you start following discussion threads, you’ll be surprised how much you know and are able to share.  Many of these forums are very active and you might find yourself spending some time each day with your virtual support network.

While managing a project can sometimes make you feel like you are marooned don’t let that prevent you from building support “bridges” to nearby or faraway islands!