Developing Empathy and Vulnerability through Mentorship
Above: UW Leaders mentors 2018-2019 cohort
After spending 3 years at the UW, and doing my fair share of failing and learning in leadership, I decided to apply to be a UW Leaders mentor. This experience, which started in the Fall of 2018, proved to be extremely rewarding. Not only it allowed me to have some closure in terms of my leadership experiences, but also it has been teaching me a lot. The UW Leaders group has some of the most inclusive, diverse, vulnerable, and empathetic people I know and they make me want to be a better leader.
My experiences at UW Leaders are particularly important for two main reasons. The first one is that amidst the crisis I created for myself at AIESEC, which led to my forced resignation, one of my team members said that I could not improve. This whole notion of not being able to learn and improve goes directly against my “why” and those words hit me hard. It is special and encouraging to me that I am taking active steps to improve as a leader and that such a program, whose motto is "leaders are made, not born", trusts me to mentor underclassmen on their leadership development.
As part of a team made of 22 mentors, I am responsible for helping shape what kind of leadership development we are offering to our mentees. We had meeting where we defined our values as a mentor cohort, which guided us in interviewing and selecting the mentee cohort, and what soft skills we would teach them through workshops. I am directly mentoring one freshman and one transfer junior, and hosted two workshops - one around time management and the other on leadership challenges
Leadership Competencies Developed:
This experience has been amazing not only to help wrap up my UW experience, but also to get me back on track on continuous improvement around leadership. It has also made me think more actively about vulnerability and empathy. In particular, it helped me reinforce my leadership identity of “Caring Directly” as I constantly have to challenge my mentees directly while caring about them and their growth personally. I am still a UW Leaders mentor, and I am sure that there is still much more to learn by the end of the year.
Synthesis
The puzzle pieces really feel like they are coming together through this experience. When I was hosting the time management workshop, I used knowledge I acquired through various AIESEC conferences. The facilitation style I used is the one I learned through that “Train the Trainers” conference I mentioned in “Experience 1”. In some of the 1-1 meetings I have with my mentees, in which they are planning for their “leadership practice”, I recall my strategic planning learnings as president of the local chapter in Seattle. Most importantly, by actively thinking about leadership again, I am more clearly noticing where I can improve and taking more action towards it. For example, UW Leaders’ group vulnerability made me want to be a more vulnerable person myself, and so I started taking steps towards it
Others' Circumstances
In UW Leaders, the mentors are chosen by the mentees through a “survey” the program’s leadership makes available to them. On the big “mentor reveal” day it was very clear to me that neither of my mentees had chosen me - i.e I was not even on their top 5 choices. One of them in particular was very upfront about it, told me he had not chosen me, and seemed very upset about the fact that he had not gotten their top picks. This of course made me very anxious and impostor syndrome kicked in. The way I overcame this challenge was by assuming positive intent from that mentee in a way that, even though I got hurt by what he said, he was also upset and was leading with his emotions the best way he knew how - by being direct about it. The next day we had a conversation to get to know each other better and clear up the weather. I learned that he, indeed, prefers being honest about how he feels and that he did not mean to hurt me. We have been working well together ever since and even went to a Sounders game a few weeks ago.
Mentoring
Being a mentor is definitely a very different leadership experience from everything I had been used to so far. As president or vice president of AIESEC, I was responsible for setting the overall direction for the team and for its overall performance. As a mentor, however, it is all about the mentee and what they want to achieve. I came to this role used to being a “coach”, where there are some specific and predetermined metrics for performance and a way to get there - so, at first, that’s what I tried to do. For my first 1-1 meetings with my mentees I had already an agenda on my mind, topics I want to cover, and so forth. That was until they started asking questions and guiding the direction of the meeting. This made me more adaptable as, instead of having preconceived idea of how our meetings and overall relationship would go, I let them dictate the pace of everything. Now both my mentees are in very different places of what they want to do and it is up to me to be empathetic and have good listening skills in order to be the best mentor I can be for both of them. I strive to apply my curiosity in learning how they want to grow while, at the same time, challenging them to see issues from a different perspective.
Artifacts
Time Management Workshop I delivered in Winter 2019