Metamorphosing Me

Younger mentors give me wings, keeping me connected to our rapidly transforming digital lives. I’m just back from a very fun and informative event, AHR Expo 2018 in Chicago. It was the largest ever with over 72,000 attendees. What did I learn from those younger than me? Lots. These are today's makers and shakers and metamorphic mentors -- the people who are driving the digital metamorphosis that I have been ranting on about in my last few columns, giving it a Brain, Face, Body, and Voice.

The education sessions at AHR have turned this event into an annual pop up learning venue that keeps our industry current. A trend I saw this year was that the industry is starting to bring their younger mentors and new employees to the show; their "IoT Mini-Me's" if you like. This ever-growing event has become the melting pot for the old and new to get a toehold in our rapidly changing industry. (Read more of my takeaways from AHR Expo here.)

Even as I write that, here is an article by Marie Taylor and Steve Crabb on the Employee Relations section of the Dummies website advising caution, Mentoring is Not About Creating a Mini-Me: 

If you have any notion that people come to mentoring to learn how to be a clone of their mentor, think again. People want to learn from the particular knowledge and experience that a mentor possesses. Whilst a mentee may look up to a mentor as a role model, the mentee doesn’t necessarily want to be just like the mentor.



I am crushed, crushed, that these young folks do not want to grow up to be just like me! But seriously, I’m the one that needs the mentoring. Mentoring, keep in mind, is a two-way exchange. David Lumb at the Fast Company website offers this piece of advice in his article, Why You Need A Different Mentor At Every Step In Your Career: 


When you’re starting out, you need a mentor you can look up to, but later in your career, you’d benefit from getting a fresh perspective. We’ve been told countless times how important it is to find a mentor to help guide you early in your career. But searching for mentors doesn’t stop after becoming established: There’s immense value in learning from others throughout your career, even if those mentors are younger than you.


Kathy Bloomgarden, CEO for Ruder Finn, in this article from the Entrepreneur website gives Four Reason You Need a Mentor Who Is Younger Than You:

I’ve learned key lessons in life and business through my “reverse mentors” -- a concept that has recently become more formalized as the benefits of learning from a younger generation are becoming more tangible. But, reverse mentoring came organically to me. When we think of “new ways of working,” what often comes to mind are visible examples like flexible work schedules, new technology to enable remote working and open office space centered around collaboration spots. But, the new way of working involves a mindset shift, not only in how people work together and where they work, but in whom we work with -- and, more importantly, learn from.

The benefits of mentorship are clear: greater retention, skill-building and higher company engagement. In fact, according to a Gartner study, retention rates are higher for mentees (72 percent) and for mentors (69 percent) than non-mentoring participants (49 percent). The same study also found mentors received promotions six times more often than their peers.



I have been on this crusade for a while but feel more passionate about it now than ever.  Many years ago we started The YoungEnergy Group on LinkedIn. Their mission statement:

YoungEnergy Group is attracting Youth for our IOT journey. We will reinvent, refocus and repurpose this group for the engagement of the industry and the task of attracting Youth to our IOT journey. The group is presently an old boys network -- even the young have grown old -- but the roots of this group are strong and the reach long so I feel it will be very useful to create a network of engagement for us the industry.

One of our original Young Energy folks, Brad White, P.Eng, MASc. Principal SES Consulting, Inc., is now our Contributing Editor at AutomatedBuildings.com.



This year in Chicago I was part of the Control Trends Awards (CTA) with another one of our original Young Energy folks, Alper Üzmezler  -- he’s at the far right in the picture that opens this article.

And here is a post that made my day: