Tag: mentorship

Rare and Random

In a world where acts of kindness seem rare and random, what makes this act of kindness notable?

Last Wednesday I opened my laptop and there they were, Sheena and Jacqueline, in a photo, grinning at me from Stuttgart at the 3-day beVisioneers Global Summit.

Sheena is the Mentorship Lead for the Do School and Jacqueline Cruz-Aguila is my Mentee from Mexico City, Mercedes Benz Fellowship beVisioneers selected to attending. I have never met them in person. The number of times I’ve met them virtually, I can count on both hands. And yet my heart burst wide open. So much awe, wonder, and joy spilled out. My reaction was raw, rapid, and reflexive. I wondered why.

We miss so much in our day to day, going fast, faster, and fastest. We scramble to embrace new ways in which AI allows us to escape the mundane, saving us from having to make sense from swamps of data. But I didn’t have to ask Chat GPT to reflect for me, to think for me, to feel for me. All I had to do was stop, savour, and say, “There IS good in this world.”

Sharing this photo was notable because of Sheena and Jacqueline’s:  

  • intention.
  • execution.
  • recognition.
  • tenderness.
  • empathy.
  • spontaneity.

What would happen if acts of kindness weren’t rare and random? Would our hearts suffer from being open? Would our hands hurt from being extended? Or would our lives flourish from being kind? What does it take? Ask Sheena and Jacqueline.

Be a Difference Maker? Be an Awesome Mentor!

Mentorship Makes a Difference

Introducing our honour roll of “Distinguished Dozen” at our Ryerson Chang School’s inaugural “Mentoring Makes a Difference” Event last Thursday, April 22nd from Left to Right above:

@JackNodel @VanessaDuran @LennoxParkins @KamalSoan @DorisDitner @MikeFedryk @AidenYosefi @JoseGarcia @AlbertChow @RosemaryDietrich @MahdiZageneh @LarissaCarvalho

After pre-matching our “Distinguished Dozen” with our newcomer professionals from two #bridgingpprograms, the speed-mentoring evening zoomed by in four 15-minute rapid rounds of one-on-one conversations.

And a little like love, chemistry plays a big role in matching mentors and mentees together. In my experience in designing professional mentorship programs, I agree with the school of thought that mentoring “magic” doesn’t necessarily come from matching individuals from the same industry and occupation. What’s important is recruiting mentors who are leaders with solid experience in developing people and mentees who are coachable.

What makes a great mentor? To be a difference maker, you set an intention, have shared values, and communicate clearly and effectively with empathy. You #aspiretoinspire

Our “Distinguished Dozen” are solid with a total of 300+ years of experience! As founders and leaders, their experience spans staffing solutions and executive recruitment, law, coaching, international business development, private real estate development, professional services contracting, innovation consulting in sustainability. While some hold multiple professional designations and degrees – PMP, CPA, FCPA, MSc, PEng, MBA, BA, PhD, others graduated from the School of Life. Our mentors also work in multiple industries: renewable energy, oil and gas, banking, insurance, government, retail, and property management, education, Fintech, construction, engineering, and utilities to name a few.

To be a mentee, you are coachable, having humility, respect, and curiosity, asking good questions.

Our mentees are students and alumni from our two bridging programs: “Middle Level Managers with Technical Background” and the “Green Economy” at Ryerson Chang School. From Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Iraq, Morocco, Nepal, Pakistan, and Turkey, our mentees have also worked in the Middle East, Moldova, Nigeria, Uganda, and the United States.

We are infinitely grateful to our Mentors for their generous time, support, and wisdom and to our Mentees and their willingness to meet new people. Thank you to all who attended and participated. As the award-wining American author and 2017 Man Book Prize winner, George Saunders, wrote “Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness” (2014), here is my parting thought: Congratulations, you all made a difference – an indelible difference!

One thing Warren Buffet can’t buy on Amazon on Black Friday – time

  • what warren buffet can't buy time
    Photo Credit: Jean Chow

Black Friday is no ordinary Friday. Big box retailers like Amazon are having the “biggest ever Black Friday” starting one week in advance, of course. Although it’s Prime Time on Amazon, Warren Buffet, the highly successful investor, and us ordinary folks would be hard pressed to buy time. So “I better be careful with it (time). There is no way I will be able to buy more time”, Buffett cautioned his friend, Bill Gates, in their 2018 interview.

Billionaires, Gates and Richard Branson, believe we need to “schedule time to just dream and think freely.” As a non-billionaire, I schedule my dream time efficiently – while I am dreaming. Clarity comes often just before I open my eyes. Allowing our minds to rest and wander gives us access to creativity. Time gives us creativity.

I met Frank O’Dea, co-founder of Second Cup, in 2013 and again in 2018. His struggle with alcohol and abuse is remarkable in “When All you Have is Hope”.  In “Do the Next Right Thing – Surviving Life’s Crises”, he outlined the need to:

  • First find peace.
  • Draw on a higher power.
  • Do the next right thing.

Take the time. Time gives us peace.

I once envied youth for all the time they have ahead of them. I urged them to not waste one single second.  Of course, they laughed at me. They have all the time in the world, don’t they? Apathy perhaps?

Comfortably past mid-life now, I no longer envy nor worry but watch with wonder the way youth race through life at Mach 9.6 speed. What will they do with all that time on their hands? More importantly, what will time give them? More opportunities? More wisdom, experience? More apathy? (surely not)

Will they meet new people #IRL (in real life)? Will they gain new perspectives by learning from others unlike them? Will they rise like Frank O’Dea when faced with unfathomable struggles? Time will tell.

I’ve met Sandra Shamas . When asked if she is a comedian, she says, “only if they laugh”. “My Boyfriend’s Back and There’s Going to be Laundry” was a big hit. We’re the same age. I borrowed a math “quiz” from her Show while making not too fine a point about the value of mentorship and experience. “How much time do we have left to live?” I had asked during a keynote for a bewildered group of aspiring entrepreneurs a few years ago.

We’ve got 30 years if our stars align properly. Sandra had asked: “What’s that in days?” 10,950 days, not a heck of lot. Try hours? 262,800 hours. Really? 15,768,000 minutes. 946,080,000 seconds, yep, that’s all we’ve got.

Looking back 30 years, I was the same age as they were that day. I asked them how many years separated us. 30 years. I then asked them to reflect on their lives so far and what they hoped to accomplish in the next 30 years. I asked them to think about how many more stories they would have to tell in another 30 years.

Then I shared with them a quote from Lubna Olayan now the first Chairwoman of a Saudi bank and one of the most powerful and influential women in the world according to TIME, Forbes, and Fortune. In “Fortune September 2015 , she said: “The more challenges you face in life, the more of life you experience – this lived experience gives one the “influence” to impact others’ lives.”

As mentors and mentees across the generations, we would make time to listen to understand one another instead of dismissing ourselves as Millennials and Boomers. We might learn something from one another that might help us save time. Anyone need more time?

Time gives us opportunities to share our experience and knowledge. Lifelong learning takes a long time, a life time. regardless of our age. Why not collaborate and co-create? Time is ticking so we best start now. #cometogether