We are proud to share that Dr. György Beck our Faculty Member received the 1st prize of the 2021 Mentor Oscar Award in individual category.
In this occasion, we talked with György about his decades long experiences in mentoring (both in being a mentor and a mentee himself) and we also highlight some interesting insights regarding the benefits of mentoring.
For more info about the Mentor Oscar, the list of the individual and organizational category winners and the related presentation by György, see the last part of the article.
SEED: Gyuri, since 2014 you have been mentor (as we call the Faculty Members here) at SEED, actually from the very beginning of our story. In your opinion, what are the main benefits of the mentoring?
As people work in more diversified industries and face increasing challenges, I think the benefits of the mentoring are three-fold:
- they could get some guidance as a person and as a professional;
- they could get some insights how to recognize and avoid different situations, traps in their increasingly complex management challenges;
- and they could also get some kind of career advice, which is a frequent and important topic in the new generation, especially compared to the earlier one.
So the mentor’s contribution to the development of a mentee is absolutely versatile.
It’s a process-based discussion, but not chit-chat. While both parties are learning from each other.
In addition to that, in certain cases the mentor is outside of the company’s internal network and policy, so this external viewpoint could help a lot. The mentor provides his/her network too, which could be also beneficial for the mentees.
SEED: In your career, how have you known the mentoring? Have you come across any useful methods or guidelines that helped you to develop your own mentoring approach?
I was very lucky, because I always had very great and inspiring leaders in the beginning of my career, from whom I could learn a lot. Later at multinational companies, I also took part in several useful leadership trainings.
I used to lead mentoring discussions in different companies for long years, but as an in-depth concept and profession I met mentoring at SEED.
Actually, the SEED approach with the learnings and commitments in a 4-month and 6-month long personal journeys provide a great framework and model for my mentoring.
We can reflect on these in our discussions, but the participants also bring their own personal cases and topics, which fuel our conversations.
One of the main reason why I am doing this, because I wanted to make easier for younger managers and leaders to gain the essential skills and knowledge, so mentoring is a great tool to support them.
