Mentorship for career goals and self reflection, 14/12/2024

RTL Today - The Lisa Burke Show

Have you ever looked for a mentor or thought about becoming one? This week’s show explores the benefits on both sides.
Mentorship can help shape careers, foster inclusivity, and make a workplace less lonely by developing stronger connections across teams and experiences. Whether through formal programs or informal connections, mentorship creates opportunities, and nurtures growth on both sides.
My guests are:
- Sonata Louvigny
- Patricia Souza
- Inês Crisóstomo
- Sylvia Rohde-Liebenau
National Mentoring Day on 27 Oct was inaugurated at the Houses of Parliament in London, led by Chelsey Baker. In December 2023 the Official Journal of the EU published the Opinion of the European Committee of the Regions entitled “Mentoring: A Powerful and Meaningful Tool for the Europe of Tomorrow." (links below)
During this conversation we discuss how to find a mentor, build a trusting environment for effective listening and communication and setting outcome expectations.
Two way Street
Mentorship can also be effective for mentors themselves, to develop stronger bonds and ideas within their organisation and learn how to ask good questions of oneself along with the other.
Inês Crisóstomo encourages people to reach out to someone you might admire professionally and ask for an ‘information interview’ with them for about 15 minutes.
“You are not alone”
Mentoring can be viewed as a learning conversation: learning about oneself; creating space for reflection and supporting action planning. It also helps to equalise opportunities, to create frameworks that support professional development. Informal networks often serve men more than women for example.
With over a decade in Science Management, Inês supports scientists to thrive in an ever-evolving research landscape. She coordinates the Mentoring Program sponsored by the Gender Equality Group at the University of Luxembourg and works as a mentor and coach. Her own background is a Ph.D. in Biology from ITQB-UNL (Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier ITQB NOVA, Lisboa), with research conducted at the Rockefeller University in New York, USA. She has worked at iMM (Lisboa, Portugal) and in the Vienna BioCenter (Austria).
Inês knows how important mentorship can be in a research environment and is accredited by the MCAA (Marie Curie Alumni Association), EMCC, EMCC Luxembourg (European Mentoring and Coaching Council), and the CARE network (Career Advisors Supporting Researchers in Europe), fostering collaborations and knowledge sharing within global communities.
Patricia Souza is the co-founder of WeSTEM+ (Women in Excel STEM) and a Leadership Development and Inclusion Consultant focused on creating more inclusive and equitable business environments. She is also the co-chair the Membership Stream for the NextGen chapter of Lead Network and a board member of the BeLux Chapter.
Patricia believes in empowerment through guidance, and a build-up of confidence and leadership through a good mentor. However, she also states that mentorship is a two-way relationship with a ripple effect to the circles of influence for both participants.
“It’s about building a relationship that can change the trajectory of their life.”
Sylvia Rohde-Liebenau is a leadership expert who worked in HR for many years, where she became involved with mentoring. Sylvia created the first ever mentoring programme at the European Investment Bank and later, together with Rita Knott, the Youth Mentoring Programme in Luxembourg. Today she works as an executive coach to leaders on all levels, with a focus on leadership presence, resilience, communication and impact.
For organisations, Sylvia believes mentor programmes are fantastic (and cheap) L&D tools that cover several purposes, in particular:
1) fostering a cohesive organisational culture
2) passing organisation specific knowledge to newcomers and younger professionals,
3) creating networks
4) fostering a learning environment
Mentors give back AND about learn about themselves.
Mentees: “You get as much as you put in (it’s not a free lunch)”
Keys to successful mentoring include building trust and openness at the start; clear agreements and engagement from both sides; basic coaching skills for mentors.
Sonata Louvigny is an EU project and program management leader, coach and mentor. Her starting point in mentoring was experiencing the negative impacts of mismanaged mentoring within her team. Sonata's master's thesis was on managing the mentoring process and to help various organisations develop effective mentoring programs aligned with their goals. She is a member of professional mentoring associations such as IMA and EMCC (European Mentoring and Coaching Council). She worked with EMCC Luxembourg, where her role was to oversee the accreditation process for coaches and mentors.
Sonata warns that a mentor could be in a position of authority over the mentee, which is more common in traditional mentoring but not in developmental mentoring, and therefore professional guidelines are really important.
Through her work she believes that mentoring is not just a hobby but requires specific competencies and skills. Effective mentors should be aware of the professional standards, continuously develop their capabilities, and, if they wish, seek accreditation to ensure they provide high-quality, impactful mentoring.
How to find a mentor
My guests suggest:
- Identify people that inspire you.
- Reach out to them
- Join groups
- Find peers
- Take advantage of organisations that create mentorship programs (workplace, non-profit organisations, educational institutions, professional associations, government initiatives, and community organizations, among others).
Links:
Mentorship Platforms for anyone, for example: https://www.mentoring-club.com/
https://nationalmentoringday.org/history/timeline
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52023IR1537
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylvia-rohde-liebenau-phd-b51b0328/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/patriciasouza11/
http://we-stem.org/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonata-kucin/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/inescrisostomo/
https://www.linkedin.com/school/university-of-luxembourg/
University of Luxembourg (@uni.lu) • Instagram photos and videos