Mentoring Stories: Olina got a first-hand reminder of the infectious nature of inspiration while mentoring a fellow Nitorean

Suvi had been thinking about improving her visual communications skills for a long time – almost six years, even. Interest in the subject had arrived in the form of an iPad and Apple Pencil, but the technology of the time wasn’t what it is today. So, the idea was left on the back burner for quite a while. When the opportunity to be mentored on the subject arrived, Suvi finally jumped at the chance, and we were brought together.

I found the mentorship to be an interesting opportunity to adapt my approach to what Suvi wanted to accomplish, and to try to push my own teaching abilities further. The first challenge was distance – I wondered how well I could convey visual communication techniques in a hybrid environment. Still, I found myself intrigued by the idea of teaching someone one-on-one for a longer period.

As we got underway with our mentoring journey, the program guidelines had set us up with a suggested trajectory. What to consider while starting out, what the end goal might be, that sort of thing. To give some insight into what visual communication entails in a business context, it is basically trying to enhance dialogue by incorporating images and drawings into one’s communication to engage and inspire people.

In the beginning, the tasks were quite simple and app-oriented. Learning the ropes of ProCreate, working with different brushes, and so on. As I got more comfortable with the drawing aspect, the challenge level of the tasks started growing as well.

- Suvi Purontaus, Senior Enterprise Coach, Nitor

Inspiration breeds inspiration

What surprised me the most in the beginning was how fast Suvi was learning and absorbing new information. I had a trajectory in mind based on workshops I’ve done in the past, but I had to adjust on the fly and give her more challenging tasks at a much higher rate than I had originally anticipated. That was a real revelation to me – if a person is motivated, interested in the subject, and highly driven, everything can progress much faster than you might initially think.

Another happy surprise during our mentorship was seeing other people becoming interested and curious about what we were doing. People would peek in and inquire about what I’d just been mentoring Suvi on, which sort of turned into a handful-size community of Nitoreans who wanted to learn more about visual communication. This became a cool spinoff of the actual mentoring process between Suvi and me. It was so rewarding to see how our shared interest and inspiration in the subject became a sort of lightning rod to some of our coworkers.

I’m prone to visual thinking and have experience in drawing, which I think ushered my progress into a faster track. I’m quite creative and artsy to begin with, but the challenge was conveying what I know through tools like ProCreate, iPad, and the Apple Pen. In a sense, one takeaway from the mentoring was that I had perhaps been anticipating things to be harder than they eventually turned out to be.

- Suvi Purontaus, Senior Enterprise Coach, Nitor

The mentoring program is spread over 20 hours in 10 weeks, which we both thought of as quite a short while to learn new skills in the beginning. The upside, though, was that the time limit made us more focused on specific tasks and challenges. We focused on getting better acquainted with the key tools of visual communication and how to integrate them into daily work. The timeframe also made us ponder on what the tangible goal would be – if you have only twenty hours to achieve a certain goal, what would it be, and how would you best spend those hours, so it remains achievable?

The scope of our mentorship might, of course, have been broader if we’d had, say, a hundred hours to spare. But for Suvi and I, we found that the best part about the 20-hour timeframe is that it drives you to be efficient and goal-centric. To focus on what you’re doing and why, and to consider also what you’ll be leaving out to streamline the process.

The multi-faceted value of communication

One of the greatest aspects of the mentoring program is that it gives Nitoreans time, tools, and the necessary internal networking for a successful mentorship experience. Many organizations have policies in place that award employees the option to use working hours to learn new skills and undertake training, but it’s usually left to the individual to take the time and energy for it. This also fosters internal coaching, strengthens teaching skills, and keeps people talking. The mentorship has a lot of positive byproducts.

For me, the most impactful thing as a mentor was seeing Suvi’s lightning-fast progress as well as how our mentorship inspired others. Mentoring programs like this have the capacity to open new discussions and lines of communication, but personally, I found that it also made me think about tangible outcomes and practicality, and how much those things may vary from one person and job description to the next.

We both felt that another positive takeaway from the mentorship was that the program introduced structure, and Suvi had time to rest and digest between sessions. Sure, she could’ve just emailed me and asked me to show her how to use an iPad to improve visual communication skills, but when sessions are spread over a set amount of time and tasks are divided into smaller increments, this is a brain-friendly approach which also means the mentee can retain the information and absorb new skills in a more impactful way. It keeps you in the continuous flow of learning.

I think the best thing about Nitor’s mentoring program is that it encourages Nitoreans to learn by example and action.

- Suvi Purontaus, Senior Enterprise Coach, Nitor

The Mentoring Stories article series sheds light on our mentoring program that offers the possibility to learn and share advanced and cross-functional knowledge with fellow Nitoreans. At Nitor, we embrace the diverse and unique journeys of our Digital Engineers. Enabling personal growth paths and supporting self-development through concrete methods and social learning is one of our core values.