The importance of mentoring in telecoms - interview with Anthony Vincent, Openreach

“Mentoring is a vehicle not only to grow others self-awareness, but your own too.”

Winner of the ITP’s Mentor of the Year Award 2016, Anthony Vincent has been mentoring for almost eight years. His most recent mentee, Jessica Ashton, was a finalist in the Apprentice of the Year category last year.

So, how did it all begin? Starting his career as an apprentice himself, Anthony joined BT straight from school at 16. Over the years, he held several roles, and at 23 was promoted into his first engineering line operational management role. Since then he has worked across transformation, production and supplier management, and managing apprentice field teams to today where is responsible for driving operational delivery with third party suppliers.

Were you ever mentored?

Yes, and still to this day I have mentor. I have had a number throughout my career who have inspired me and helped me in several different ways. Some have helped grow my maturity whilst others have been a sounding board for me to self-reflect on my leadership style etc. Where you are in your career and which areas you wish to develop should help determine your choice of mentor. Also, having more than one mentor at a time can be beneficial too, as it has allowed me to broaden my ‘network of influence’ outside my normal sphere in the business and get a refreshing point of view from someone else who doesn’t necessarily have a conscious or unconscious bias to the world I may be working in at that time.

What drove you to become a mentor?

Having had some fantastic role models who have supported and inspired me throughout my career, I’ve learnt the importance of one of the traits that makes them who they are; the desire to want to give something back. Being a mentor is one way I can give something back too, and if I’m able to inspire and be just a little part of next phase of talent coming through then that’s great. You never know one of them might be my boss one day, as I did become years later for one of my very first mentors.

How long have you been mentoring?

I have rarely actively offered mentoring support to someone out of the blue – for me is doesn’t work like that. It’s all about the needs of the mentee, what they feel they need to develop, and who inspires them enough to want as a role model. So, as I do with my mentors, I approach them. Looking back, I’ve been mentoring for as long as I’ve been a manager – since 2009.

What do you get from it? Do you ever experience reverse mentoring (where you are receiving as much value from the experience as the mentee is?)

Yes absolutely, reverse mentoring this is one of the huge benefits you get – call it self-therapy in a way. At the most basic level for example, when your mentee is talking through a scenario you can relate to, you tend ask yourself - would I have honestly taken the same approach faced with the same thing? Mentoring is a vehicle not only to grow others self-awareness, but your own too.

How do you see mentoring helping young professionals?

Understanding where you want to get to and navigating your career journey isn’t easy. Just having that opportunity to sanitise your own decision making, or take on board those golden nuggets of advice from someone else, is immeasurable when it comes to getting to where you want to be. It’s also worth noting that as I mentor I don’t profess to know all the answers either; my opinion or advice is purely advisory – it is up to the individual to put the pieces where they feel they fit. Reflecting on the times with my own mentors, there has been occasions where I’ve honestly not known where to start with a particular problem. Talking it through with my mentor, their opinion has then sparked a new train of thought which I wouldn’t have found without talking it through out loud.

What advice would you give your peers who may be considering mentoring?

My advice would be actually, why wouldn’t you want to mentor?

Think about all those interactions you’ve had with people over the years, either formally or informally, which you have walked away from feeling valuable and benefited you. Now ask yourself, why wouldn’t you want to be mentor and help someone else?

Anthony was the winner of the Institute of Telecommunications Professionals (ITP) Mentor of the Year Award 2016. The 2017 Awards are now open for entries until 14th July at www.itp.org

The ITP Annual Awards take place on 9 November 2017 at the Radisson Blu Hotel, London.

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