I moved from being a petroleum engineer, working on technical jobs and oilfield development type work, to a more entrepreneurial role in business and commerce. Then I was invited to go into general management … to go out and run one of our businesses. At that point, I met David. I was in a new role I’d never done before and the head of HR very wisely advised me to get a mentor.
I was fairly confident technically but not personally. I had a sort of imposter syndrome. When I was offered the job, I remember saying to the CEO that I’d love to do it, but if were him, I wouldn’t offer the job to me!
The head of HR knew my biggest issue was my fairly low self-perception. I didn’t understand the concept of leadership, so I didn’t know I was capable of becoming a leader.
With David’s mentoring, I came to understand that I could be a leader, and a good one. Soon, I decided that David should be meeting my team and attending team building events. My team gained more confidence in me because of my willingness to expose them to David which made it clear that my development journey and the team’s was completely linked. Having the confidence of my team made me more confident.
I have certainly benefited from the kind of base that he gave me. An awful lot of what we did then has stuck with me and I’ve found myself giving similar advice to people I regard highly.
