What's in for you to engage as a mentor and coach of young talents?

 
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Since taking over my leadership role for Bosch in China, I frequently engage in our talent development programs. There, I have two roles which are being a mentor, sharing my experience and being a coach, helping them to increase their awareness and to define their personal development plan. I do that for our young talents as well as for the soon to be directors.

 
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Whenever I hear from others how difficult it is to spare some days to invest in our future leaders, the following quote comes into my mind . . . .
CFO asks CEO: “What happens if we invest in developing our people and then they leave us?” CEO: “What happens if we don’t, and they stay?”
But this is only on perspective that I take from being engaged with our talents.

After my recent 2.5 days engagement with a group of aspiring leaders, I was sitting in the train back to my hometown, reflecting on what happened and questioned myself why I am investing a certain amount of my time for being with them.

The obvious is my passion for people and to support them in their personal growth and professional development. Either as a mentor in sharing my experience of more than 20 years in leadership or as their coach with profound training and practice. But there is more than that. Our company has so many divisions and business units. People from different background come together for their leadership development and allowing me to get insights in their fields of expertise and what's going on elsewhere. I have learned a lot about our company during the discussions with those colleagues. Additionally, it keeps me connected and grounded when listening to their concerns, how they feel about the current situation and challenges in the business. Being with them is as much a learning for me than it is for them. Every time I leave those events, I leave grounded and aware of the challenges we face but also energized and inspired by our young leaders, their motivation and ideas.

I'm glad that we at Bosch have a process to encourage senior leaders to join the talent development programs as mentors and coaches or as speakers. I recommend that for everyone in leadership who is willing to learn about and from our future leaders. It helps to keep you grounded and up to date with the current challenges as well as what inspiring ideas our talents bring into work.

 
Jens Maxeiner