‘I can’t recommend getting a mentor highly enough’

So just what is this ‘mentoring’ about and why does CIH have it as part of its member benefits package?

Well firstly, I must confess that I do have a bit of previous with mentoring.

I have been lucky enough to have a mentor before. I was a finalist in the first-ever CIH Cymru Rising Stars competition and one of the prizes was to pick a mentor of my own.

I ended up being with my mentor for five years and found the relationship immensely beneficial. OK, yes, I had probably held on to the mentoring relationship too long (isn't hindsight a wonderful thing?), but I ultimately made the decision to end it in 2017. So what then?

I hadn't really thought about getting another mentor, certainly not in the short term anyway. But over Christmas, I spent some time looking around the CIH website and found that as part of my CIH membership I could request a mentor. I hadn't even realised it was one of the CIH benefits!

The process was really easy, from the list of potential mentors I picked three, submitted my application online and got a confirmation email back from CIH. A few days after this I had an email confirming that Andrei Szatkowski had kindly agreed to be my new mentor. It was one of the easiest things ever!

For our first mentoring meet-up, we arranged to meet at Piccadilly train station a few weeks later for a chat. On the train down there were a number of Twitter conversations about the CIH mentoring scheme and Lisa Pickard, chief executive of Leeds & Yorkshire Housing Association, suggested I should blog about my experience of the CIH mentoring service – so here I am!

The first mentoring session is a chance to meet and see if the ongoing relationship will work. In the case of Andrei and I, we have agreed to meet again, so it must have gone well!

I can't recommend getting a mentor highly enough. The ability to talk to a fellow housing professional who gets to know you well but doesn't work with you is invaluable. Having a mentor, I have been able to get some fantastic career advice and some much-needed sense checking on things that have cropped up where I've needed a second opinion.

During that Twitter conversation with Lisa, I also agreed in the next few months to sign up to become a mentor myself through CIH. I have done some unofficial mentoring previously (as well as being a qualified mentor and coach) and have also had the experience of being mentored myself, so I am really looking forward to the chance to pass on some of my career experience and advice to someone else.

My final request is simple - if you aren't already involved in the CIH mentoring scheme, I would strongly suggest you take a look!

Follow Brett on Twitter: @brettsadler77