This week’s blog is to reflect on the impact and significance of having a coach or a mentor in my professional journey. Before I go down the journey of highlighting why I feel a coach and mentor is important for my personal growth, I first have to travel to the past that had the biggest impact on why I am driven to always having a mentor.

My personal Story

         Growing up in a small coal-mining town in Kansas with three brothers and my dad, life itself was different and a challenge to not stand out as odd compared to other families.

My father was a high school drop out, single parent, and did the best he could to maintain a home based on the little income he earned from his auto salvage business. My mother was not around, and I actually did not officially meet her until I was eight years old. My siblings and I did not grow up like normal kids with the push to belong to school organizations, participate in youth activities, or even allowed to go to church. You went to school, worked in the family business until dark, then as a family the meals were cooked, and whatever time was left was meant for homework. Neither one of my parents had the skills to coach their children on college or mentor on how to deal with work place challenges.

         I remember as a small child, I would daydream while watching a movie of being that person with a huge corner office with glass windows, who was in charge. Although I was quite the dreamer, there was something inside that always made me feel different than my family. I didn’t understand that I had mentors and coaches as a young age until I was an adult. My first set of mentors was my neighbors, Leonard and Nancy. Nancy worked for the local college, and Leonard was on the school board, very active in community events. I often wandered to their house just to talk and one day they asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. At 11, I told them I wanted to be a heart doctor because I wanted to change all the unhappy hearts. Of course they grinned and said I would be a great heart doctor.  When I was in high school, I played basketball and was allowed to participate in the cheerleading squad. My dad never went to any of our school events, but my neighbors were always there providing me the abode of positive confidence and reinforcement of doing a great job, usually followed up by a hug. One day I asked my father why he never came to any of my activities. His reply was he was too busy and family business was a priority. The hardest part of my childhood is that my siblings and I spent several episodes in the foster care system due to child abuse.

Military Coaching

         I learned the value of coaching while in the military. I joined the Army National Guard (ARNG) at the age of 17, as my dad had to sign the enlistment paperwork so I could attend basic training between my junior and senior year of high school.  I actually joined the military to get away from my family. While in basic training with over two hundred 17 year-olds, I realized I was in an environmental setting where everyone is being treated equally and I was normal. With the military training I had zero mental obstacles in doing any of the tasks. I was actually impressed that I could actually walk 22 miles with a loaded backpack, but my peers did. I remember my platoon sergeant pulling me out of the pack to walk with a couple of soldiers that were struggling mentally and physically with the task. I was immediately thinking “why me” since we had several assigned leaders, already. I quickly realized I was being coached on how to coach another person. This was one of the first times in my young life I was entrusted to help someone else. I feel this was my first experience to coaching.

Military Mentoring

         My first mentoring experience was when I had just completed about three years of my military service, and just had my daughter. I was sick while pregnant and gain a substantial amount of weight. Military guidelines required that you had only six weeks to lose excess weight to be considered fit for service. I worked hard at losing weight and running to complete the physical fitness program, on time. This was a major challenge and not a path I would recommend to anyone today, but it was something I had to do.  So my military unit was competing in a military readiness exercise, where each person had to pass a series of events, with the physical exercise test being the final one. I remember worrying about this test, especially since I just had my daughter six weeks prior. My brigade colonel had a conversation with me the day before about my goals and what my plans are for achieving those goals. I shared the weigh loss story and the challenge to get into fit so quickly. He shared is confidence in me as a soldier and offered his advice in achieving goals. The next morning was the physical test. I remember running the run and my mind telling me its not a big deal if you quit, then all of a sudden there is the colonel running beside me, reminding me of our conversation of my goals.  I completed the test and passed. The next day as we were in our war gear, in formation, I am called to the front of the formation. I was nervous, cause I had no idea why I was being brought up in front of my peers, I mean I passed all the readiness tasks. The colonel appears, and performs an In-grade promotion. I was totally shocked as in grade promotions tend to occur when you are in real wartime situations. Of course I had some upset peers that did not understand why I was deserving of a type of promotion for just passing a couple test. The missed message was the colonel mentored me to achieve a goal that was important to me. I have been fortunate to have a several mentors in my military career, often being pushed to take a new job or a new role, even when I did not think I was qualified.

         I am fortunate in my military career to have obtain five different skills types from operating heavy equipment, administration, maintaining maintenance on F16, accounting and finance, with my last role being within the base education and training squadron. Working in the education and training is where I was able to apply the most coach and mentoring to other military members. I managed the Community College of the Airforce degree program. I helped airman find institutional leaning and funding to help them achieve the two year applied science degree. Due to this effort I received the Air Combat Commands (ACC) award for helping 10% of our airman obtaining their degrees in an annual period. Although this was combined with coaching and mentoring, by guiding them through resources and advice, it was truly their success. I felt rewarded by knowing another person was able to achieve a milestone in education. What I gained was an in-depth ability to coach and mentor.

Civilian Coaching and Mentoring

         Working at Lockheed Martin is probably the most challenging employment I have ever endured. I started my career in 2004 as an admin for a few senior managers. I felt like I was going backwards as a admin, but it was due to not having a college degree and I needed to just get my foot through the door so the company could see my skills. I started back to college in 2005 with financial backing from my company. By 2006 I had graduated with my bachelors degree and two applied science degrees from the Airforce. During this struggle I had to take physics, which was not my forte, but my senior manager cleared his whiteboard and starting teaching me my homework, since his degree was in physics. A leader at the company volunteered to mentor me in my educational goal, but coaching me on a learning struggle. When I see this leader today, we often joke back on that physics class and when he wiped that white board to walking me through the homework. I did not ask for help, but someone volunteered to help. This reinforced the idea that mentoring is a need not an option.

Why I Coach and Mentor

         Coaching and mentoring is a requirement to leading the future leaders, in my opinion.  I credit my success is a direct result of those in my life that chose to coach and mentor me on my goals and challenges, because they wanted to. I have been fortunate to have leaders that cared enough to ask me about my own goals of a leader and then intentionally put me in situations to grow on those opportunities.  I often wondered as an adult why I was lucky to have been pulled from the small coal-mining town in Kansas with a parental design that did not coach or mentor me to where I am today. I credit my dad for teaching me the value of perseverance of overcoming tough obstacles that do not define you. I credit my neighbors for taking a vested interest in my emotional stability to reinforce confidence of a better the future. I credit the military for setting the boundaries of what success could be if I set short and long-term goals. My biggest credit is Lockheed Martin for having a program that is aligned to helping me obtain my higher education, and opportunities to be a better leader.

         The most rewarding mentoring and coaching opportunity occurred recently when a young girl was starting her Masters degree at work. Her manager told her to come to me to see how the program worked, as I had experience with the tools. The conversation was about her aggressive plan, which included three courses at a time. I automatically went into the mentor role and expressed that could be somewhat a challenge due to workload and the master degree level of involvement requirement. Two weeks after she started she stopped by to say I was right, as it was a bit tough. I let her know that we are here for her, and make sure she goes to her manager if it becomes too much to handle. A couple more weeks later she let me know she had the handle of it, but thanked me personally for the help. Although the example is small, people are put into our laps when we least expect it, but mentoring and coaching should always be on the forefront to lead our futures. Mentoring is very important to me as I don’t think I would be where I am today without those who were my mentors.